Certificate of Citizenship

Alina's Certificate of Citizenship arrived in the mail today!! It is nice to have proof=) I was going to take a picture of the certificate and post it on this blog but didn't want to go to jail. I had the camera ready to go when I read the little red words at the bottom. No copies, photos, or anything of that sort.

We had a not so good start to our day. I had Reina in the bathtub and somehow she cut her thumb. I still haven't figured out how she did it. I was helping her sister get ready for a shower and so was not looking right at Reina (shower and bath are right next to each other). I turn back to her and notice her thumb is bleeding. A lot. So I get her out of the tub, dry her off, get her dressed, and wrap a paper towel around it. It was bleeding so much I couldn't actually see the cut. I put pressure on it for about 15 minutes and it finally stopped. The cut is actually 2 cuts that went pretty deep into the pad. I put neosporin on it and wrapped it in a couple band-aids. She was crying most of the time cause it hurt, poor kid.

I got Alina out of bed (she woke up in the middle of all this) and got Lauren up to get dressed. Then we headed out for a walk and a play in the park to get Reina's mind off it. We went for about a 45 minute walk. Alina was great in the wagon with Reina! They had a great time pointing at flowers and Reina made bird sounds to answer the birds making noise around us. Then we headed back into our neighborhood to the park and the kids ran around awhile. Alina likes the slide and playing with the little rocks that cushion the playground area. Reina climbed the rock wall with my help and ran all over the place. Mission accomplished=) No more tears.

We headed back home where Reina decided to tear off her band-aid. The cuts are deep enough that the skin is going to get caught and pulled if not protected. So I convinced her to put another band-aid on and wrapped another one around that one to keep her from pulling it off. Then I drew a pink flower on the band-aid (they don't make cute finger tip band-aids, and a flower was all I could pull off. She wanted Dora the Explorer). So far that one has stayed on. We'll see if it is there in the morning.

This afternoon Alina had another doctor appt. She weighs 21lbs. 9oz! She has gained 3 lbs. 6oz since her appt. in Almaty a month ago. She had two more immunizations done and her ears checked to see if they were better. They also checked her hearing, but the machine wasn't working well. Her right ear is fine, but the machine quit working when they checked the left. We'll try again next time. I will be making an appt. for her to get her vision tested as well.

Her blood tests came back. She is a very healthy little girl! The only thing that could be a problem is that her thyroid appears to be overworking. We will wait a couple months and do another blood test for that to see if we need to go to a specialist.

She is walking more and more. Her main mode of getting around is still crawling or cruising the furniture, but she is getting braver and braver about just stepping out and walking on her own. She is going to be running soon!

That's it for now!