Now that Diana has passed the 9 month mark and is fully recovered from her roseola, we’ve been keeping her pretty active.  We’re still going to language classes twice a week, and are working on getting Diana to take two naps a day instead of three so we can do more during the day.  So far it’s working well, and the two slightly longer naps actually seem to make her happier and better rested in the evenings.  She’s also got her appetite back, which means we’re trying some new foods and working on finding a new vegetable that she’ll tolerate.  She’s loving cheese and yoghurt still, but her new favorite food is whole wheat toast with a smear of pureed fruit (or squash or sweet potato) on top. 

Diana has been sick all week with what we think is roseola, aka “baby measles.”  It’s been a draining week for all of us, but here’s a little video of her in the bath in happier days.

bath-squeek

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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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.

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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:

laughing-girl

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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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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Village People audition

1st Mothers Day

My first teething biscuit!

See how good it is?

Omnomnom...

In my PJ's and nightcap

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.

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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We planned our first trip to Timika, the town about an hour and a half away, this weekend for a little shopping and relaxing by the pool.  We had been told that there wasn’t much to do in town, but that the former Sheraton there was a great place to “get away” from Tembagapura.  Ben was able to borrow a department vehicle for the weekend, so we made our hotel reservation and packed our bags.  Naturally, on Friday two of the four vehicles in Ben’s department broke down, so we weren’t sure if we would have to cancel our trip or not.  Luckily, that didn’t happen, but it did mean we had one of the not-so-nice vehicles, which meant no A/C and no forward facing seats in the rear.  Oh well, we were still determined to go and have a fun weekend.

We left on Saturday morning, timing our departure with Diana’s first nap.  Because there were no forward-facing seats in the rear (just two side facing bench seats), we strapped Diana’s car seat into the front pasenger seat.  Don’t worry, since there are no air bags in the Land Rovers, it was safe to do.  And she didn’t seem to mind the bumpy road and was asleep within 10 minutes.  We had gorgeous weather on the way up, and had wonderful views for the whole drive.  We knew it was unusual to have such long, fog-free views since the Indonesians in all of the other trucks we passed were also stopping to take pictures.

We had a wonderful time at the hotel, swimming and having cold drinks by the pool, and Diana really enjoys being in the water.  She laughs and kicks her feet and slaps the water with her hands very excitedly.  The video below is from when we took her swimming at the Hidden Valley pool two weeks ago.  Naturally, our camera batteries ran out after about 5 minutes in Timika, so we didn’t get as many photos as we’d hoped!  We had brought Diana’s pack n’ play for her to sleep in and set it up in the bathroom so that we could relax and watch some TV while she took her afternoon nap.  She didn’t seem to mind her new bed, but I think was a little surprised by the echo in the room.  We stayed at the hotel for dinner, and we were all pretty tired from the heat, so we went to bed early.

The next day we headed into Timika proper for a little shopping.  It was dissappointing to find the DVD store closed, but our taxi driver suggested another place where we could get DVDs, at a little shopping center called….. “Diana!”  That DVD store was closed too, but we’ll have an easy time remembering that place next time.  We did a little more window shopping at stalls that sold local crafts and jewelry, and then headed back to the hotel to pick up our friend Jamie and head out for brunch.  Of course, Ben had to change the truck’s flat tire first, which was miserable in the heat, but the reward was a wonderful brunch at the Rimba Golf Club.  Wonderful food and a gorgeous view of the green golf course in the middle of the jungle.  We drove back home up the mountain and collapsed.  It was an adventure, and we were happy that Diana managed the change so well.  The one sad thing was that the humidity and the sweating totally flattened her little Kewpie curl; we almost didn’t recognize her with flat hair.  We’re happy to be home now, but will probably go back again in a month or so.  We’ll try to coordinate that trip with some other folks with kids (or a nanny) so that we can possibly head out to town for an hour or so and not have to drag Diana with us.

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Almost crawling

Anything to make
D smile!

Zzzzzzzzzz

You can just see
the road on the left
in the middle....

Water baby

swimming-surprise