Sixteen months old: playground, trial at gymboree

We like to take her to an outdoor playground near our house. It has artificial sand too at the edge of the swimming pool. Faith likes to play with water!!

In this month I took her to Giggles at FX for a playdate with my friends Angie and Ibeth and their daughters, Gaby and Kimmy, Celine and Giselle. As usual, she liked the water fountain area where she could play with water. She was a bit upset when I took her to shower (because I was afraid she might get cold playing with water too long in an air-conditioned room). 

Sadly I didn't take any good pictures. I will wait for Angie to share the pics on her camera and maybe update this post. 

I also took her for a trial at Gymboree Cilandak. I thought maybe the class would be good for her to socialize with other kids and to improve her motor skills.

Faith joined level 4 class for 14-24 months. There were three teachers during that class and about ten children accompanied by their mommies/daddies/nannies. The class started with circle time. That time the topic was "top and bottom". The teachers sang and asked the children to follow their movement. 

Afterwards they asked the children to walk and climb around the blocks and slides. Then followed by games where the teacher asked the children to ride some kind of hobbyhorse and shaking it pretending riding a horse, etc and closed with a circle time again. The class duration was about 45 minutes

Maybe we came too late (when the class was about too start), so she didn't have time to familiarize herself. She wasn't interested at the circle time. She liked to play by herself. She was also afraid when the teacher tried to hold her or asked her to join the game. Hehehe.. maybe she was too young and not ready? I think I'll delay enrolling her to any school until she's 2.5-3 years old. 

Anyway here's Gymboree's fee and schedule. They said they will give me 50% off the enrollment fee if I enroll that day. 

Oh ya, she was very sweet sharing her apples with me :) 

Some notes:

I think in this month she started to want to hold her own bottle. She was able to do that before but just chose not to do it. 

She also started to nod/shake her head when asked for something. Sometimes she just nodded at everything we asked though! 

For example: Do you want to go home? *nod*

                     Do you want to stay here? *nod* -_-

Some random thoughts

I keep reminding myself that I need to have at least 2 more posts to bring this blog up to date.
But somehow for the few past nights i overslept after tucking Faith to bed -_-

Here are my random thoughts lately..

• Is God the center of my life? or Faith? If you see my questions below you'll see :( 

• My decision today will affect Faith's future

• Does enrolling your kid to school early make a difference? (my friends enrolled their kids as early as 1 yr old)

• Do I need to push/stimulate her or just wait until she's ready?

• Do I need to worry that she hasn't been able to drink with a straw or her vocabulary isn't much.. (I used to worry that she hasn't walked yet at 14 months old, but she walked at 15 months old.. so maybe because we named her Faith, so we have to walk by faith?? )

• I want to do a lot of things (cooking, baking, reading books, cross-stitching, updating blog ^_^) but have a difficulty in organizing my time. Now I know why some people says "So little time so much to do" 

• Toma is asking for a new baby.. will we be able to love the new baby as much as we love Faith? will the baby be as cute as Faith? what about Faith? isn't she too young to have a younger sister/brother? Sigh, I think I'm not ready yet. 

Anyway, what's yours?

Little ballerina :)

I wanted to post chronologically, but forgot to post this picture in the 12 months entry.
In this picture Faith was actually trying to climb the bed, but somehow her posture was more like a ballerina practicing sidekick (I don't know the ballet term).  

Anyway, I still have to catch up for a couple months to bring this blog up to date. Let see if I have time on the weekend. Happy Friday everyone!

Trip to Puncak, West Java

After family gathering at Pelabuhan Ratu, my office held another gathering to Puncak on 20 - 22 April 2012. This time was only for finance team.

According to Wikipedia, Puncak (English: Peak) is the popular name for the area surrounding the peak of Mt.Gede-Pangrango, located in the Bogor-Cianjur-Sukabumi regencies, West Java, Indonesia. This area is a popular holiday area for the residents of Jakarta, the capital city, and its satellite cities. It has fresh air and mountain scenery (indeed :)).

Before going there I had to come to the office for some reporting purposes. Toma and Faith picked me up at the office then we went directly to Pak Chris' (my boss) villa, Puncak Kana. At the office Faith cried a bit when meeting my colleagues (Nella and Ata). It turned out she was thirsty and was calmed right away when given a bottle of milk :) She sat nicely on the car seat for almost the whole trip (thank goodness). 

We arrived at Puncak Kana just in time for dinner. My colleagues and their families were already there.

