11/14/04-A joyous stage for children...

First, let’s start by extending birthday wishes to Thomas McGrath, who turns seven today. Your cousins Jack and Grace wish you a happy, happy birthday.

Over the last couple days, we’ve been dealing with every parent’s favorite stage – teething children. Both kids had two lower teeth when we started, but now they are getting their top teeth. Jack has two upper teeth in and Grace has two in and a third coming. I think I’ve mentioned that Jack gets real strong reactions in the afternoon when his teeth are coming in. His temperature goes up and he gets real irritable. Today was one of his worse. He just started to wail inconsolably. We gave him some Tylenol and a bottle and he snapped out of it. Last night, we think Grace’s teeth were bothering her. We could tell she was tired, but she just would not go to sleep. It would go silent in the room, and then we would hear her cry. This went on late into the night. Finally she settled in and slept until 8 this morning. She had to have an extra nap today to help recover. We have some baby Orajel, but that only helps a little. Apparently, Gma tells me, we have another year of this. Oh, joy, oh, happiness.

Well, we are moving into our last week. Only two more days and we head for Almaty. We are waiting to get the kids’ Kazakhstan passports. For those of you who may have wondered, when this is all said and done, the kids will be dual citizens, holding both Kazakhstan and US passports, until they are 17 at which point they can choose where they want their citizenship. Of course, you know what we hope they choose. Maybe 18 years of drinkable tap water will tip the scales.

Here are a few pictures from today.