One baby blog

Having a baby is like living in an airport0

You know the feeling — you’re sitting in the departure lounge, your flight is leaving in an hour and a quick lager would be the great thirst quencher you’re looking for.

“A Fosters? Why of course sir. That’ll be $18.99 please…”

I hate airports.

And after a few days of exposure to dedicated baby-good stores I feel like I’m moving into one.

You want to buy a cloth to wipe baby’s face, but you’re not permitted to use a “dishcloth” (RRP 2.99), instead you have to purchase a “MotherCare Government Approved, Baby Friendly, Organically Grown, Fair Trade Produced, Baby Face Washer” which will knock you back a sweet RRP 39.95.

Our baby can have a dirty face — makes for cuter pics

Posted: Buying for babies

Don’t let a computer pick a name for you0

S spent a few hours on the computer this evening surfing through babyname websites…

She wandered out a tad distressed — apparently our new name (yes, there’s a new name!) is becoming more popular.

I use “more” in a relative manner, it’s not like 39% of the Australian population is suddenly using the name, but it seems a few more people are.

Personally I don’t care what a website tells me about a particular name — if it feels good that’s enough for me…

So yeah, there’s a new name — and best of all it works for boys or girls…but no, don’t even ask!

Now there’s just the middle name to sort out and we’re done!

Posted: Dealing with pregnancy

This bed was made for bouncing0

Continuing to get stuffed around by the cot-turkeys — started browsing online stores in Singapore — may be easier (and cheaper!) to fly there and pick one up than continue to try to sort it out here.

Came across this quote:

All mothercare cots are tested to take over 5000 bounces- “because cots aren’t just for sleeping in”

Frustrating business…

Posted: Buying for babies

Baby-proofing0

I was thinking about this post as I was cleaning up the kitchen. I was preoccupied with cleaning what I’d discovered to be a near-toxic blender and wasn’t really apying attention till I accidently turned it on and managed to just about blend my left thumb off. While you can’t see much of a wound let me tell you it hurts like hell.

Kind of ironic that I was thinking about how to protect the baby from the house (or is that the house from the baby) when I did it — perhaps I should start by protecting myself from this house.

While in whale-pose last night, S gestured over to our long shelves declaring;

“Well that will all have to go.”

Initially, I thought it was another one of her attacks on my alledged packrattedness, or another flight of preggy-lunacy, but she went on to explain that once the baby is here, he’ll be wanting to practise his shotput on anything he can handle — or at least try to handle — by dragging it off the top shelf by the power cable… hammer-throw anyone?

So short of nailing everything down, we’ll be needing to invest in high shelves and moving everything out of reach — oh joy.

But there’s always the tricky ones — I don’t think we can move the catbowl up high as that will confuse FatCat, and we certainly couldn’t have kitty starving to death, but no doubt Junior will be wanting to scoff down some of those delectable Whiskas… suggestions anyone?

I guess you just need to give in and let the shoes get tossed all over the place, but what about books, magazines — my precious piles of paper that I keep in strategic places throughout the house…

Maybe an easier solution would be to leave all the stuff down on the ground, and have some sort of caged-in basinet device that we could hoist to the ceiling…

If nothing else that would prepare him for the overhead lockers when we start flying with baby-on-board…

Posted: Baby planning

It’s time to call Greenpeace0

S has taken to sprawling herself out in beached-whale-pose on the closest flat surface whenever possible — I’m sure she’s got a mattress set up on the floor of the office from where she orders the underlings about.

I came out of the kitchen tonight to find her in the most un-ladylike of poses thrown across the sofa, slowing rubbing the belly and staring blankly at the ceiling.

“I’m feeling stretchy” she says, “It hurts to move”

Her behaviour has slowly been getting more and more bizarre — a development she seems fully aware of.

While in whale-pose, she told me how last night there was a mosquito whizzing around in the bedroom, I apparently ignored it and went straight to sleep.

S on the other hand turned the light back on and lay there for an hour (seriously) and tried to kill the mosquito — whacking me more than once in the head.

Aside from proving she’s going just a tad mad, it also explains the dreams I was having about someone hitting me in the head with a cricket bat.

Posted: Dealing with pregnancy

“Cot Broken”0

Yes, that’s right — bad news on the cot front.

After rushing around and getting in a panic ordering one, S found out today that all three of the brand and model we wanted are badly water-damaged in the warehouse.

So now it’s back to square one — either pick another one or try another store — nothing is very easy when it comes to baby purchases in Jakarta it seems.

At least on the upside the store agreed to refund the money — how generous of them.

As an aside, today’s Guardian has a good story on just why we need to be careful about how late we leave it to fly back to Bangkok…

Posted: Buying for babies

Nesting a.k.a. cleaning like a mad woman1

This morning we went for brunch at a flash hotel to see off S and R who, as previously mentioned, are escaping Jakarta for Hong Kong. The brunch was flabulous and I ate wayyyy too much sushi (yes, you can eat sushi for breakfast), but we had to leave a little early as S remembered that she’d left the oven on.

Yes, the old noodle just isn’t what it used to be it seems — at least she still remembers who I am, though no doubt I’ll get kicked out of bed one day soon by a confused lookig woman asking what the hell I’m doing in her bed.

After dropping me off to check the house hadn’t burnt down, S whizzed off for a bit of retail therapy to buy the cot I mentioned in an earlier post and returned suitably content having spent a truckload of money on something the kid will want to swap for a Jedi-themed-bed as soon as he can crawl.

