Ethiopia Day 4

Marley woke up early and has been a little fussy. I feel like it's ear infections. She rubs and tugs at both ears a lot. Poor baby. I have been giving her Tylenol a couple times a day. Since our schedule has been so full of tourism type activities, poor Marley is napping for about 2o minutes at a time and not having much of any routine. Things will change when we get home. I just worry about our flight home. She really is such a happy baby and her fussiness is obviously out of discomfort and probably also from being pulled out of her surroundings. This morning, early, Brandon got really sick. REALLY sick. Luckily, he began to feel better after lunch. Firsth this this morning we went to House of Hope to take pictures and spend time with all the children. We saw Ruhama first. She is my friend Missy's baby. I had many many children to visit, but Ruhama got priority, as she is just 5 days younger than Marley and I'm her Akist! I walked into the room that I have so many pictures of Marley in. I had the nanny change Ru into a t-shirt her family made for her. I talked to her her and held her for her mommy. There were so many babies there, I couldn't tell if all of them had been referred out or not.
There are four rooms that babies are in. Three rooms were for little babies, like under a year. One looked like it was for babies around one to two years old. I saw nannies feeding, changing and washing babies. I went into a room that had a gym mat on the floor and about eight babies having tummy time while a nanny folded what looked like about 200 cloth diapers. I always wondered if the babies had tummy time. I guess so.
After taking pictures and visiting with the babies, I went downstaris to visit withthe older children. I sat on a step as about 15 children crowed me with admiration. They called me Mommy as they brushed their fingers through my hair. They were very entertained by my straight hair and my skin. They stroked my hair and my arm. One girl tried to put a pony tail in my hair and then an older gilr took it from her and corrected her in Amharic on how to do it the right way. The boys were rubbing my arm as to say it was squishy...lol. The smiled giant big smiles, some toothless. We gave them candy and playdough. They sang two songs. They seemed so proud to preform for us and we cheered when they were finished. The nanny then handed us our shoes, as if to say it's time to go. Too funny! I was able to take some video and pictures for many families.
The other travel families returned from the mountain tour and we left just minutes later to eat lunch again and go back to our guest homes. Our documents from the Embassy were ready, what a relief!