A Haitian slumber party!

This week we have been working on replacing our floor in the baby house.  This means that Nick and his crew had to rip out a layer of tiles and 1.5 inches of concrete from the entire baby house.  They then mixed and laid 12.5 yards of cement by hand.  It was a long, hard week for them, but thankfully it is all done.  Now we have to wait a month for the cement to fully setup and then we will be painting apoxy on it.  Hopefully our new floor wont hold bacteria as much and there fore will help the overall health of our kids who crawl all over it!

Any ways, the day the concrete was poured no one was allowed into the baby house.  No big deal right, except we had to find somewhere for 51 babies and toddlers to sleep.  The two youngest rooms were put in the dorm style rooms in the volunteer house.  We debated for a while where to put the 3 toddler rooms. I wanted to take them next door to the Manna compound which is another mission.  It was decided that that was to much work and they'd just sleep under the play pavilion.

The nannies were all pretty excited about this and thought it was a good idea.  They brought out all the kids' cots, hung up a ton of mosquito nets, put up tables and mattresses all along the border to keep the kids in, and creatures out, and basically turned the whole area into a fort.  It really was kind of cool!

At least until 1 in the morning when we had a full on rain storm.

Nick and I grabbed our rain jackets and sprinted out there to see how they were doing.  We were pretty drenched by time we crossed the compound.  The nannies cheered as they saw us approaching.  Jenn and Amy came down at the same time.  We decided to put a few of the kids in their apartment and the rest in another room in the volunteer house.

So in the middle of this storm, we transported 30, most of which were sleeping, toddlers from the play pavilion to their new assigned rooms.  We also hauled about 10 twin size mattresses which were excessively heavy due to the rain over to the adoption office to stay for the night.

Of course the nannies, who didn't carry any kids, realized after they got to their new room that they didn't bring any bottles, wipes, diapers, water, formula, etc with them to their new location, even though I asked them before the left the play pavilion if they had every thing.  And of course they remembered each of these things one at a time, so we had to make several trips out in the rain to gather the needed supplies.

It was actually really fun as the six of us ran around, completely drenched in the middle of the night.  Only in Haiti would one have to worry about these things!  And the kids were all so adorable.  The entire floor of the AC room was covered in mattresses and all the Zandolit and Elefant kids were sprawled out on them in every which direction.  I just stood there for a minute looking at the kids and soaking in the moment!  I really do love these guys!

Unfortunately while we were gone Eventz was woke up from some thunder and was screaming.  We brought him in bed with us, and we both laid there for several hours before falling back to sleep!  And then were woke up again bright and early as Eventz was kicking Nick in the face.

Don't worry though, tonight all the kids are warm, dry, and safe inside the baby house AND are enjoying playing on the new floor!