Day 16

Hello all,
Hopefully this will be a quick post. First thing Karla and I did this morning was run to the bazaar and buy sum sa, a juice box, and something else for Erlan you’ll see in the pictures below. He sucked out of a straw and inhaled the juice box. He figured it right out. Then he played and hung out with mommy and daddy. He likes trying to walk up the slide.. He also tried blowing up the balloon that he had watched me blow up an hour earlier. Then we tried out Erlan’s brand new personal blue thing. Well we didn’t try it out, Erlan did. Nothing happened in it this morning or this afternoon, but he sat and didn’t fight it or cry. We were very happy. Erlan is 25 months old and doesn’t wear diapers. He has had four accidents now. One each the previous two days and two today. He has been getting a lot of liquids and today we were about 30 seconds behind, both times. We do not want him to revert back to diapers. A lot of changes happening but today I still think was a success. He keeps amazing us. -ben

Baba Janice (and anyone else who has ever talked to Ben) will enjoy the following story. After Erlan had an accident this afternoon, our translator, Bayana, had a conversation (in Kazakh) with Erlan:


Bayana: Erlan, you need to tell Mama that you need to use the potty.
Erlan: Why?
Bayana: Because you want to make Mama happy.
Erlan: Why?
Bayana: You want to be a good boy for Mama.
Erlan: Why?

Finally, Bayana looked at us and said, “He keeps asking me ‘Why?’ every time I tell him something! The nannies told me that he’s been asking ‘Why?” for the last 4 days. Is it just the age?” (I thought, “No, it’s the universe paying Ben back.) She told us the Kazakh word for why, and he has been using it for the last 4 days. -karla