Casa de Amor Mother's Day

With a house full of substitute mothers, "mothers of the heart" as we call them, Mother's Day is a special day around the Casas de Amor! Here in Bolivia it's always May 27, in commemoration of a battle fought in the 19th century by all women while the men were at war. (With the result being a massacre.)

A little picture tour of this year's celebration at the Baby Home!

Gifts! (And music playing on the laptop)


Skit by Casa de Amor II + volunteers, stories of Jesus healing

Those Baby Home tias - never disappoint with a side-splittingly hysterical skit!! :)

Dra. Corazon...Elena???

Tia/Pastora Maria also gave an uplifting sermonette on Hannah and son Samuel. (no picture)


And we mighttt have gone a little long so Tia Savannah had to go ahead and leave with her little charge - newborn F's first doctor's appointment! But first a little pose with boyfriend M. :)

And speaking of Savannah, baker & designer of the world's cutest cakes in case you weren't aware....

Specially designed Casa de Amor I & II cakes!!!

Don't know if you can tell here, but each little (unique) face has it's initial. I think everyone's fav was baby G, complete with his little burn mask!

Casa de Amor II

And...the potatoes! No Bolivian meal is complete without 'em.

Happy Mother's Day!!!

For a blog post about another side of Mother's Day (mothering our children without mothers in a season where EVERYTHING here is about mothers), see this post on Savannah's blog.

2011 Group Picture!

On May 23, we finally took our annual "April group picture". :)

First respiratory viruses and then a bad case of scabies caused delays, but....

DRUM ROLL!!!

Ta-da! It finally happened.

Granted, baby G was in the hospital so not present and we also did not bring newborn C from the 4th house, not being entirely sure the skin stuff was entirely dealt with (surprise - it's not!). Anddd the very next day baby F arrived (see former post), so three are now missing from this picture to be the actual "these are our current kids" picture.

But we still love it. Are the babies not the cutest thing in the world?!

J, age 7, proudly doing his part with new baby E

Casa de Amor III!

Then it was time to give little girl B a 4th birthday party! Check out that cake, just what the birthday girl ordered: a kangaroo!

Some of the guests (Hospitals of Hope was visiting this afternoon)



The ever-photogenic B!

Fun times!

Birthday & Babies

While every week is memorable with my two "jobs", this last week was really over the top. On Tuesday was my birthday and every day since Thursday there's been something somewhere for Mother's Day.

A few of the highlights on my birthday...

The day started off with an early morning serenade outside my door, complete with guitar and representatives from three of the homes!

Then we went to the dining room where a breakfast feast had been laid out. Savannah outdid herself on the cake, yet again! She explained that the kids wanted to make me a cake like the movie “Cars”, which I think is pretty appropriate since they adore my car and I practically live out of it, hehe, but Savannah voted them down and did a logo cake.



Around 8:30, there was a phone call. The social worker took it in the entry way then popped her head around the corner and said “Jennifer, you have a birthday present. The other baby [from a women's shelter] has been born, should I say yes?” I thought she was joking, only that she doesn’t joke! And so a beautifully perfect newborn arrived...

Cheers to the new baby!
...with freshly squeezed orange juice... :)

At 11:51am I was reading the papers with baby F in my arms, reading that she was born at 11:50am the day before, May 23, weighing nearly 7 pounds.

She was 24 hours and 1 minute “old”!!

But before her arrival, I had already run to the juvenile detention center and the hospital, where I was just supposed to leave the third sample of one of my former bridge kids. However, they didn't even need the last sample to confirm what I've suspected a month now: positive for TB.

In the afternoon, I picked up one of our newer babies, G, who was released from his 3 day stay at the hospital for unexplainable diarrhea and vomiting.

Admiring the two babies! Baby G, approximately 3 months old and recovering from burns, and baby F, 1 day "new"!

That evening I was told to await a visit from the "world's most handsome little man" and was surprised by this little fellow, Gabriel, and multiple gifts! Gabriel was adopted last year by one of our caregivers.

Then it was off to the Coronilla (an infamous hill in our city known for its street community) where about 25 were waiting patiently for me to arrive to a carefully prepared birthday party.

Once I had approximately two pounds of confetti on my head, after each one greeted me personally, there was a huge heart shaped cake. And singing. And coke. And gifts. And lots and LOTS of pictures! All by candle light!

