Current mood:

nauseated

The results are in
Thanks to everyone for voting in the election. The winner by a landslide is ASELLA. So, ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in America, I would like to introduce you to our Kazak princess, the Kostanai kiddo, the child from the wild, the cutey-patootie from north of Djabooty, our daughter…

Asella Claire Straus
(subject to change, all sales are not final, yet)



Well, the fine Kazak cuisine finally caught up with Sarah, so she’s not feeling well and could not go to the orphanage today. So daddy got to do lots of father-daughter bonding. Asella is starting to master the fine art of sitting up, spending minutes at a time without teetering over like a blow-up punching bag. She’s almost over her cold, which she demonstrated by scooting around for most of our visit. There’s just something about the edges of rugs that seems to fascinate these kids to no end. We witnessed feeding time again. They pack these kiddies faces with tons of food! Picture the feeding frenzy of Augustus Gloop.

Not much new or different to report, and you can probably figure out our daily routine by now, so here are a few logistical and local tidbits:

1. I have no clue what the blog-comment rules are for questions vs. comments. So, I’ll make a decree. If you have a question you would like answered, it is probably better to email me (Darren.Straus@watsonwyatt.com). I check each night here, so I should get back to you within a day. Feel free to keep the rhetorical questions in the journal.

2. Asella's birthday is August 14th, and she currently weighs about 15 pounds. She has black hair and black, black eyes. (Just like her mommy and daddy! Not!)

3. We have completed 6 of our mandatory 14 visits. Once those are complete, we can go to pre-court, followed by real court. Then there’s a 15 day waiting period until the adoption is official. (Gotcha Day). We will still visit daily while we wait to go to court and during the waiting period after that. Then we go to Almaty for 3-5 days to do U.S. consulate stuff. Then we come home, sell the baby to gypsies and collapse in a heap.

4. The weather has been generally gray-ish, with periods of blue-ish. Highs are in the 30s, lows in the 20s. It’s a bit windy most of the time.

5. Lanes are subjective on the Kazak roadways. There might be one-lane, but it could also be 3. Pedestrians are fair game, unless their in a designated cross-walk, and even then the goal seems to be to get as close as possible to winging them.

6. Everyone dresses like it is 30 degrees below zero. And all the young women wear stiletto heeled boots with tight, tight jeans or miniskirts, and big hair. Gnarly. It’s like Texas but everyone speaks Russian.

7. Much like the mode of dress, every building is kept at a balmy 78 degrees or so. Our apartment, restaurants, the nursery, the ice-skating rink; everything.

Bye for now.