Yearning to Say Goodby : Health: The former guardians of a Romanian orphan, in the U.S. for foot surgery, want to see the child again. But officials say it is best not to.

For the Cook family, life has returned to normal in the 10 months since a crippled Romanian boy they had hoped to adopt was abruptly taken from their home.

In the bedroom at the top of the stairs, Debbie Cook has taken down the decorations that she put up for 7-year-old Alexandru Ivanescu.

She has removed the photo of the frail, blond boy posing with her two young children that had been placed prominently on top of the living room TV set.

And, Cook said, her children, Lara, 6, and Bob, 4, have stopped asking about Alex as often as before.

But the Simi Valley mother said she has one piece of unfinished business with the Romanian child whom she treated as her own for three months last year.

She wants to say goodby.

Alex spent three months with the Cook family after he was selected from a Romanian orphanage a year ago to come to the United States for surgery on his severely deformed feet.

Then, volunteers for the nonprofit agency sponsoring the boy removed Alex from the Cooks’ home after a series of disagreements over the boy’s education and other matters regarding his care.

Now living at the Reseda home of a Romanian couple, Alex is supposed to have a second and final surgery at Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital to correct his feet.

Because he is in the United States on a medical visa, he is expected to be sent back after his surgery to his native country, possibly to the state orphanage where he grew up.

“The main thing I want him to know,” Debbie Cook said, is “when he gets older and decides where he wants to go and be in life, my door will always be open.”

Volunteers from the nonprofit Free Romania Foundation have put off Debbie Cook’s requests to visit the boy.

Fullerton resident Christine Nelson, the foundation volunteer who has guardianship over Alex while he is in the United States, said she is worried that the boy may become upset if he sees the Cooks again. “He missed them for a long time” after being taken from the family, she said.

It was Nelson who arranged for Alex’s treatment at Los Angeles Orthopaedic, raised money for his trip out of Romania and arranged for the Cooks to be his host family.

Nelson and another agency volunteer, Nicolina Markou, had repeated arguments with the Cooks over what was best for Alex, including a dispute over whether he should attend first grade, as the Cooks wanted, or kindergarten.

One weekend in late September, Markou picked Alex up from the Cook home for what was supposed to be a two- or three-day visit to her home in Reseda. She never brought him back.

Nelson said later that she and Markou had decided a few weeks earlier to remove the child. And Free Romania Foundation officials at the agency’s Boston headquarters stood by the decision.

“I walked into this favoring an American family from day one, with the idea of this child getting a home in a completely different atmosphere, a whole new life,” Nelson said. “I was very sorry from the beginning that things didn’t work out.”

Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital officials said Markou brings Alex in for periodic checkups.

“He’s doing fine,” said Maria Aguilar, the hospital’s international children’s program coordinator. “He’s growing. He’s a big boy now.”

When Alex arrived last year, doctors said the boy had one of the most severe deformities ever seen at the 81-year-old hospital. Each of Alex’s feet was “literally like a Z,” one surgeon said.

After the first surgery was less successful than hoped, hospital staff tried to straighten the boy’s bones with a series of casts. Aguilar said Alex is walking much better than when he arrived.

Alex is speaking English, attending public school special education classes, and he behaves more and more like a normal 7-year-old, Nelson said. In 13 months, he has grown 15 inches.

Still, Nelson is concerned about letting the Cooks visit Alex, who was told that the family had moved away. Nelson said she and Markou lied to ease the pain of his separation from the family, the first he had known since his mother took him to the Romanian orphanage when he was 2 years old.

“We told him they loved him very much and the kids loved him very much and they’re going to miss him as much as he’s going to miss them,” Nelson said.

Even with the various setbacks that Alex has suffered during his U.S. visit, Nelson said he has kept his buoyant, cheerful spirit.

“Alex is a happy child,” she said. “He will be happy anywhere.”