As I suspected, last night's concert wasn't the only celebration going on yesterday for Capital Day/ President Nazabayev's birthday. The news this morning showed some parades that were going on around the country (particularly in the Almaty region) as well as some pretty lavish gala dinners and outdoor theater performances in Astana (complete with fireworks). How fun!
It was a bit cooler today since a cool front came through yesterday afternoon and dropped the temps by about 12 degrees (F) - very nice. The nice weather should hold steady for the next few days, with lows in the upper 40's (F) and high temps in the low- to mid-70's.
Well, I guess it was just a matter of time. Now that I'm better and Sean is also finally recovering from being ill, Powers #3 - James - is now sick. He spiked a temp of 102. 4 degrees (F) in the middle of the night. I got him into the tub to soak in a warm bath for a bit and gave him some children's ibuprofen; it worked. Actually, you couldn't tell from looking at James that he's sick, though. I've had to keep him from playing too much today and tried to encourage him to rest, instead. So, he's been sitting on the couch watching DVDs today. He was, however, highly upset this morning when he couldn't go to the Baby House to visit Michael. I had figured it would be hard on both myself and Sean when it comes time for us to leave, but I really had not considered how James would react when it was time for us to go home and leave his baby brother behind. We'll just keep talking to him about how it is only temporary before Michael gets to come home and be with us for good.
With James not feeling well, Sean and I took turns visiting Michael today so one of us could stay at the apartment with James. Sean took the morning visit, and I took the afternoon visit. Michael crawled around a lot today and pulled himself up during both visits. I wore my hair in a ponytail today and wore hoop earrings. Apparently, Michael thought the earrings were a really cool shiny new toy because he went after them all afternoon during my visit with him. The common sense thing to do would have been to remove the earrings. However, I used them to my advantage because as I was sitting on the floor, Michael would attempt to reach my earrings. Yet, in order to reach them, he would have to pull up on me (working his leg muscles) and face me (forcing eye contact). Yeah, I'm multi-tasking.
This evening as I was typing up this post, Sean received a phone call from our interpreter, Juliya. She just informed us that we're about to take our next big step in our adoption process! We are to have our social worker meeting (kind of like pre-court) tomorrow afternoon at 4PM, and we're expected to bring James with us. I'm not sure how this is going to go down, but I heard from the Canadian couple that they were questioned by three people today during their social worker meeting. I am a little bit nervous but have faith that it will go smoothly. I just hope we're able to get James to take his nap tomorrow beforehand and that he's feeling better so that he'll be in an agreeable mood. I wasn't planning to demonstrate my parenting skills tomorrow at the social worker meeting! So, any prayers, good vibes, good karma, or anything you can send our way would be most appreciated!
With that we'll close today's post. We'll keep you all posted about tomorrow!
