Sittin' On Go: Friday, May 25

We went back to the clinic this morning and found that the TB skin test is in fact positive, so they ordered a chest x-ray for TongJie. The nurse who looked at his arm this morning said it's likely that it's a false positive because many countries do a vaccination for TB that sometimes make the skin tests show up as positive. The chest x-ray was not a fun experience, as you can probably imagine. We had to take TongJie's shirt off because it had metal snaps on it, and since it was a onesie type shirt, we also had to take his pants off, so there he was in just his diaper strapped onto this bicycle seat with his arms up in the air surrounded by plexiglass. Jeff put on the lead jacket so he could be in the room with him, but I went in the back with the x-ray technicians. Luckily it didn't take too long, but it didn't make for a good morning. They'll send the x-ray results to the UW clinic and I'm pretty sure TongJie will need to take the meds regardless. It doesn't sound like it's that big of a deal though, and he seems to think medicine is a yummy treat, based on the reaction we got from the antibiotics he took in China.

It's nice that TongJie is taking afternoon naps consistently now. Jeff also took a little nap this afternoon since he didn't sleep well last night on the floor in TongJie's room. In our excitement of picking up Albert yesterday from my parents' house we forgot to bring his dog food with us, so we went back over there this afternoon to get it. Albert was happy to see my mom again too! She had offered to deliver the dog food to us, but we figured it would be a fun diversion to get us out of the house and to get more practice for short, fun trips in the car seat. This morning's chest x-ray car trip was short but not fun.

Jeff played drums in Leavenworth this evening with the local polka band, Polka Pals, so I got to practice doing dinner and bedtime by myself and it went pretty well. Also, I got to talk to my friend Heather on the phone for awhile while TongJie amazed me by playing with his plastic shapes by himself, periodically checking to make sure I was still there. When it was bedtime, I got him into his crib by 8:45 and he was asleep by 9:30, so he's still seeming to fall asleep a little earlier every night. I'm sure we'll have our share of setbacks, but we're thankful that things are going so well right now!

Albert seems to be doing a little better but he's still not his normal self. It's kind of funny that they both seem jealous of each other. Albert jumped up on my lap this evening, and TongJie, who had been contentedly playing by himself just a moment before, instantly came over and started pulling at my pant leg and wanting to be picked up too. I tried to take some pictures of them together but none of them turned out very good. In fact, a lot of the pictures look kind of fuzzy because the lighting was bad and I didn't use a flash.