Welcome to the neighborhood!

This afternoon, we received a new little boy! He just turned two years old on September 21st and is a tiny little thing. I can't post his name, but his first initial is "D." He was asleep when he was brought to us but woke up in all of the excitement and fussed just a little bit. When we heard that he'd been living in jail with his mother, we all agreed that he needed to be shampooed with lice shampoo "just in case." Upon further inspection, this poor child is absolutely COVERED in nits and lice. Seriously, I've never seen so many nits on one child's head in my life. It looked like he had at least one nit per hair and a better estimate is probably two or three nits per hair. We shampooed him but could tell immediately that using a lice comb to comb out the nits was doing absolutely nothing. We started just cutting his hair off and trying to get it as short as possible, but that also did nothing. He had so many nits against his scalp as well that we just couldn't get the hair short enough with scissors. We ended up taking him to the barber to have his head shaved. I'm not a fan of shaved heads on little boys, but it really was the only way to get rid of the nits. I just have "before" pictures so far so I'll have to update with an "after" picture tomorrow!

He was pretty quiet for the first hour but has really opened up this afternoon. He had a very loud cry, but he seems to be happy most of the time. He was having a lot of fun playing with the other kids and was fully engaged in their play with them. He independently ate his dinner very well. We'll see how he does at bedtime tonight!

Oh! And just to show you that Cochabamba isn't really that big at all… When I went to visit Michel and her mom at the jail on Pedestrian Day about a month ago, I asked her mom if Michel has many little friends in jail. She said that she doesn't like to play with the other kids (she was pretty independent at the baby house too), but there was one little boy that she really liked and when everyone was outside, she always looked for this little boy (and only this little boy). Although the little boy was her friend, they always hit each other and didn't always play very nice. Well, it turns out that our new little boy is the little boy Michel played with in jail! When we were told his name and history, I immediately knew who he was! He's just the right age to be the same little boy from jail and based on how Michel's mom described him, he fits that description too! We were also told that his mom requested our orphanage, so we're assuming it's because Michel's mom told her about it.