Back to school

Jeff went back to school today to finish out the school year.  It sounds like he had a good day, spent showing his choir classes a slideshow of our trip to China and being welcomed back by staff and students who missed him.  TongJie and I also had a good day at home.  We spent a lot of time in the backyard, and it was pretty nice this afternoon.  He loves to climb up and down the stairs on our deck.  He can't do it by himself, but that doesn't matter to him - it's still an endless source of entertainment.  You can see his look of concentration in the photo below as he makes his way down the steps.

Albert and the cats always join us outside, and TongJie loves to pet them and try to follow them around.  Like I mentioned in my last post, I think Albert is really warming up to TongJie and he hasn't been moping around the house anymore like he did at first.

I took a lot of pictures when we were outside today because we were outside in the backyard for a large part of the afternoon.

TongJie spent a lot of time picking up things and showing them to me.

And he even walked a little bit by himself (but not for very long)!  He's pretty confident with his walking inside the house, but he's still wary of walking on the uneven grass without holding somebody's hand.

And speaking of holding somebody's hand, he was especially clingy today.  I'm not sure if it was because Jeff was gone all day for the first time, or if he was just feeling extra needy today, but I don't think he walked at all from the time I lifted him out of his crib this morning until probably after 2:00 this afternoon!  Whenever I tried to set him down, he would slide down to assume his position of a beetle stuck on its back and cry and cry.  After his nap and some time outside, he seemed to get a little more independent.

While TongJie was napping, I had a phone conversation with a nurse from the UW pediatric clinic about the results of all of TongJie's lab tests.  Everything appears to look pretty good, which is great news for us.  Of course, there is the positive TB skin test that we already knew about, so we will start giving him medicine every day for nine months for that.  It doesn't sound like that's too big of a deal, although nine months seems like a long time.  Plus, he was found to have giardia (remember the poop samples from last week?) so we will have to give him a one-time dose for that and hopefully it will be taken care of.  TB and giardia really are not that big of a deal, especially considering all of the other, more serious, conditions that he could have tested positive for.

After Jeff got home, we went for another short walk on the loop trail.

This evening, TongJie played with his car for awhile.

We tried to get him to bed a little earlier.  He was in his crib by 7:50 but he's still wide awake, laughing and exclaiming.  To end my post for today, here are a couple pictures of TongJie when we were playing peek-a-boo.  They turned out kind of blurry, but you can still tell how much fun he's having!