Gigi Baru!

Victory! After weeks of trying, and hundreds of photos of a suddenly closed mouth or turned head, Tash finally managed to get a photo of Iola's new teeth. Zoom in on this sucker: those choppers are monsters!

What We Did on the Weekend

What we did on the weekend…

[oops. I posted the text by email, then modified it by adding thr images using post edit on my blog site. The order of the photos is now the reverse of the captions. I'm sure you can work it out...]

1) Okay, so she hasn't quite sussed out exactly what a newspaper's
for, but she's still loving it (literally) to pieces.

2) It's definitely in the genes. Who'd have thought Tash's muffin
wrapper could have so much chocolate left on it?

3) Iola's stylish new shoes. We'd sworn black and blue that she was
never going to get a pair of shoes that squeak, but these sandals were
just too damn cool. Tell you what, though: I've got some two-part
epoxy ready and waiting to fill the holes where the squeakers used to
be the very second she starts walking!

4) Remember when you were a little kid and you'd go to sleep in the
back of the car? This little girl's doing it Surabayan style…
Personally, I'd feel a bit more comfortable if she had an occy strap
or something to keep her in place!

5) Negotiating rights of passage. Will diplomacy prevail? Or do we
shift to defcon 3?

6) Hurrah! Iola's five-point plan has ushered in a new era of harmony
and good will in the Supermall playground. The two little girls go
their own ways in peace and understanding.

7) Fashion parade. I'm not sure what it was in honour of, but it was a
pretty big deal. There must have been close to a kilometre of red
carpet stretched out through Supermall, with a rolling fashion parade
moving from the stage to do laps of the mall. Many, many people with
many, many cameras.

8) & 9) I want to start collecting a few more pics of this sort of
stuff. There seems to be a fascination here with classical
architecture and imagery. Thus, as seen here, you can be driving along
through warungs and shops and typically Indonesian suburbs, when you
suddenly come across triumphal arches, looming pillars (Doric, Ionic
and Corinthian too: though, as seen here, the capitals are often
supporting nothing but sky. Instant ruins—just add water), Greek
goddesses and Roman centurions. I love it. I'm trying to persuade Tash
that we should invest a month or two's pay in a legionary or two and
maybe a Diana or a Pegasus for the front yard, but (oddly enough) she
seems less than convinced.

10) Checking out the scene from her observation bubble.

We also went to see the new Indiana Jones movie! It was brilliant.
Very, very cheesy—but that's what it's all about, yeah? I won't say
anything more about it lest I spoil the plot for anyone.

Woofer Footage

So while we're on the subject of videos...
Whenever the little monkey sees animals of any kind, it pretty much makes her day, if not her week. So we shouldn't have been too surprised when we flicked the TV on, planning to watch a dvd, and had to wait for half-an-hour while she rocked out to a documentary on cape hunting dogs.
This is a little bit of footage of the woofers rocking her world:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iuml3k0CNec

Video Madness

More video!!!
Check these two links for Iola doing some jamming back bends, and her new interpretative dance entitled 'Ninja Turtles on Ice'...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3nLqg-z2F0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_sKmkSZyoo

And just for luck, here's one of me being walked over by an elephant at Tamin Safari Park!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C9oBodqapQ

We Have a Winner

Yay!
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!
After the Gymboree fiasco, we were a little depressed about Iola's
chances of getting out there and meeting kids—you know, just hanging
out, chewing the fat, maybe rolling the odd ball around—without having
to subject herself to an intensive immersion course in Sumerian
astrology or something, and without her parents having to remortgage
the house in Darwin! (Although she has been spending some quality time
with Wayne and Emily's little boy Wyatt, who seems to have formed
quite an attachment to her.)
Yesterday we took her to one of the many adventure playground/obstacle
course/nightmare offspring of a deranged cubist and an inbred
surrealist that litter the Surabayan mallscape like the discarded toys
of a toddler god.
It totally rocked her world.
She started off in the baby section, but after a half-hour or so
exploring that she'd had enough, and set off for distant horizons. I
was following her pretty closely, but she never looked back to check
as she disappeared into the 'big kids' section, making her way through
the ropes and up the ladder to the second floor!
She got to play with other kids, too; which made her a very happy
little girl. Tomorrow's a public holiday here, so we're setting off to
a random mall so she can have more adventures…

Destructo

A few more pics!

1-3) In destructo mode with her foam squares.

4-6) Ajay's farewell at Puri Darmo.

7-9) It's in the genes... Iola being fascinated by all the ice after Tash defrosted the freezer.

