6 month follow-up

Today we drove to Columbus for Eli's 6 month follow-up (it's actually been 8.5 months since his last appointment) at the International Adoption Clinic. He is up to 31lbs (95th percentile) and almost 35 inches tall (75th percentile). He's a big boy for his age! Our appointment lasted about 2 hours and included a physical, a developmental assessment, another TB test, and more bloodwork.

We weren't surprised to learn that Eli has exceeded all of the developmental milestones for his age, especially in speech and language. He is doing great! In fact, the assesor actually asked us how confident we were about his birthdate, suggesting he could be a couple months older. Well, we are 100% confident with his birthdate based on the information we have. And, he now gets very shy and quiet around people he does not know so he did not show off all of his good stuff today!

His shyness and quietness around strangers actually makes me quite happy and relieved right now. When he first came home, we had some incidents of him approaching strangers in public and hugging their legs and/or grabbing their hands. One time, he grabbed a woman's hand at the park and started leading her away from us. When we redirected him away from the woman, he got very upset and wanted nothing to do with us. We were mortified! We definitely believe this was an attachment issue as he was transitioning home. These are the seemingly little things that no one really wants to talk about, but most of us experience them in one way or another when we bring our little ones home. But, it was huge to us and reinforced that we needed to continue practicing attachment parenting. It has certainly paid off because that would never happen now! He definitely knows his mama and daddy.

After the physical and developmental assessment, we were off to the lab for more bloodwork. It was just routine repeat bloodwork from his first visit just to make sure nothing shows up a second time. Unfortunately, little pea had to have both arms pricked. The lab tech started drawing blood and then the vein blew so he had to prick the other arm. Eli was such a trooper. Of course he cried, but he was more upset that he couldn't hold his whale/dolphin book!

After we left the clinic we hit our favorite store, Trader Joe's, to stock up! You gotta love Trader Joe's! Apparently pea does too. He had his own shopping to do. A boy on a mission...
"Ummm, excuse me daddy...where is the peanut butter?"

Hangin' out while we were checkin' out.