Screw-ups, Growth, Glasses and Education

Lots to talk about today!

First, LabCorp screwed up yet again…for the THIRD time. We finally got all the test results back and we should be finished for the time being. We’re not too happy with their performance.

The second screw-up was Isaac’s Certificate of Citizenship, which shows him as being born in China. We got a kick out of this. Imagine: Twins…one born in Ukraine and one in China. Need I say more??

In my last post I mentioned how much the kids had grown, but something didn’t sound right. So I got the figures from the hospital and am keeping record myself too, so here’s a correction. Since we met them in May/June, Isaac has gained 1.32lbs and grew 0.83”, while Isabella gained 0.44lbs and grew 0.59”. We don’t think Isaac was receiving enough nutrition, probably because he gets distracted so easily. We’ve been having to keep reminding him to eat when at the table and not play around with the fork or stare at us eating. The funny thing though is that in the morning, he devours his breakfast and needs no reminding whatsoever!

At the Ophthalmologist visit, the doctor decided to try correcting Isaac’s crossed eye with glasses. She might try a patch later on, but she’ll see us again in 2 months to measure progress. We don’t have the kids on a vision plan yet, so it cost a little bit of money to get the glasses. However this is temporary and we’ll have to think about covering them later. I honestly didn’t think the doctor would try glasses, so we’ll have to see if there’s some exception since this isn’t really to correct his eye lens but the eye alignment. Pretty amazing how much stuff you have to learn about quickly eh?

The kids love playing with each other and they seem to be having fun in pre-school. We haven’t experienced attachment issues and we told the school how they can help with that. The kids, especially Isaac, tend to be overly friendly and want to hug everyone. Although for the untrained eye it might seem sweet, in actuality it could be a potential FAS symptom/effect, or because they were institutionalized at such a young age. Learning social boundaries, such as understanding the difference between parents/relatives and friends & strangers is very important for their development.

Finally, today I read a couple of really good articles in the RainbowKids.com newsletter that I subscribe to and I’d like to share a link to them. I highly recommend them for anyone considering an adoption or for those that want to understand the issues that adoptive families might have to deal with:

• Friendships, Social Skills, and Adoption
• Understanding Language Issues