It was quite the event. :)

About one third of those present...

Life here is very full, with both my babies and my big kids, and I can't imagine being anywhere else, doing anything else.

this little love...

joined our Casa de Amor family today!

More news (and pics) later! :)

this is what happens...

...when you ask Casa de Amor for babies!!

Within six days, two babies!

The story of baby BOY G (yes, it's a boy! he was in donated, very pink clothes when I picked him up)...

On April 5, 2 month old G and his mother were admitted to the hospital* with severe burns suffered in a kitchen gas tank explosion. His mother was burned on 60% of her body and G on 9% (his face and thigh). He was operated on three times and received two blood tranfusions.

He's been well enough to leave the hospital since the end of April but they weren't sure where to send him.

Then...... On Saturday, May 14, his mother died from complications. His father, an alcoholic, never visited, so he was declared partially orphaned and abandoned and taken to government offices today. Which is when our social worker called me (out and about) and asked what to do. See, we've had some bad skin things the past couple weeks possible due to this new baby so although we have room, it didn't seem the wisest thing to bring a baby into our scabies infested house.

Sooo.... I called Casa de Amor IV! They agreed to take Baby G in until next week when we're sure we're over all this skin stuff.

I was blessed to be with him all day long as I ran other errands and took him to the doctor, and never once heard him cry! In spite of all the trauma he's been through, he seems to be a sweet, laid back baby, but still pray for his recovery (he also has a bad diaper rash, possibly caused by all his medications) and the VanderWerf family as they kind of have twins suddenly. :)


*And possibly his half-sister, but the government doesn't know where she is (??) so tomorrow we start the search!

new baby, new home!

While receiving a beautiful newborn to our Casa de Amor family is always headline news, this tiny one...

...made double the news by being the very first to enter our Casa de Amor IV! Yes, you read right! Casa de Amor children are now living, growing, and being loved in FOUR homes scattered throughout our beloved Cochabamba.

While the model is certainly more "foster family", for legal purposes it's just another one of our "hogares" (children homes), with the same administration and support staff as the other homes.

Mama Cara getting her first peek!

The VanderWerf family has three lovely daughters. Pray for them as they adjust to their new role as Casa de Amor foster parents!




More on the baby: baby girl C was born on May 11 by cesearean and was in the arms of her substitute family by the afternoon of May 12. Before judging why this baby would be abandoned, understand that the mother is 16 years old, and the father is the stepfather of the mother... Her own mother left the home last year, whereabouts unknown. A hard situation, to say the least. The birth mother plans to go on to study cake making and decorating to be able to get a job and be on her own.

Doing some paperwork right after leaving the hospital with my new charge: we were color-coordinated, ha!

the newest look-alikes

Two of the cutest babies EVER!!

Baby F (10 months) and Baby MN (8 months)

They are getting so big!

(So blogger definitely uploaded this sideways! I'm never sure why it does that when it does that...)

Married!

Congratulations Tia Elena & Tio Vico!

Your wedding was beautiful...

...and you were very generous to invite the dozen children of Casa de Amor II, who definitely had a memorable afternoon & evening!

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
I Corinthians 13:13

three hospitals

I'm at hospitals/clinics every day (and many nights) with both of my jobs, but lately it's gotten a little crazy as I have kids in three.

Just the past few days...

I've had up to two from the street in Viedma (both for surgeries)

Up to three babies at Hospital Albina Patino

And now one at the public pediatric hospital: a new baby for us, as soon as she's released!

But that day won't come till sometime next month, for reasons obvious in these pictures:

We're not filled in on the details, but Baby A was admitted due to multiple fractures inflicted by her parents. She is only 1 1/2 months old. Both of her legs are broken and her skull has a crack as well (remember baby Victoria?). There are no words......

Apart from the fractures, it's abundantly obvious that she has a bad skin condition going on. The doctor who approached me out of curiosity, for checking on this "abandoned baby", said it's bacterial. She must have been in less than hygienic conditions. For that reason they can't even cast her legs, until her skin is better.

Either the skin problem or the pain she was in has caused her to claw her face in several places.



Thanks for praying for baby A and her long recovery at such a young age!

Please also lift up baby boy S, in the hospital for over two weeks now, as we wait for results. The TB came back negative as we expected but the H1N1 results will be in tomorrow. Even so he has been moved to the isolation wing, where normally only our HIV+ kids go. He really needs to get better SOON!!!!

sick baby update

Shortly after writing the last post, we got the good news that baby girl F could come home!

