As we had mentioned earlier, Samantha has a cold, and the doctor confirmed that it is just a cold and nothing else. We’ve also noticed that she’s been pulling on her ears. The doctor checked and said that there is some wax buildup, but she can see past it. She gave us some hydrogen peroxide drops to help clear that up. Along with the expected Mongolian spots, she also has a red patch on the back of her neck which the doctor confirmed was just a birth mark and will most likely fade. For those of you unfamiliar with Mongolian spots, these are grayish patches on the skin that normally fade as the child ages. They can easily be mistaken for bruises, so it’s important that our doctor document these when we get back so that we don’t get suspected of child abuse. These are very common among Asian children and are absolutely nothing to be concerned about.
The rest of the medical was relatively normal with no concerns:
- Length – 70.5 cm (~25 percentile)
- Weight – 8 kg (~20 percentile)
- Head circumference – 42.7 cm
These are pretty consistent with what we expected, if not actually a bit better.
We have now signed off to the Canadian government that we accept Samantha, and that we wish to proceed. The documents were delivered to the Embassy in the afternoon, with the expectation that her Visa will be completed and ready for us on Thursday.
The remainder of the day was open, so we went back to the room and had a bit of a rest, then put Samantha into the stroller for a little walk – in the 38˚ weather. Just a quick walk down to the grocery store and back. Samantha was good in the stroller for about three quarters of the trip, but then I had to carry her the rest of the way back. Not bad for her first time.
After that we just had a quiet afternoon getting to know each other better. Some of the others in the group were heading out to Pizza Hut for dinner, but Samantha had already gone down so we passed, although we did ask them to bring us one back – needed a break from the steady diet of Chinese food, and it sure was good.
Samantha’s smiles and laughs are coming a bit more freely, but she does have a number of other faces that she is more than willing to share with us as well.
