Red Thread To China 2007

Well yesterday I took Levi in to the Dr. She was very thourough in her examination of him. She said that he was very healthy. His head is 19 inches, he weighs 31 lbs, and is tall. His head size and weight is on the charts, but his height is not, since he is pretty short. He has gained about 1 1/2 lbs since coming home. He received 6 immunizations, had x-rays, and blood drawn. He did very well during the first couple of shots but then he did start to cry a bit, but not for long. The x-ray techs were amazed how well he did with the x-rays. And he did so very good at the blood draw. He only flinched a bit when they inserted the needle, but watched the whole thing. Better than me because I couldn't watch it. The pictures are of all his boo-boos, poor baby. He is a little sore this morning, but not bad. The doctor did say that if we didn't hear from Scottish Rite that she could get me into Cook's to start the plan for his foot. He has appointments set up with an ENT and a pediatric opthamalogist. I still have to make one for the dentist too. SO it seems we will be very busy for awhile. Take care and Have a nice Thanksgiving everyone.

Well we have another Dr. appointment for Levi tommorrow. Hopefully we will get some answers. It would be nice if they took some x-rays of his leg so that they can tell us exactly what his diagnosis is. We sent in our application for Scottish Rite hospital last week, so maybe we'll hear good news soon on when they can see Levi and start a plan for his treatment. We need everyone to pray that he gets accepted to be treated there. Levi continues to progress with his language and is saying more words everyday. He also seems to have gotten a bit bigger since we have been home. I think he is getting more comfortable with us now and starting to trust us. I will post more info after his appointment tommorow.

Well everyone Levi seems to be getting more comfortable everyday. He is so silly at times he even cracks himself up. He is starting to pick up more words. The other day I was in a hurry to get somewhere and forgot that I parker really close to these boulders next to the driveway. Well I tried to cut the turn too close and I scraped my brand new car right under the rear door. Now I was so upset because it is new and now has a dent in it!!! I was practically in tears when I got out and shouted "Oh my goodness" and I could hear monkey (Levi) in the back seat repeating it. I couldn't help but laugh, it was so cute. Then last night Jerry loves to watch wrestling and some guy comes out and starts saying over and over money, money. Well Levi proceds to put his hand up to his mouth like a microphone and say money, money over and over again. He was so cute!! We all had such a good laugh. He is a ham when he is in the mood.

We have an appointment with Early Childhood Intervention today to fill out some forms and have Levi evauluated. We will see how that goes. And I will be sending off another application for Scottish Rite Hospital in Dallas for treatment of his leg and foot. Everyone needs to keep thier fingers crossed that it works out for us and they are able to give us some good options for his foot. I would love to see my little boy take his first steps soon. We also have another doctors appointment scheduled for next Tuesday. Hopefully this doctor, who does have some international adoption experience will order and do all the testing necessary. I will keep everyone posted on the progress.

Take care and leave comments, I love reading them!

You may be wondering what I am talking about. Well this will be the first time that Jerry will not be home with Levi and I for the weekend. Jerry had to leave yesterday for military duty this weekend down in Brownwood. He has SRP again. For those of you that don't know what that means it stands for Soldier Readiness Program. They do this when getting geared up for deployment. His unit received thier warning notice sometime last month that they will be deploying sometime next year. Not good news for the adoption front. If we wish to adopt a girl we need to get working on finding her and soon. I might be going to get her on my own with one of my older kids or MIL. Charla would really like to go and I think she would like it very much. But only time will tell how that all plays out. I have to leave it in God's hands now, but I still worry about my Mylie out there somewhere and when I will be able to bring her home.
Back to the subject of Levi and NO daddy. You see Levi is so very attatched to Jerry already that every time he walks out of the room or isn't right there by him he starts to freak out. So last night when he had to leave I made sure he was in his highchair eating dinner so maybe he would do better, since that is his 2nd favorite thing FOOD!! He did so well when daddy kissed him bye bye and never cried at all. Whew!!!!! I thought I was going to have WWII going on when he left. I am so glad because I have been worried that Levi hasn't been bonding to me, he prefers daddy to me at all times. He will tell me bye bye and not shed a tear but when daddy leaves he screams and carries on. Even just going to the bathroom he will sit at the door and bang on it until he comes out. When there are other family members around he just flat ignores me for the most part unless I have food or a snack. I have had to really hold my emotions in check about this and try not to take it personally. But it is so hard! I want him to love me so badly that the rejection is devastating to me. I love him so much. I know in my head that it will take time and Jerry lets me do more of the caregiving to promote the bonding process. It is just so different from my other kids, they couldn't be out of my sight for one second or they were crying for mommy. They were fine with others as well but prefered mom to anyone else. No one knows what happened to himin the past maybe a "mommy figure" hurt him in some way and since I am the mommy he takes it out on me and can't fully trust me yet. He is doing so well right now and hasn't either realized that daddy is gone or understands that he will be back. I have been teaching him Daddy be right back whenever he has left the room. SO maybe he is getting it. Well I better get ready for the day.

Take care all,
Sandi

We finally thought that maybe he wouldn't be too afraid of the clippers for a haircut. We sat him on Jerry's lap and he did great!!! He wiggled some but I was able to give him a decent cut. Here are the pictures afterwards, he had hair all over him so it was off to the bath he went. When we first got him he hated taking a bath, now he loves it. He would sit in there and play for hours until he was a prune if we let him. So enjoy the pictures.