Blood and barbeques...

Catchy title, huh? Okay, so the blood and the barbeque themes are seperate. It's not that we had a bloody incident at a barbeque or anything. Although at the barbeque tonight there was a story relayed to me about one of the women sleepwalking and having her mother wake up to see her standing beside her bed with a butter knife. That would kind of freak you out wouldn't it?

Anyhow, yesterday we took the girls to the International Adoption Clinic at CHEO (the Childrens' Hospital of Eastern Ontario). The clinic will see internationally adopted children four times over the course of a year, if the parents so chose. Yesterday was our first appointment. Let me start off by saying, CHEO is an amazing place. I had heard many times about how great the place is, but it was usually in association with some fundraising event or effort, so I figured 'yeah, yeah, sure'. Well, it truly is a great place. From the moment we walked in it was clear this was a hospital dedicated to kids. Everything is designed for the kids ... from the decorations, to the people working there. I guess it makes sense that anyone chosing to work in a childrens' hospital would be into kids, but I just couldn't believe it. It's really nice to see twenty-something men blowing bubbles and bouncing around trying to get a smile from a kid who's being poked by a needle.

We met with Dr. Hui and two others -- one resident, and one medical student. They spent quite a bit of time talking to us about the girls and our experiences. Dr. Hui also outlined what will take place at the next three visits. They will be checking for all sorts of possible illnesses (from HIV to Hepititus to TB, etc., etc.), and also monitoring their attachment, bonding and development. It is really nice to have a place dedicated specifically to international adoptions. And Dr. Hui is great. He answered our questions and gave us a real comfort level.

After we left Dr. Hui's office, though, we headed off to the blood work lab. Unfortunately, in order to do the tests for the gamit of illnesses, they needed to take lots of blood. E and A did NOT enjoy that part of the visit... and therefore neither did DoT or I. As entertaining as the bubbles were, they could not divert our attention from our screaming children. :-) On the plus side, we needed to get a urine sample from E (A had already provided hers) and the trauma of the blood donation did cause her to empty her bladder, so we were able to take care of it all with one visit. :-)

Tonight we went to a friend's house for a barbeque. It was our first opportunity to go out for a meal with the kids. It went pretty well. Aside from not having as much opportunity to socialize as we may have liked, it was good to see friends again and have a bit of a visit. Our friend has a three-year old daughter (M) who A and E spent a lot of time watching. E and A both seem to like kids a lot. Although M is really cute, so maybe that was it.

Well, that's it for tonight. I was going to leave you with a couple more pictures, since I know how much you like that (that's right, it's all about you...), but for some reason blogger doesn't want to let me. I'll try logging on through my work computer and adding them, but if you don't see pictures you'll know it didn't work.