Sunday was Alivia's six month anniversary of US citizenship. We arrived in New York on July 15 this past summer. Hurray, Livi!!!!
To celebrate we ordered her US passport this week. That was a lovely way to spend two hours... I couldn't believe how slow they were at the passport office. We got it done, though, and should have her passport within 6 to 8 weeks. Since we had a Florida certificate of foreign birth it made it easy to apply. We just had to show that along with her certificate of citizenship.
Yesterday was Alivia's 18 month checkup and I was thrilled with the doctor's report. Alivia has gained both pounds and inches and is now up to 16.5 pounds and 28 inches in length. She's still below the 5% line, but she's closing in on it at last. The really great news was about her head circumference, though. It came in at 17.25 inches and put her on the 5% line for low birth weight girls! Hurray! The doctor also had really good things to say about her development, placing her at 15 months. When I first got her at the age of 12 months she was only at 7 months developmentally, so she's closing the gap there, as well.
The fun part of the day yesterday was the shots and the bloodwork. Alivia actually did well with her shots--she only cried for a few seconds. It's not the needles that bother her--it's the stingy stuff in them. Apparently the stuff she got yesterday wasn't too bad. Then, when we went to the lab, the staff there were making comments about how they don't like doing babies because they always cry so much. They obviously didn't believe me when I told them she wouldn't cry, but I explained that as long as they got it on the first stick and didn't dig around in her arm she'd be fine. I think they were amazed afterwards to find out I was right. They did a good stick on the first try, got the blood they needed and Alivia sat there quietly and just watched them do their thing. She's such a trooper!
We seem, finally, to have gotten everything straightened out for Alivia's physical therapy, speech therapy and early intervention services. It's been a real pain trying to work out the insurance coverage and get everything in place. The next thing is to get her in to a pediatric orthopedic doctor to evaluate her hips and see if we need to do anything corrective there. Otherwise everything seems to be moving right along!
We are planning an outing to St. Augustine this weekend and I'll try to get some new pics to put up. Till then, everybody stay cool!
~ Jeana
Today Alivia made her first trip to the zoo! Gran and Papa joined us for a lovely afternoon. It was cool and breezy, but warm enough in the sun. Since the weather here has been so unusually cold lately a lot of the animals were inside, but we did get to see quite a few of them--including a couple male gorillas who were rather unhappy with each other. I also was able to get a couple cute photos of Alivia including this one with Papa. You can sure tell he's one proud grandpa!
The zoo also has a carousel. Alivia's a bit young for that yet, I think, but she did enjoy posing on this carousel horse that's at the entrance to the ride. She really liked sliding her hands up and down the pole, too... I'm wondering if I should start worrying... Anyway, we bought annual memberships to the zoo so that we can take Alivia back there often. It's a nice way to spend an afternoon--especially on a weekday when it's not too crowded. 