Once back in the house, she went on a rabid cleaning spree — and when I say rabid, I mean frothing at the mouth R.A.B.I.D.

She polished the back of the fridge, underneath the stove grills, the floor, cleaned up, washed up, made up, polished, shined, brushed, organised, neatened up — it was unbelievable to watch — Fat Cat scarpered quick smart, no doubt worried she’d get shaved and polished as well.

A thoroughly exhausting few hours I tell you — and I was only watching…

But what is even more bizarre, is it’s considered to be totally normal behaviour!

Posted: Dealing with pregnancy

Advanced cotophobia1

When we go on holiday, we get FatCat — our cat which is intent on living forever — and bundle her off to cat-farm for a mere $10 a night.

It always struck me as a lot of money, but today when we popped into just about the only “dedicated baby store” in Jakarta to check out cots, I almost threw a fit to find out that something that looks pretty solid goes for around US$600 (and that’s without the mattress!).

The saleswoman pointed out that the cot should last baby till he’s at least five years old, which equates to some 1,825 nights (not including leap years), which at cat-rates translates to a mere US$18,250 — why aren’t I thinking this is a bargain?

One: I don’t think I was still sleeping in a cot at five years old — I mean what would my kindergarten mates have said if they’d known I was still sleeping in a baby’s bed — oh the shame of it…

“bed wetter, baby head, still in nappies nah nah naaahhhhhhhhh”

Two: The cots looked to be designed to become super-festy after a year or so in order to guilt parents into buying a race-car bead or a life-size pink dollhouse to sleep in — I know I couldn’t say no to a BattleStar Gallactica bed, though thankfully they don’t appear to be available in Jakarta.

Three: The stores (or rather solitary store) guilt you out by just having three beds on display — the super duper one, which is probably standard issue at the White House, a mid range one, which is verging on not adequate and a cheapie death-trap bed that would probably even kill Fat Cat if she sat in it long enough and is only purchased by Bad Parents…

So what did you do? How long was it before your child leapt onto your bed demanding a ritual cot-burning in the backyard?

Btw, FatCat loves her new cot…

Posted: Buying for babies

Baby books for boys0

When I returned from Vietnam, there was a new baby book sitting beside my side of the bed. Well, to be honest, I saw quite a few new baby books around, but this one appeares to have been purchased with me in mind.

It’s called “The lost art of being a man: How to bring up baby”, and it’s great.

I just thought I’d share a few pointers with you:

Mental prep pre-birth checklist for Dad
• Watch a film, read a book, listen to a CD from start to finish. Uninterupted. Pure joy.
• A father is a man with photos in his wallet where monry used to be. Enjoy your last chance to spend money guilt free.
• In the last weeks of pregnancy, stock your shelves and fridge with east-to-make food and drink (yes, beer is considered easy to make)

Things not to do with a crying baby:
• Head down to the local library and try to write your Ph.D thesis

How to cope with a crying baby:
• Bring forward that urgent business trip to Rio

What to do if baby has diarrhoea:
• While various nuances of baby’s diarrhoea may be fascinating to you, don’t burden our friends and relatives with details

The do’s and don’ts of driving with baby
• Don’t drive faster so that you can make it to your destination before baby wakes up
• Do learn to drive safely even when your baby’s screams are piercing your innermost being

All sounds like great advice to me…

Posted: Uncategorized

It’s the wrong white fish dummy0

I may have mentioned this before, but there are two main western-orientated grocery stores we go to in Jakarta — Kemchicks, which is moderately inconvenient and Ranch Market which is just plain inconvenient.

S really likes the fish in Ranch — and I agree it is great, but Kemchicks is a lot closer and, I find, a little cheaper. It also has a lot better range of veggies.

Anyway, today I went off to do a big shop and S had asked for me to filtrer some fishies into the menu over the next week as she’d like to eat fish twice a week.

No problem thought I, knowing that while the fish range at Kemchicks isn’t as good, it is still more than edible, so I figured I’d just get some fish there.

That was Mistake One.

I got two sets of fish — some salmon fillets which I plan to make into a Salmon Baked in Mustard dish and a couple of white fish fillets which I planned to cook into a French White Fish and Artichoke thing tonight.

What kind of white fish? you ask – I don’t know.

That was Mistake Two.

So I get a call from S around 18:00, she’s leaving work shortly and could dinner be ready when she gets home as she’s really hungry and would like to eat then sleep as she has to get back up at midnight to file on executed Christians stuff.

OK no problem.

So I cook up the dish and it’s just ok – nothing great — I wouldn’t cook it again.

That was Mistake Three.

So when I lay it out in front of S, aside from commenting on the aroma (the artichoke gives it a pungent aniseed flavour), the first thing S asks is:

“What kind of fish is it?”

Now if I’d bothered to find out, or quick enough to “improvise” (ie., lie), then I could have answered and neatly sidestepped the question of where I purchased the fish, by swinging onto some long and conveluted story about the history of Trevally, but as I didn’t have a clue, I just said:

“I dunno”

Busted.

While S didn’t actually ask me where I bought the fish, she knows I was a lazy clutz who went to the closer store, where the fish comes in hermetically sealed plastic trays with no sign of scales nor guts nor life nor taste…

I promise I’ll go to Ranch next time loverrrrr!

Posted: Food