Free Time

Life with a 14-month-old can never really be described as one having a lot of relaxing free time, but...  The fact of the matter is that we do tend to have somewhat more free time here in Bangladesh than one does in the States, and many fewer distractions.  Our commute is a 5 min walk down a little side street to the office, we don't spend time driving anywhere to shop, there are no TV shows to schedule our lives around (there are lots of Bangla TV shows, we just don't have a TV), the work day is generally an hour shorter than in the States, and we have hired people to help us with our cooking and cleaning.  

Once you get used to and more comfortable with being hot most of the time, you find that you have a lot more opportunity to get through books, and other tasks that you used to not find time for, or at least were easily distracted from.  In general, I find that I am probably about 2-4 times as busy as I was during my Peace Corps service, but there, I had no electricity or mobile phone or internet to coordinate new things to do.  And still, one finds the opportunity to do things you might not otherwise find the patience to do back home, like read thick books.

So, what do we do with our free time?  Well, we worked out a little routine together to remind us all of home.  It took Ezra a little while to learn the footwork, but in the end we were pretty impressed.  Hope you enjoy watching the clip below.

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Fun with Water

Ezra really loves playing with water, in the bath, in plastic water bottles, and in buckets.  He loves it to the point that he wants to have the water running the whole time during his bath until his little tub is practically overflowing.  We let him go at it in a bucket and basin on our deck one weekend.  Here is some video of him playing, although he seems pretty business-like about the whole thing.  

Part Boy, Part Monkey

Ezra has been walking for several months now, and can just about break into a run, but how he developed his excellent climbing ability, I am not totally sure.  He climbs up everything, if we let him, and sometimes we just play "spotter" to see how far he can really go.  The video below shows how he can just climb the window bars seemingly without thinking about it and as if he has been doing it for months.  Hope you enjoy watching it (and don't get too nervous).

Geckos...and first words

Just like most babies, Ezra has been babbling for a long time. He actually makes a variety of interesting noises, some sounding like animals such as monkeys or dolphins. He has been repeating the standard monosyllables dada, mama, nana, etc. for as long as I can remember. And for the last few months, he has been expressing an emphatic "ooooohhh" at everything he sees (especially birds, bugs, and plants when exploring outside). In fact, he seems to have a better eye than us for these things, as often he is saying "ooohh, ooohh, ooohh" and I don't even see the bird in the tree until it flies away.

Although it is fun to hear him say "dada" (by far, the most frequently expressed word) and "mama" (this one is still rare), he doesn't yet say it for us. Instead, he picks up a toy and says "dada" while showing it to us (like he's telling us what it is). He also says "da-deee" (i.e. daddy with emphasis on the last syllable) which is also super cute, but again, he calls most of the things he sees or touches either dada or dadee. Our nanny knows a bit of English, and she kept saying, "no that's not dirty" to Ezra. So finally I asked her why and she said that Ezra was saying "dirty". Well, in her accent, dirty sounds a lot like daddy, but not at all to us (which reminds us why our Bangla sounds "right" to us but not to them!).

So, on to the real point of this post - Ezra has finally said his "real" first word. That is, he finally said a word that is not just a combination of easy sylables he knows and he used it in the right context. I mentioned that we have a lot of bugs now but didn't mention that we also have a lot of geckos. And when I say a lot, I mean there are probably about 20 living in our house (and they are making more - we have seen the tiny babies!). They make a very distinctive (and sometimes quite loud) sound and crawl everywhere, including upside down on the ceiling. They are usually near the light fixtures or in the vents to catch bugs to eat. The Bangla word for gecko is tik-tiki (pronounced: teek-TEE-kee) because the geckos make a sound that sounds like the word for them. When we first arrived in Bangladesh, it was one of the first Bangla words we learned because we saw them all the time and the word is easy to say and remember.

You may have already guessed where this is going. Ezra has heard us saying "tik-tiki" whenever we hear or see a gecko since he was about 6 months old. He also hears the staff in our house saying the same word. So, when spring came and the geckos were again in full force, Ezra was constantly seeing them and saying the famous "ooohhh". Until one day, about 3 weeks ago, I was pointing to one and saying "tik-tiki" - and Ezra repeated "tik-tiki". We were stunned. It was great that all 3 of us (me, Jeremy, and Emily) were together to witness it. We stared at each other in disbelief....until, he said it again. Since then, Ezra has been faithfully saying tik-tiki every time he sees or hears one. Actually, he likes them so much (who can't like a gecko?), that now we catch him saying tik-tiki and looking at the ceiling when he wants to see one.

So, Ezra has begun taking and ironically, his first word was the same as one of our "first" words here. His second clear word was "babu" (yes, another Bangla word), which means baby. This is another one he hears constantly because everyone is calling out to him. Some have claimed he says other words, like hello, but I've yet to hear them. But any way around it - Ezra is a very expressive little boy.