Baby Claire and the blustery day.

Claire seemed to be feeling worse today. The doctors said that the flu is making its way through the babyhouse, and poor Claire is pretty miserable. She has a fever and is very warm because of that, but then on top of that we have to keep her head covered and dress her like she’s the abominable snowman. I think she’d be so much happier if we could just remove a layer or two (or sometimes three). We won’t see her tomorrow because it’s Sunday, so hopefully she’ll be feeling better when we see her on Monday. We won’t get to see her Tuesday, either, because our court time is during morning visit hours, and we have to take Justin to the airport during afternoon visit hours. But Wednesday will be a big day, because Grandma will be here! I hope she’s back to her old smiley self by then.

We practiced our court speeches this afternoon. From what we’ve heard from other couples, court will take anywhere from five to 45 minutes. Justin has to give a short speech, which pretty much just covers how much we love Claire, what our occupations are, how much we love Claire, why we chose to adopt internationally, how much we love Claire, and why we chose Kazakhstan. Can you tell we’re supposed to stress how much we love Claire? Every time we practice, Justin starts his speech with “Four score and seven years ago…” Let’s hope he drops that before court. Otherwise I think we’ll get a bewildered look from Asel as she’s translating it.

We were going to go for a walk this afternoon and trying out a new restaurant for dinner, but we looked outside and saw this:


I thought that after living in Kansas for eight years, we’d be used to wind, but I’m not sure “wind” is an accurate description of the weather phenomenon that’s taking place outside right now. I’m not about to go out and try this, but I’m pretty sure that you could just fall into the wind like one of those trust games, and it would catch you and hold you up.

Looks like we’re homebound again tonight…dinner will be potato peroshkis and French fries (bring on the carbs!). We’re rounding out the food pyramid with some fruit – ketchup and apple juice. Only two more episodes of 24 left. I don’t look forward to the shakes and chills that will set in when we’re finished.