Spaghetti, Four Steps, and the Exploding Diaper

Evan and his first spaghetti experience!

The one photograph we have of the exploding diaper incident. Note the one sock and shoe.

"Calling all cars, calling all cars, we have an emergency at the Shchuchinsk Baby House. We are OUT of Cheerios. Repeat. We are OUT of Cheerios. Send reinforcements from Kokshetau IMMEDIATELY..."

Ball bathing...

The "Evan Cam"

Hi everyone!

Sorry we haven't been posting a lot lately. All those stories you hear about how families are bored when in Kaz do NOT apply during the summer months! We are constantly on the go (except during our long, luxurious afternoon naps, which will soon end).

Anyways, news in Evan's world includes the headlines above. There's a picture of his first experience with spaghetti (note the sauce all over his face). He definitely liked it, but we're noticing that while this kid loves to feed himself, he does NOT like to get his hands dirty! He all but refused to stick his hands in the spaghetti! Same goes for anything squishy, including banana and pear pieces. Oh, he'll let MOM get all mushy and bite my fingers as he chomps on the food, but not him.

The second piece of news is that he is RAPIDLY learning to walk! Yesterday he stood up from the ground by himself, not holding onto anything! Also, he took as many as four steps completely on his own yesterday! To top it off, he's a climber! We are in BIG trouble!

And, of course, last but not least, is the Infamous Exploding Diaper. Imagine, if you will, three adults and one 15 month old baby. Hmmmm, what's that smell? The adventurous new parents do a little detective work... smells like a poopy baby! Jen runs to the diaper bag and gets ready to change her first diaper. Brian and Makhabbat ready themselves for the event. The pants Evan is wearing unsnap completely from underneath, so we think, "no problem"! Only once they are unsnapped and we see the disaster that awaits us in his onesie do we realize our mistake. The diaper had failed to live up to our expectations. The mess was NOT contained! I'm not certain whose idea it is to now remove the pants OVER the child's head, (perhaps it seemed like the path of least resistance?) but that's when the screaming starts. Then Brian is behind me saying, "we need a cloth or something or it's going to get everywhere! Which one do you want, the orange one or the burp cloth?" "I don't care, just hurry!" I yell. At this point I am holding the boy's legs way up in the air in an attempt to avoid poop getting all over his back and the floor. Makhabbat is at Evan's head, trying to keep him entertained while we all run around like idiots. (How exactly do you get a soiled onesie off a child without making an even bigger problem?) We find ourselves folding up the onesie in an intricate origami-like fashion to contain the mess and then pulling it up over his head. (Any sudden moves could spell disaster!) Finally, we end up with a naked kid, starkers, except for ONE sock and ONE shoe. We fully wipe him down. It's only once he's allowed to crawl away (still naked plus shoe) that he stops his wailing. I will avoid a description of the smell.

Yergeldi says that an exploding diaper means that parents will become rich. But that's hogwash and we all know it. It's like saying that rain on a wedding day is "good luck", it's just to make the parents covered in poop feel better.

Anyways, a little tidbit of good news is that we are hopeful that we'll get custody a few days early, next Friday (the 4th). Keep your fingers crossed!

Over and out.

Jen

p.s. Just got back from the baby house again, he took FIFTEEN steps today!!!