Last Day

Yesterday was my last day volunteering with the infants and toddlers. I spent part of the morning with the infants. I played with Baby L and Baby C. They’ve grown so much. They are both walking and Baby C even says some words. She always says hi to everyone when they walk in. At one point, she picked up one of those soft rings and brought it over to me. Crawling Baby thought it was funny when I put it on his head so I did the same thing to Baby L. Baby L and Baby C laughed. When she’d try to steady the ring on Baby L’s head, it would always fall off. After it fell, it’d role across the room. Baby L chased after it laughing and then brought it back to me to do over again. Then we played a game of peak-a-boo with me sitting behind a shelf which they had fun with, but I had to stop when they started throwing toys on the other side where Baby E was laying. One of the toys actually hit her, but she didn’t cry.

When they brought the babies outside, there wasn’t anything for me to do so I went into the toddler room for a while. I saw Crawling Baby for the first time since his transition. Well, he’s not a crawling baby at all anymore. He’s been walking for a while now and last week was his first full week in the toddler room. He seemed happy mostly playing by himself. Sometimes he’d try to get involved in what the other kids were doing, but since he’s so young, it doesn’t work. He either doesn’t understand what they are doing or they don’t want him to play. Most of the toddlers are ready for preschool so they are ahead of him. He thought it was neat to hold a bucket up to his face and talk into it. I think he liked the echo. Another toddler who I’ll call M came over and they started sharing the bucket. M is older than Crawling Baby and he talks a lot more, but he seems to like spending time with him. Crawling Baby and I walked around the room a few times and I brought out the bubbles which they all loved.

I also saw D. She has changed so much as well. She has small conversations now. When I first met her, she didn’t say any words. When she realized I was there, she ran over to give me a hug. Every few minutes while I was there, she came over and wanted to be picked up. She reaches her arms up and says, “Up up.” The problem is that she’s really heavy and when I want to put her down, she doesn’t want to get down. That happened recently when her grandmother was late picking her up and she wanted me to carry her around the whole time. She has a funny personality. She’s nice, but has an attitude too. I’ll miss her.

It was unusual, but the babies slept for most of the afternoon. When Baby C woke up, I spent some time with her, but then Little Guy and Baby E woke up. They both like to be held, but we got Baby E settled down on the floor. Little Guy really wanted to be held so I held him for a while and then put him in the squishy seat next to Baby E. He was okay for a while, but wanted to be held again. For the rest of the time, I sat holding Little Guy and watching Baby E talk to her toys. There was one toy she was trying to grab. When she couldn’t reach it, she would make a fussing sound like she was frustrated, but when she was able to grab a toy, she’d start laughing. Little Guy smiled while watching Baby E too. When I left, they were all playing and happy.

It was my last day with the babies because it looks like I’ll be taking a job with them maybe next month. I’m not sure of the details, but it’s with one of their preschool rooms. Only a couple toddlers were ready to move up so they haven’t opened the room yet. Now there will be enough kids so they offered me a job in that room. The good thing is I will already know some of the kids. I will miss the infants and toddlers though, but sometimes, I can stop in to see them on my breaks and who knows. Maybe I’ll get to work with this age group again in the future.