Claire and the fuzzy pants

Justin called this morning to check on his girls. I guess Daddy (and a few of Claire’s other fan club members) hit refresh all day yesterday waiting for the latest post. At first he was worried about us, but then he decided that he was overreacting, and he started worrying about our laptop, “Toppy” (yes, our laptop has a name…it’s short for “Laptoppy”).

Claire had a long conversation with Grandma today. Neither of us were really sure what it was about, but she was telling a very animated story that involved lots of grunting and punching motions. Maybe there was a fight in the playpen? Perhaps she’s thinking of becoming a boxer? She’s starting to have better crawling form. She’s pulling her knees up underneath her, but she still needs to get her arms to push her up a bit further before she graduates from “combat crawl” to normal crawl.

Asel took us to the bazaar after our visit with Claire. She seemed a bit reluctant to take us, and I was getting a “are you sure you know what you’re getting yourself into” vibe from her. We went anyway. I guess there are two bazaars…one is outside and is very muddy, crowded, and seemed to just sell fruit, vegetables, and dirty clothes (dirty from being out in the mud all the time). The other is inside and is relatively nice. The bottom floor is like a giant produce stand, bakery, and butchery (I glanced in the butchery direction and quickly glanced away…yikes). Upstairs there are about 100 small kiosks selling just about everything you can imagine, but especially shoes. I bet fifty percent of the kiosks were shoe stores. Is this heaven? No, it’s a bazaar in Kazakhstan. I bought an unbelievably precious pair of red tennis shoe Mary Janes for Claire because Justin wasn’t there to stop me! Hahaha!