Ben, Em, Diana, and Helen

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Archives for May 2009

Growth spurt

May 28, 2009 by benemily

Diana has undergone a sea-change this week. She started eating twice as much food at every meal three days ago and shows no signs of letting up. Maybe she’s finally decided it’s time to grow a little! Her eighth tooth is coming in on the bottom, so she’s drooling a lot more again, but she’s staying hydrated with her improved use of her sippy-cup. We’re both very proud of her, although Emily is most proud of her recent improvements in sleep habits! She has been truly sleeping “through the night” from her 6:30 bedtime until 6:30 or 7am without feeding, and even without waking and fussing in the night. Em still doesn’t know quite what to do with herself since she’s still waking up instinctively at 1 or 2 in the morning, but hopefully that will go away soon.

Since she’s eating so much more, we’ve been able to get her interested in rice cereal and more vegetables. She really liked holding and looking at broccoli, but she’s not quite sure what to do with it yet. It did make it in her mouth, but she mostly just enjoyed squeezing it until it broke apart. The spiral pasta and whole-wheat toast fared a little better, but they both also got squeezed a lot before they got eaten.

We just finished our fourth week of Indonesian language class, which we have been attending twice a week as a family. Our guru (teacher) says that Diana is a very serious student. We have learned several interesting things, such as: you don’t travel “by car,” you travel “up car”; there is no Indonesian word for “sweater”; you don’t “turn off” the light, you “kill” it; and that overalls are called “monkey pants.” One nice thing about learning Indonesian is that there is no verb conjugation. There are, however, many different ways to say the same thing – it sometimes even makes it hard for our teacher to remember which words she has taught us.

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Cuddle-fish

May 23, 2009 by benemily

After a long week of runny noses, Diana and Em are finally on the mend.  We’ve started doing our daily 25 minute loop walk around the neighborhood again, and the fresh air and sunshine has helped. Diana had her follow-up visit with the doctor on Friday and he said everything looked fine. He had originally given us three meds to give her three times a day, but we followed a more relaxed schedule, and dropped two of the meds after two days, and just gave the cough syrup/decongestant at night since it conked her out. She was clearly feeling better on Thursday and was very happy and giggly all day, which was great since she needed to go with Em to Tembag to get snacks for Ben’s safety meeting. Most of the snacks were of the chocolate or gummy variety, but we threw in the Cuttlefish flavored snacks as a wildcard – needless to say, the Indonesians gobbled them up without hesitation, while they made Ben nauseous, even just to look at.
Diana has gotten her appetite back, and she’s doing better with the finger foods, so we’re feeding her in her high-chair now. We’ve added a few new foods in the last two weeks as well: brie cheese (loves it), avocado
(likes it ok), and chicken (doesn’t like so much). But she’s been very enthusiastic about food in general, so we’re continuing to try and re-try things.

She’s been as happy and friendly with strangers as ever. The receptionists at the hospital, the librarians, and the ladies who work at the café and grocery store all know her name and talk to her every time we go out. Now that we know the Indonesian words for “very cute” – lucu sekali – we hear strangers saying it about her all the time. Still no progress on crawling, but she enjoys when we help her stand up, so maybe she’ll go straight to walking. Her eighth tooth is cutting through on the bottom, so her smile should even out soon.

We’ve been having a relaxing Saturday. Tomorrow we plan to watch the runners in the Race to the Clouds event (13km long, 800 meters up and then down again from Tembagapura to Hidden Valley and back), and then head to brunch. Otherwise, status quo here.
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Meal Time Photos

May 19, 2009 by benemily

We were going to take a walk along the little jungle path behind the houses in town, but the bridge was out (see picture #5).

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And a little video to prove that Diana is feeling better after being sick for a few days:

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Underground: The Mill Level Access Tunnel

May 16, 2009 by benemily

Here are three pictures from a recent department trip underground to look at faults in the Mill Access Level (MLA) tunnel.  This tunnel was mined in about 1980 to give geologists good access to drill diamond core and explore for a new orebody.  We didn’t find any faults, but we all had a good walk and one of my co-workers brought along his camera.

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Betty Boop

May 13, 2009 by benemily

Diana’s been sick for the past two days with a cough and runny nose, but here are some pictures of our big-headed girl from happier times.

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Happy Mother’s Day!!

May 9, 2009 by benemily

 

Our week has gone by fairly uneventfully, but Diana did get her weigh-in at the hospital.  She’s 15lbs 12oz, which puts her in about the 10th percentile for weight (she’s the weight of the “average” 6 month old).  Her height is in about the 30th percentile, but her massive head is in the 90th percentile.  So she may be petite, but she got a melon the size of the average 1 year old!  No wonder she can’t crawl yet, she’s still too top-heavy!!  She’s actually been a little cranky this week, we think because she’s a little frustrated with her lack of mobility.  She tries to crawl, but ends up just pushing herself backwards.  We’re trying to burn off some of her energy with her jumper, but she just really wants to move.  We’ve introduced a few new foods this week – potato, tofu and cinnamon.  None were big hits, but they all went down without a fuss.  She still seems to prefer sweet potato and homemade applesauce and pearsauce best.  Still no sign of that 8th tooth to even out her smile, but she seems happier now that all the top teeth are in (and her shirts a staying much more drool-free!).  

There was one other exciting piece of news from this week – Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream at the store.  There was only one pint there and Em snatched it up.  We even made it last for two nights! 

No other news.  We’re headed to the Lupe club tomorrow morning for a nice Mother’s Day brunch to round out our relaxing weekend.  We have a few other pictures to post soon, but just one toothy-grin photo for now.

Indonesian Snow

May 6, 2009 by benemily

Sorry for the delay in posting, and for the lack of Diana photos in this post as well. We finally got out battery recharger set up, so we’ve got the use of our camera back, but have been a little busy this week. We started our Indonesian language classes on Monday. The class meets two nights a week and there are only 8 of us in the class, plus Diana. There is a couple from Chile, another American couple who worked at Morenci 10 years ago, our friend Jamie from Morenci, and another American engineer. Diana has been able to make it through the hour-long class with the help of Cheerios and pear cubes, although the enthusiastic laughter of two of our classmates did cause her to burst into tears a few times. Luckily she is easily soothed!

Emily went to the Rumba Latina dinner and dance party at the club on Friday night and had a good time. She was assuming that some of the older couples might head home a little early and she could catch a ride with them, but no such luck. Everyone stayed until the bitter end, so she didn’t make it home until 11:30, but Diana didn’t seem to notice at all. She has been sleeping really well at night and sleeps until 6:30 or 7:00am. She is still taking three naps a day, but they are all only about an hour long.

The most exciting news from the last week (at least for Em), is that we’ve started getting Diana to practice on her little potty. We just set it up next to her changing pad on the floor, and when we go the check/change her diaper (about every half hour) we plop her on. We have about a 50% success rate, and she seems to really enjoy all of the cheering we do when she goes. We’re not anticipating that she’ll be diaper-free anytime soon, but it is nice to reduce our diaper laundry load a bit.

Here are some pictures of the snow that they had up near the mine last month. Since we’re in Indonesia, most of the people here have never seen snow, so there was a mini traffic jam as people pulled off the mine road to take pictures. We’ll work on getting some pictures of Diana up this weekend.

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