At the risk of being redundant, my kid is awesome!

Claire slept 12 hours last night! I love this kid! She’s finally settling into a routine (complete with real naps now!), and she’s pretty good at soothing herself when she wakes up in the middle of the night…I’ll get up to pat her back and she’ll look up at me like, “It’s okay. I’m good.” Of course, I guess that’s what she’s used to. We’ve noticed that her “pacifier” is attached to her. Mine, for an obscenely long time, was my thumb, but hers, strangely, is her wrist. She sucks on it while she’s sleeping and has had a giant wrist hickey for the past few days. Today it looks more like a bruise. I hope I don’t get any strange looks at her doctor’s appointment tomorrow for that.

The office called us this morning (I’m already conditioned to answer the phone in under 5 seconds during naptime) and asked us to come over and sign some paperwork at noon. When we got there, Claire was whisked away by one of the lawyers in the office, and we finished up all the paperwork we’ll need for the embassy on Friday. Dad, one of the toys they were playing with in the office played “Teddy Bears’ Picnic,” only not your “…the teddy bears are dancing in their underwear…” version.

We ate lunch at a Japanese/Italian restaurant. Strange combination, I know, but decent food. I suppose it’s not stranger than those Kentucky Fried Chicken/Taco Bell/Pizza Hut (or KenTacoHuts) places, though. Claire is getting pretty used to the high chair gig and tolerates it pretty well, but our meal took a while today and she decided she’d had enough just about when we finished. Good timing. While my mom waited for the check, Claire and I went outside the restaurant to walk around. I got lots of “what-a-horrible-mother” looks because I left her hat inside. Oops.

After Claire’s afternoon nap, Kiriu came back to pick us up and take us to the Tsum store. It’s pretty much a typical Kazakhstan mall – electronics on the first floor, clothing on the second, and souvenirs on the third. We went straight to the third floor and finished up all of Claire’s “Family Day” (or “Gotcha Day,” whichever you prefer) gifts. Now she’ll have a gift from Kazakhstan every April 14 until she turns 18. Poor Kiriu looked bored to death while we were shopping. I asked him if he has to come to the Tsum a lot, and he said that every family he drives for always wants to shop there. I imagine being a driver gets old when you have to take people to the same places week after week, but when I told him that he shrugged and said, “It’s my job.”

Outside of the Tsum, there were several local artists selling paintings and drawings, and we found an artist who does amazing charcoal portraits. Since the likelihood of Claire sitting still long enough for him to sketch her is less than slim, we gave him a photograph and will go back to pick up her portrait tomorrow afternoon.

We started packing tonight and it’s a bit surreal that tomorrow night is our last night in Kazakhstan. Someone (God bless you, someone) left space bags in our apartment, and I think we’ll have more than enough room to tote all our treasures home now. Of course, I’ll hand-carry the real treasure.