Baby Kerly and The Sound of Music

Well, summer time is officially over here. Yesterday was the first day of school. We had a ton more kiddies come. One in particular is a baby named Kerly about 8 or 9 months old. She is super adorable and when I passed by her for the first time, someone was holding her and she reached her little arms out for me to take her. "Awwww, how precious!" I thought. Well, let's just say she turned out to be a screamer. Hours upon hours of screaming. I think I saw the inside of her mouth more than anything else. It was her first day at the Guarderia and I was starting to suspect that she's used to being held. (Yes, all 8 or 9 months of her little life!). She cried and screamed most of the time, but if you put her down, OMG, I've never heard anything like it! I knew when she was getting hungry, because she kept tugging at my chest and was making a sucking sound. I just tried soothing her and told her ....."No tengo leche aqui" (I don't have milk here), to which the Tias (Aunties, as the women workers are called) roared with laughter. They just thought that was the funniest thing ever. So, all day they teased me about that.

The mothers of the infants come and breast feed their babies every few hours (as they work on the rose plantation which is on the premises). One of the mothers came to feed her baby and heard what a ruckus this little Kerly was making. The next thing I know, she takes her from me and starts to breast feed her! I was like..."Whoa! Is this even legal??!!" But nobody seemed to mind. It took me a whole hour to get over this! This was a big reminder that I am in another country. In the States, you just don't breast feed children that aren't yours! Anyway, she was fine for a little bit after this and then went back to her wailing. Poor thing. Her face was so red at the end of the day! I felt badly that there was really nothing I could do for her. Apparently, if I did have breast milk, I could have fed her. Actually, I think I'm still not over that incident!

Also, yesterday we received a new volunteer. She is from Austria. I didn't get a chance to talk too much with her yet. But as soon as she said she was from Austria....I just kept thinking of my dad and the Von Trapps. All of you Sound of Music fans out there will know what I'll talking about! My dad just loved that movie and was set on calling our family the Von Stotlers!