Complete Journal

Chloe Frank

May Project Journal

Due 5/29/19

For my May Project, I volunteered in University City Children’s Center’s infant room, where I fed, changed, and entertained eight babies. Over the four weeks I spent there, I bonded immensely with the children, as well as the teachers there. I am going to miss it like crazy and plan on visiting as much as possible during the next three months. The following are different stories and observations about the people I spent my time with, all of whom I completely adore.

Mandi is one of the teachers in my classroom and she has been such a sweetheart to me since day one. She is an endearing oversharer so I feel like I know much of her backstory now. After having her first baby when she was fifteen, she decided she loved children and wanted to be a mother figure for as many kids as possible so this job was a natural fit for her. I noticed her maternal instincts toward not only the kiddos but also towards me very quickly, a role she was happy to continue throughout my stay in her classroom. When I asked if she wanted to have any more kids of her own (she’s only 32 now) she said “God no, these are my kids and working here is the best birth control a person could ask for.” She has had so much pain in her life but never once did she complain or ask for sympathy. She brought laughter and joy into the classroom every morning and I will miss her dearly.

Lennon is my favorite baby in the classroom. She is almost a year old but she still looks like a newborn (she still weighs 12 pounds). She can’t walk or talk yet, but she manages to army crawl everywhere. The were a few times when I put her down on the floor and looked away for a second and when I looked back she had just disappeared. I soon discovered that whenever she gets a chance, she scoots across the room under the lunch table and eats any cheerios she can find off the floor. As disgusting as that was, she never stopped giggling and smiling a large toothless smile, even when she saw you reacting to her grossness. She is the most perfect gorgeous baby you will ever meet and should definitely be a pampers model. I had daily daydreams about putting her in my car and driving away and never giving her back to her parents. When I told the teachers that, they said they all have to be accountable for one another to make sure none of them kidnap her because they have all had the same thought. When I say she’s perfect I mean this baby is PERFECT. I only heard her cry twice the entire time I was there and both times she was just reacting to one of the older kids stepping on her. Even though the oldest is less than a year and a half old, the “big” kids still want to pick her up and feed her. They have a very limited vocabulary but still point to her and say “baby” even though they’re still babies themselves. It is precious to witness. My mom came to visit me at work one day and fell in love with Lennon as well. She told me if I didn’t track her parents down and force them to let us babysit her she would be very disappointed. That is still the plan as of now. I’m thinking bribery or some sort of ultimatum.

Ellis is probably my second favorite baby there. She is just like Lennon but a bit larger and she cries much more. While I was there I watched her learn how to sit on her own which was amazing to see. She refuses to drink from a bottle so every day I would sit on the floor with her and spoon feed her breast milk. In the beginning it was extremely frustrating because I just wanted to shake her and say “dude what are you doing just suck on the bottle you weirdo” but by the end I loved doing it because we had our own special little eating ritual. It was kind of adorable and is definitely one of the memories that will stick with me the longest, even though I left every day soaked in breast milk solely because of her. During our second week together she developed a weird attachment to me where she would scream her head off if I wasn’t directly in her line of sight, even if she was sitting in my lap but facing the other direction. She ended up only eating if I was the one feeding her, and the teachers said that every time I left to go to the bathroom she would scream and cry until I came back to her. They even sang a song to her that is usually reserved for directly after the parents drop them off in the morning. It goes “She always comes back, she always comes back, she always comes back to get you. She always comes back, she always comes back, she never will forget you.” I cried when they told me they used that to calm her down every time I left. Ellis has an older brother named Crosby who is a few years older in a different classroom. Every time he goes outside to play, he brings all of his friends to our classroom window to show her off to them. He always looks so proud to be related to her and is going to be such a great brother as they grow up together. Ellis and Lennon were born less than two months apart and live right next door to each other. I am so incredibly excited to see them grow into best friends.

My first day there, the kids were finger painting on the floor. I walked in to see five naked babies covered in purple paint, giggling and eating what should probably not be eaten. My first memory of Adelina was watching her try to stand up in a puddle of paint and then slip and fall face first into a blue and purple puddle. She cried and tried to get up again but the entire floor was a giant slip n slide of paint at that point so she was stuck. It was one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. Del was pretty much falling and crying 24/7 when I was there. I watched her run into the window and fall, fall repeatedly face first into a box and get stuck upside down, climb up on a chair and fall onto the floor, etc. Pretty much any way a baby could possibly hurt themselves, Del managed to do it. Despite her clumsiness, she would cry for awhile and then shake it off, quickly returning to her bubbly self before the next mishap. I now consider her my mini me because she looks exactly like I did when I was her age and I am fairly sure I was equally clumsy. One time she pulled her shirt up to show me her belly button and I said “it’s a Delly belly!!!!” She thought that was hilarious and apparently those words will never get old. Every time I said it she had the same reaction. Gotta love the consistency.

Thomas is the biter of the classroom. He is a sweet kid and I love him so much but whenever he was left unattended, he would run up to one of the smaller kids and bite their cheeks, leaving some serious marks and sometimes drawing blood. I love psychoanalyzing people, babies included, so it was very interesting observing his mom to try to find out why he loves hurting people so much while the other kids do not. He knows he is hurting them when he bites or pinches the kids because when they start screaming and crying, he smiles and laughs. After his attacks are pretty much the only times I saw him look genuinely happy. Either he is going to grow up to be a serial killer or this is just a phase that he will grow out of and he will be a totally normal adult in twenty years. Nonetheless, I made it my personal mission to learn everything I could about his family life so I could try to figure out why he was targeting the babies that he knew couldn’t run away from him or bite back. During the first interaction I had with his mother, she dropped him off and as she was walking away, he held up a male doll to her and said “Dada!” She laughed and said  “That might as well be your dad because I sure as hell don’t know who your real one is.” I had to cover my face so she wouldn’t see how shocked I was to hear he say that so publically and out of nowhere. The second time I met her, she carried him in while he was passed out in her arms. I asked if they had had a busy weekend and that was why he was so tired and she said “Nope I just gave him a few benadryl on the way here because he was being annoying.” So that was interesting. Anyways, when he wasn’t biting or tranquilized, he was a cuddly sweetheart and I truly enjoyed getting to know him.

Lira is the last baby that sticks out in my mind. She is five months old and weighs, and I’m not exaggerating here, 42 pounds. She is a little ball of fat and I frequently referred to her as “my little Michelin Man.” I don’t have many fun stories about her because she’s still in the phase where she does nothing but eat, sleep, and poop. She does, however, have a large mole on her left hand. When I mentioned it to Mandi, she told me that she was born with a sixth finger on one hand and the “mole” I was seeing was actually a scar from where the finger was removed. I still thank that is the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.

All in all, I have loved this month so incredibly much and UCCC will forever hold a special place in my heart. It never got old or boring and I loved every second I spent with those kids (who I now consider to be my kids, just for the record).