The other news nearly made us faint: the bill for 13 days is $280! (We rarely spend more than $100 to get a child out, if not much less, because we are in the lowest paying category of the pediatric hospital.)

We were blessed to have the social worker, a long time friend, speak to the director on our behalf and slash the bill down to $143. Tomorrow baby boy S might be released (yeah!) and we have been warned that his bill is nearly as much as baby F's.

Apart from these two, we spent $110 on the other babies admitted, not to mention a whole lot more on medications the past month.

The accountant just showed me his pile of health related receipts for March as related to other expenses - it definitely wins!! It's been a rough several weeks.

If God puts it on your heart to help with these extra expenses, please let us know. I think maybe once or twice a year I mention economical needs on the blog, not wanting it to be anything about asking for money (my least favorite part of my "job"!), but sometimes it's good to share our needs with one another.

I'm done now - off to check on all the babies! :)

sick babies.

We've had a rough few weeks as the babies get sick with a cough, then get sick AGAIN with the cough, and now the dreaded rotavirus is here....oh will we ever be all healthy again?? In times like these we become excruciatingly aware of how susceptible our babies are. Many were born prematurely and obviously without many of the physical and emotional benefits of other babies.



Baby girl F and baby boy S were admitted on the same day, 13 days back. Little girl S (CDA II) and one year old F (Baby Home) just spent a few days before they were on the mend. Doctors wanted to admit baby A (youngest at the Baby Home at 4 months) but there were no available beds in the two main pediatric hospitals! This epidemic has hit Cochabamba hard.



We thought it would be cool to just take over this hospital room with our three. As it is, we run back and forth between the two wings of the hospital. More than once another mother has said "Is that one ALSO yours?!" Oh yes, and there are many more where this one came from. :)



Monday was scary as baby boy S took a downturn and doctors said I needed to go in to "make decisions". They were throwing around the possibility of a type of chemotherapy. WHAT??? He is now in testing for TB, but if he came straight to us from the hospital, how could he have TB? If a staff member has it... I don't even want to think of the possibilities!! Finally he was taken off penicilin and put on two other antibiotics and is slowly improving.

Pray that he and baby F are out SOON!! We are so ready to have everyone back home and healthy. One of the triplets, A, has had a very hard time improving. Baby MN has been absolutely miserable with the rotavirus.

*Photos shamelessly swiped from volunteer Savannah's blog :)

one of the newest...

We have been flooded with new babies this year!!

{some of our current crew of babies}

Whereas in 2010, the arrival of the triplets was all we had for the first seven months of the year, we've already received EIGHT this year! How I love being able to say YES when we get the calls. :) This due to the other amazing statistic of FOURTEEN adoptions last year, by far a record for Casa de Amor, and the re-opening of Casa de Amor III.

This handsome little guy is one of 3 March arrivals: His arrival story is unique to the others. I've known his young family since late last year through my street work. I actually met his mother and 1 1/2 year old sister at the crime police station as his father was being sent to jail. As I helped them weed through the paperwork and implications of what was happening to their family, I fell in love with baby M's witty mother (and adorable sister), often joking that she was my assistant on the street. For the past few months she has been back at home with M's sister and we just meet up to visit L in jail once or twice a week. Long story short, baby M has been living with relatives in another part of the country since he was 3 or 4 weeks old. When they dumped him back rather unceremoniously with his mother the evening of March 10, now 5 months old, he was in a terrible state. He was being fed watered-down powdered milk and had a bad cough, diarrhea, fever, tight distended stomach, and almost 3rd degree malnutrition...and screamed non-stop. (Now the pediatrician has detected a concerning heart murmur and has requested tests.) The very next day I went to government offices to get approval to bring him home temporarily, until his dad is out of jail (possibly this month) and the family is functioning again. Just now I realized that I've taken pictures of him three Fridays in a row - what a transformation!!

March 11, 2011 - Arrival day! A few minutes later a tia christened him with his name. He has not been named as they are waiting for his dad to get out before deciding. (But the parents like the name we chose.)

March 18...looking better!

March 25 - sweet, happy baby boy who rarely cries now

More pictures to come of the other new arrivals, and I think I still owe the triplet birthday party picture post.... :)