Our little girl is developing at a frightening pace—literally in leaps and bounds! When I left Darwin, less than two months ago, she was rolling around quite happily, and looking like she was almost ready to do a sort of attempt at a crawl.
Now all you have to do is take your eyes off her for a split second, and she's suddenly clear on the other side of the room, standing up and supported by one or two fingers on the window bars, psyching herself up for a tricky first traverse of the patio doors.
She's also discovered her new favourite game: jack-in-the-box-peek-a-boo. Tash made her a cubby house out of the box the tv came in, and she's been loving it. She gets herself inside the box, pulls herself up so she's standing with her head poking out the hatch in the top, and then laughs like a loon for about ten minutes as she lowers herself down and then pops back out so you can see her again.
I had a bash at posting a video of her new routine, but unfortunately something went pear-shaped about two hours into the upload! We'll try filming her on lower res and have another go at it soon.
Iola's getting so spoilt. Everywhere we go she gets mobbed by people wanting to say hello to her. I'm starting to understand the angst of all those poor little rich girls who lose it at the paparrazi—the other day it took me ten minutes to get away from the cashiers at the supermarket because so many of the other customers wanted to take her photo!
I kinda like it. If I go down to the shops on my own everyone pretty much ignores me, but if I take Iola it's like being bodyguard to the People's Princess. I think it's getting a bit old for Tash, though. For someone who relishes their anonymity, it can be hard not to be able to walk down the street without cars slowing down to point and stare, or complete strangers wanting to stop and chat about babies in a language she doesn't speak yet…
The other photos I've put up today are from a pet shop at PTC, a mall about ten minutes from our house. CITES eat your heart out… If you want an exotic pet here, all you gotta do is ask. Snapping turtles, every variety of snake and lizard imaginable, giant tortoises, whole sections of coral reef, and my personal favourite, salt-water crocodiles. I mean really. What do you do with a bloody crocodile when it grows up? As soon as I saw them I had flash-backs to bad eighties horror flicks, with some Surabayan maid being ordered to flush Chuckie the Croc down the toilet because he was getting too big for little Bayu to play with.
At least a croc would have a fighting chance, I guess. Apparently it's quite common for rich kids to get a cute little baby orangutan as a pet. Orangutans get quite big and strong--something which seems to escape the attention of their new owners—and when people suddenly find that that cute ball of fluff is now eighty kilos of un-house-trainable muscle that could quite easily twist your head off your shoulders if you forget to buy their favourite orangy-treats, they drive them back to their 'home' in the jungle. Of course, wee Ginger has never actually been to the jungle, and so starves and pines to death quite rapidly.
But enough doom and gloom.
The other animals are much cooler. The picture was taken at Super Mall. You know how malls in Australia usually have some kind of plastic car or something that parents can drag their kids around in? Well here they have giant electronic animals with servo-driven legs that the kids ride around! Apparently I'm too big to have a go.
We have an extra long weekend coming up. Friday is a holiday, so we're hoping to get up to somewhere around Malang for a nice, chilled out couple of days. Then I have Monday off so we can head off on a day trip to Singapore to sort our visas out. It looks like we've managed to get Tash and Iola onto my KITAS (residency) as dependents, which will save a lot of running around over the course of the next twelve months!
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