She wasn’t nick-named Xiao Pang-Pang (Little Fatty) by her foster mom for nothing: as of our last doctor appt. on Friday our little one had gained a half pound during the previous week! She’s in the 25th percentile for weight and 50th percentile for height now — extremely healthy. But one yellow flag did come up, which explains why I’ve now got massively pumped up arms and John and I both have aching backs: she registered 14 µg/dL on the blood lead level scale: in Massachusetts, safe is between 0 - 10 µg/dL. From what our doctor says, this is actually not as bad as expected, coming from this particular orphanage, where lead levels have registered very high among adopted children. She thinks we may just miss the state’s flagging mechanism, which would immediately flag our home as unsafe and require extensive renovation to comply with lead safety requirements (even though the lead levels of our child were raised elsewhere).Tomorrow John takes Li-li in for her hearing exam: we’ve got fingers crossed for temporary deafness caused by inner ear fluid, mostly because I want her to know the joy of listening to Barney again and again as soon as possible.
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Hi,
It has been great to read of Anna-li’s progress since coming home. Allie is also doing very well. Everyday she does something new. It is getting hard to keep up with her as she crawls so fast. I wanted to let you know that her lead level came back at 20. We’ve been contacted by our local health commission and they are reviewing the case to decide if they need to do a home study. The doctor was very reassuring and said this should go back to normal within months. We are hoping that Anna-li’s hearing issues are resolved soon.
We haven’t been posting at our blog since coming home but you are inspiring us to resume (along with demands from the extended family). It is http://www.markandronnie.blogspot.com.
mark (for Mark and Ronnie)
(Ronnie’s email is ronnietodaro@optonline.net)
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I can’t wait to see your new pictures, so get cracking on the blog again! We miss Anna-Li’s former roommate (and her parents) very much — and don’t you wish we had that great buffet waiting for us every morning? Best of luck with the lead issue — I think we’re supposed to get tested again in 2 months, and our doctor said the same thing: they expect the lead levels to drop quickly.
We had to get all of her inoculations done again (poor little thing) at our doctor’s suggestion, but I think we’re really lucky that these two were in such good hands for the most part. Please let me know if you ever venture up North — we’d love to get these two back together again! Li-Li has finally started that raspberry thing your daughter mastered so well!