Blood Tests & Sleep

View from area to right of entryway.

From back of dining room toward family room & front door.

Into the kitchen.

Into the laundry/utility room (bathroom to right of stacking washer & dryer in back is the perfect spot for the litter box!).

From the back door in the kitchen toward the front door.

From the kitchen door; main powder room on left.
I spent Anna's "nap" cleaning downstairs so I thought I'd better take pictures. Tomorrow I'll try to get the upstairs and outside.—and I'll try to post them during her nap as well, we'll see.

She did it! Anna slept from 7:30 to 8 AM when Craig woke her up this morning. Just like at home. Unfortunately, she didn't take a nap this afternoon (not totally unusual for at home, but I would have thought she'd still be tired from this past week and not revert to no napping so soon). Doubly unfortunately, I woke up at 2 AM and couldn't fall back asleep until about 6 AM. I did not take a nap this afternoon but "accidentally" fell asleep this evening after I put Anna to bed and Craig was out getting my cell phone (so cute, I'll have to take a picture!).

We went to the Qatar medical offices where we had to do the tests for our residency permits. This is where they repeat all of the tests that we had to do back home because apparently doing them once wasn't good enough. I had to bring Anna with me to a separate ladies' side while Craig was escorted through the process on the men's side by two of the guys from his sponsoring company. He says that they ushered him to the front of each line so they breezed through.

The ladies' side wasn't busy, but since I was on my own, I was probably slower because I didn't really know what I was doing and Anna was not necessarily cooperative. One of the guys from Craig's work wrote that I am pregnant in Arabic on my form so each station I stopped at asked how far along, etc. At the station where you're supposed to get an x-ray, the lady said that since I am pregnant she would just do the TB skin test (same as they did in Texas) but that the injection wasn't available today so I have to go back tomorrow (and then probably again on Sunday to have it read). This caused a bit of an uproar with our hosts when I came back out without my stamp but there was nothing to be done. I'm just glad that I got out of the x-ray as I was worried I'd be back there by myself demanding a lead apron that they wouldn't give me or some other horrible thing.

Anna is having quite the time with everyone wanting to interact with her: she does not like strangers! She always turns to me and says "mom!" really loudly and then sometimes the strangers (waiters/people in Craig's office/people at the medical clinic) back off and other times they are (annoyingly) persistant, like they're going to win her over. Ha! She hasn't totally freaked out on anyone, but a couple of people today thought they were helping me by trying to pick her up and hold her while I was getting my blood test or whatever. They quickly put her down when she let them know she didn't like it!

Also, Anna was offered (and I accepted because I didn't want to be rude) two bags of cheese curls (one puffs and one crunchy—both generic versions) today and she loved them. Her diet hasn't been the greatest since we started packing in Texas, but this was really bad. Luckily I actually had time, ingredients, and the appropriate number of clean dishes to cook a meal tonight (chicken, mashed potatoes, and broccoli) so we'll get her the right stuff again in spite of Qatari-hospitality.

I had no problem getting from Craig's work back home this morning after we were done and I am planning to go back tomorrow without him and I feel like I can get there without too much hassle. It's actually probably a bit easier without the use of street names and just counting roundabouts and stoplights. I just tell myself, "straight, straight, left, straight" and then I'm there! No worrying about remembering the right street names. My trip tomorrow is longer but since I've done half already with Craig (and rode as a passenger for the other half), I'm not too nervous. I need to make a CD with some music Anna likes for the ride though because I haven't found a decent radio station to listen to yet and she gets antsy a few roundabouts before we get home.