Sorry for the hiatus. I feel like all the days here run together, and I’ve only been here for a month. Day in and day out, life is pretty routine for these precious Starfish babies. Here’s what a typical day is like (note that all times are approximate, and anyone who’s ever had an infant knows you follow baby’s schedule not Mom and Dad’s J):
6:30-7:30 Wake up! I hope I never forget the first sound that woke me up our first morning in Starfish. I didn’t know then who was singing Old MacDonald so loudly, but now I do—because it’s just about the only song Chloe sings! And the cutest thing is, it’s not quite complete. Over and over and over she sings “E-I-E-I-E-I-E-I” :) As the children wake up, the nannies plop the littles in high chairs or walkers and the toddlers like Chloe wander around and play. Anna and I are usually not up that early (don’t judge!), but if we are we’re getting ready for the day. (Look at the flexibility of this one, little Emma!)
7:30 Breakfast The children eat about 5 times a day here, sometimes more for the infants, sometimes less for the older kids. The younger babies drink vitamin-fortified formula for each meal, but as they get older they add solid food with increasingly complex textures. It seems that the cook (fabulous, I might add) makes one dish—usually noodles with Chinese-flavored sauce, veggies, and meat—for the older kids and then blends it more and more for the younger and younger kids. Recently, meals have been supplemented with yummy in-season fruit purees like peaches and watermelon. I feel confident that all of the children are fed plenty to eat of a fairly well-balanced diet.
8:00-11:00 Play Time This is the time when volunteers get the most interaction with the kids. We are singing, playing finger games, exploring toys, tickling, reading books, laughing, talking to them—all the fun things you can do with kids. We try to bring as many of them out of their rooms as we can for maximum impact. :) Their minds are so young and curious and they learn by experience and exploration and social interaction, so I feel like every minute I play with a child is a minute more of helping their minds grow. And it’s a minute more when I can help them feel loved. 
We bring the kids to one of two courtyards or outside. The front courtyard is where we spend more time with the babies and pre-walking kids. It’s a large rectangular open space with a skylight-type roof. It’s nice because it gives more of an open feeling to the place, but it’s also a greenhouse in the summer and gets super hot during the afternoon. All four sides of the courtyard are lined with trikes, baby walkers, toys, balls, etc. which provides more than enough playtime opportunities for all the kids. Many of the kids at Starfish don’t learn to crawl because the nannies take them straight from the high chairs to the walkers and they zoom around in those things like pros! But, at the suggestion of nurse Gill, we rearranged some floor mats in the corners of the room and have been trying to give more tummy time for all the kids. Apparently the cross-body coordination required for crawling is an important cognitive and motor development. Already we’ve seen some learn to crawl since we’ve been here. Success! I’ll often have be entertaining 6 or more babies on the mats in what one volunteer has christened “Baby Corner.”
The second courtyard recently had a playground added to it, thanks to Care4Tina foundation. The older kids love to climb and slide, but the swings are the most popular attraction and are often occupied. 
If we want to take the babies outside, we load them up in strollers, give each of them a sun hat, and head out the big double doors. The grounds of Chang Le Gong (the gated old-folks community that the Starfish building is a part of) are ideal for taking the kids on walks because there is very little, if any, traffic, the grounds are lovely with trees, bushes, and flowers, and the NaiNais and YeYes LOVE seeing the little people. Also, there’s this little dog that hangs around because Naomi has been feeding it!
10:30 Brunch As we get nearer and nearer to 11:00, the nannies come and take the babies back one by one. Usually this meal is a bottle that helps soothe the kids to sleep for their mid-day nap. At first we didn’t help much with the feeding, but as we’ve become more familiar with the system, the nannies welcome our help. Each child has a bottle labeled with their unique Starfish number, and they only ever drink out of that bottle. This way as little germ-exchange as possible occurs.
11:00-2:00 Nap Time Even the older kids are put in their cribs, but I can’t say whether or not they sleep for the whole nap time. (Once I peeked in through the window and saw they had climbed out of their cribs, thrown blankets and clothes all over the floor, and were pushing the cribs around like bumper cars! Hee hee!) At 11:30, we eat lunch with Naomi and the other volunteers. The lovely cook makes a few delicious Chinese dishes and we eat and chat and have a nice little break. While the babies sleep, we either sneak a nap of our own or find something else that needs to be done. There’s always laundry, picking up and disinfecting toys, mopping the courtyard floor, etc. but sometimes we do things like organize closets. Today we worked on making new cute nametags for the doors.
2:30 Lunch The kids start waking up between 1:30 and 2:30 and we feed them again.
2:00-5:00 Play Time Then it’s play time again, just like the morning. A few times a week, we call out “Shang Ke!” (“Start class!”) to the older kids and they run to a room in the back of Starfish where we hold little classes for the older kids. I’ll do a whole post about that sometime.
4:30 Dinner Same old same old. :) And every other day or so bath time follows this meal.
6:30 Bedtime And then a bottle (Oh, I forgot to mention, the older kids don’t drink formula out of bottles; theirs is in sippy cups.) and bed! And of course, though bed time is 6:30, usually it takes a while for all the kids to settle down, and in the baby room, I’ll often walk by at 9 or even later and see at least one baby up. Typical.
I’m pushing toddlers around in a Minnie Mouse bicycle during play time? Yes, I’m in China.
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