Days 50 & 51

I cannot believe that we’ve been in Kazakhstan for 53 days (the titles for each post reflect the number of days that we’ve known and loved Erlan). In some ways, the time has flown by and, in other ways, time has stood still. Our appeal period seemed to last an eternity. Thankfully, time has resumed a more reasonable pace here in Almaty.

Almaty is very nice city (at least the parts that we’ve seen). Spring is in full bloom here (as my allergies can attest!) The tulips and daffodils are beautiful. I’m so happy that I get to see them since I’m missing ours at home.

In my completely unbiased opinion, Erlan gets cuter and happier each day. He loves to laugh. He especially loves it when we are laughing with him or at something he does. Yesterday, I taught him how to raise his hands and say “Yay!” He started doing it, and it was so funny that I couldn’t catch my breath from laughing so hard. He was delighted that I found this funny, so he kept doing it as if to say, “Look how cute I am Mom!” (Naturally there is no video of this event. Whenever he does something cute, he will never replicate it for posterity.)

We have him sleep on a pallet by our bed. About 4 this morning, he woke up and climbed into our bed. About 7:00 this morning, he climbed back out. I thought he was getting up, but looked down a short time later to see he had fallen asleep on the hard wood floor. Happily, he slept until 8:30!

We’re trying to keep up with his potty-training activities. It’s part of his routine, so we’re trying to adhere to it. Some days he does really well, while other days he’s 2. Yesterday, he brought me his books and led me to the potty chair. Later that day, he stood in front of the potty chair and started pulling down his pants. Woohoo! We were so proud. Today? Two dirty diapers. *Sigh* In the picture he has a Kefir moustache. Nothing like eating and drinking while on the potty.

Today we visited Panfilov Park. Ben carried Erlan most of the way in the backpack (Kelty Kids for those who are interested and for those with a strong back). He was so good. He did not put up a fuss, even when it started sprinkling on us. We had stopped to buy an umbrella from a woman selling them on the street, but they were 1000 tenge so we moved on. When it started raining, we wished we would have just bucked up for the umbrella. We figured if we could find her again, the price would probably be 2000 tenge!

The Zenkov Cathedral in the Park is beautiful. (Since you can easily google the history of the church, I will not give you the history.) We walked around inside it. Here are the pictures that Ben took. The cleaning lady laid into him about it, but Ben had gotten permission from the priest. The cleaning lady was none too happy about it even after the priest said it was ok.

We spotted a very odd looking squirrel in the park. I've blown up the pix. This squirrel had huge ears. I've never seen anything like it. It kind of creeped me out.

Today's video is two clips: (1) I've been playing patty-cake with Erlan, and I was tyring to get him to do it by himself; and (2) When we were walking to the Park, Erlan was tired. He was singing to himself to stay awake.