Hmmmm

Bugger.
Gymboree was a total wash-out. We knew it was relatively expensive, but we thought it would be worth it for Iola to be able to hang out with some other kids and for Tash to meet some other parents to play with while I'm at work.
First off, they hadn't mentioned the hidden costs (eg a 1.3 million joining fee). Secondly, we hadn't realised that the sessions go for a grand total of 45 minutes. Thirdly, yesterday's session consisted of 40 minutes worth of fifteen babies sitting in their pembantu's laps while being given tambourine's to shake and scarves to play peek-a-boo with, followed by five minutes of a bright young thing saying, "Now put your baby on your shoulder and rock her to sleep!"
Put Iola on your shoulder and rock her to sleep after forty minutes of banging on things and being teased by not being able to grab the other kids? Please.
So basically we would be looking at forking out approximately twice what it would cost us to have a fulltime, live-in nanny for two forty-five minute sessions a week of highly structured activity. Bugger that.
I think the clincher for Tash was when the lady from Gymboree asked her what kind of learning programme we have Iola on. Tash's reply? "She's nine months old. She has a cardboard box she likes to play in."
But all is not lost.
Pretty much every mall we've been to (including the one ten minutes walk up the road) is well stocked with elaborate, 3D children's playgrounds that cost about a dollar an hour to use if supervised by an adult, two dollars if you want to leave your little cherub to the tender mercies of their staff.
They're actually quite amazing. I don't know if they still exist in this litigious age, but when we were kids there used to be these fun-house type constructions at Moomba and the Royal Easter/Melbourne Shows. They usually had a few tunnels and rope bridges, and maybe a room or two with padded pillars that kids could bounce themselves (and each other) off. They were very popular, but in retrospect there wasn't a whole lot to them.
Now, imagine you're eight years old again, and you are given a chance to design your own fun-house. You've got as much money as it takes, a team of architects and engineers to make your every whim concrete, and an unlimited supply of padded vinyl in primary colours. The result is pretty much what you'd find in any mall in Surabaya. I'll have to get some pictures of them--you won't truly grasp how damn cool they are unless you actually see them.
I suppose, given that Surabaya is a typically Asian, high-density city, these kind of take the place of parks. There are a few parks around, but if all the parents who can afford to go to malls took their kids there to play, there'd be nowhere for the street kids to sleep!
So we reckon we'll start taking Iola to those more often. She's way too little to take full advantage of them, but she loved the playground at Alpha Zone (where the ball room photos were taken), and it'll be good for her to play with other kids.

Play Time!

It's a big day today for the little monkey.

At 11 o'clock Tash and Iola are off to Gymboree (www.gymboree.com) for a big old play session! Gymboree is kind of like the place where we went to Rose's birthday party on Sunday, but it's a bit closer to home. For older kids they run quite structured programmes (Chinese, English, art, music etc), but for the little 'uns you can book in for what's basically just play time.

If she likes it today, Iola and Tash will be going twice a week: 'play' session on Mondays and a 'music' session on Wednesdays, both in groups of 8-12 month olds who have to be able to crawl easily. I hope she has fun—it'll be good for her to have some contact with other kids (or, as Tash puts it, 'she needs to get her hair pulled by bigger kids every now and then'!).

Tash is hoping to meet a few other mums, but she suspects (and she's probably right) that she'll mostly meet the other kids' pembantus (nannies). Everyone here seems to have a nanny. I've even had nannies turn up for parent-teacher interviews! We could actually have a nanny of our own for not much more than we pay the cleaner (a nanny/maid would cost us about $60 a month plus board—we even have the maid's room out the back), but neither of us are into the idea—particularly since our house ain't all that big, and the idea of sharing it with a maid 24/7 doesn't really appeal.

Party Time...

Wow.
Last night (Friday—I'm writing this on Saturday, but it won't be posted til Monday) I was feeding Iola when I realised that with every mouthful something was scraping against the bottom of the spoon.
A tooth! And this time it's actually busted through the gum and it's here to stay. She's had a few ups and downs with her teeth—little white spots appearing and disappearing—but this time you can feel the sharp edge of the tooth biting your finger! How cool is that?
It's been a huge week for the little monkey. We'd been wanting to get her some kind of plastic walker, since she's been having so much fun pushing chairs around the room, but the only ones we'd found to date were big-brand-name products in high-end malls that cost over a million rupiah (to put that in context, my bike, with Shimano gearing, v-brakes, dynamo lights, metal gear racks and basket, cost less than that). Tash had a bit of an explore around some of the other baby shops, though, and she found a walker/scooter identical to the Fisher/Price one we'd been looking at, but for less than a quarter of the price!
Iola loves it, and, I have to admit, it's a pretty slick bit of kit. Check out the photos posted on April 30th: cool, huh? It's kind of like a swing-wing fighter plane. The photos show it set in open, or 'V', formation—suitable for relatively relaxed speeds and inexperienced pilots whose motor coordination is just starting to come to grips with 'one foot in front of the other'. Once she's a bit bigger and more mobile, however, it locks down into 'TPM' mode (Toddler Powered Missile), which is when things get scary…
And if getting her first set of wheels wasn't enough, she got to spend all day Thursday checking out the animals at Taman Safari Park (see pics posted on Friday 2nd), and she had an absolute ball. She's got a real thing for zoos and aquariums, and found everything she saw absolutely fascinating—except maybe the elephants, which freaked her out a little bit!
She even got to cuddle lion and tiger cubs! I think her favourite (close your ears Nana no. 2) was the olive python that she discovered around a zoo keeper's neck. Tash had to keep a pretty close eye on things as the monkey and the snake made each other's acquaintance: not because she was worried about the snake biting Iola, but because she was concerned for the safety of the snake at the hands of an enthusiastic and perhaps overly friendly baby.
Speaking of snakes—my dear old mum had better keep her phobia of snakes well away from one particular exhibit. You enter an aviary-type construction through an airlock, and inside the snakes are pretty much free to do their own thing. Just off the path was a seven meter reticulated python, just hanging loose there in the grass! Can you imagine seeing that in Australia? How long would it be before some drunken yob channelled the ghost of Steve Irwin and decided the wrestle the thing?
We had a lovely day (brilliant idea, John), and we'll be using any visitors who might wander into town as an excuse to get back out there! There's a whole safari walk we didn't have time to explore on Thursday…

Two days later…
Iola went to her first birthday party yesterday. Young Rose (Jez and Liliis's daughter) clocked up a big two years, and celebrated said event at Alpha Zone. Haven't really got time to write about it today (very busy week coming up at work), but suffice it to say that Iola had an absolute ball, and so did we, Check out the pics.

PS She done got herself a new trick yesterday. She climbs up onto the upturned washing basket and 'Rrraaaahhhhs' like the tigers on the rocks at the safari park!

Taman Safari

More pics and video coming on Monday. Ran out of time today...