The next day we wanted to go to Taman Safari, but the road was closed before we reached there. During weekends, to avoid traffic, from 9-11.30 am all vehicles are only allowed to go to the summit (road from the other way, i.e. Puncak to Jakarta, is closed), while from 3-5 pm is the other way around. Since Puncak Kana's location is above Taman Safari, we have to reach Taman Safari before 9am.

We decided to postpone the trip and went back to the villa.
On the way back we decided to stop at Kota Bunga. It used to be a popular destination at Puncak. However nowadays it wasn't as popular. Maybe because the flowers were not maintained as they used to be or they started to charge an entrance fee?

We took Faith to a petting zoo there. The zoo was very small but I think Faith was easy to please :)

Afterwards we went back to the villa. At night we went to De Brasco Outlet to pick up some gifts to my mom, mom in law, faith's nanny, mom's maid. I also bought Faith a Hello Kitty shirt. 

The last day we woke up earlier to be able to reach Taman Safari before the road was closed. However, my friend Mindo and Mul and their families missed it. Luckily they were able to hire a guide to find an alternative route. 

Upon arrival we circled around Kawasan Satwa by car. We fed the animals with carrot (given by Heny as we didn't know that we could feed them hehe). It's amazing that all animals there like carrot? ^_^

Afterward we took pictures in the elephant area and went inside the baby zoo (birds and tigers). 

We also took pictures with a tiger... at first Faith was busy looking at the tiger instead of the camera hehe.. 

Too bad we have to go back home to avoid traffic. Otherwise we would have spend more time to explore other attractions in there. Maybe in another visit?? We'll see :) 

Fifteen months old: walking (yay!), feeding herself using fork

The above pictures were taken at Gandaria City, after Chika's (Toma's college friend) wedding. 

The highlight of this month was Faith started to walk by herself! After about five months holding our hands while walking, she finally had the courage to walk by herself. I actually noticed that at around 13-14 months, although she was holding our hand, she didn't lean on our hand while walking. So she actually could walk if she wanted. But I guess she didn't have the confidence yet. 

Anyway, when she finally had the courage, she could walk very fast and steady. Maybe she's the cautious type? 

She also could feed herself some fruits using fork. She was very proud about it and so were we.

We went to Puncak this month. Will post separately :) 

Family Gathering at Pelabuhan Ratu: 12 hours round-trip by bus!

29 March - 1 Apr 2012

My office held a family gathering at Pelabuhan Ratu, West Java.
At first we were afraid of taking Faith there since the trip took about 6 hours (12 hours round-trip). We were also worried about the mystical tale about the hotel (Nyi Roro Kidul etc).
But we decided to take her there anyway because we didn't want to be apart from her :)

We prayed that everything would be all right, that Faith would enjoy the trip. And yes, Faith turned out to be a lovely baby during the trip! She didn't complain about the long trip there and back home. Not once she cried during the trip. Even I felt a bit of headache as the road there was not straight like a toll road, but it was curvy and rocky.

Faith on the bus, standing and sleeping :) 

Took picture at Lido

The hotel, Inna Samudra Beach, was very old. It was built around the sixties under the direction of our first President, Soekarno. It has a reserved room just for Nyi Roro Kidul.  It was a pity that the hotel was not properly maintained (carpet and wall were dirty, blankets were old, etc..). 

Found an antique phone in the bathroom...

There was some kind of outbound activities in the second day. Afterwards we could choose few activities such as rafting, flying fox, paintball, etc. Since Faith was too little to join any activities, we were just relaxing by the Citarik river. Took pictures and drank young coconut :) 

 The boy was my colleague's son, Farrel :) 

Notice Faith's expression on the right picture :)

In the evening, we had a door-prize distribution (every employee received one) and I won a 32inch Toshiba LCD TV!! It was the highlight of the trip I guess :) 

I experienced the verse Luke 6:38, "Give and it will be given to you", as a few days before the trip, the TV on Faith's nanny's room was broken. I gave our TV to her. I jokingly said to her that maybe i'd win a new TV from the trip (as I knew that there'd be a door prize). And it came true :) 

No activities on the third day. Just relaxing and went back home. 

We're glad that we decided to take Faith there.

Fourteen months old: weaning, TMII

At fourteen months she was fully weaned from breastfeeding. She drank both formula milk and UHT milk as I was still confused which one were better. (At 15 months however I decided to give her full UHT milk, as I believe that the more natural the form the better). 

We took her to Taman Mini Indonesia Indah . It is a theme park that summarizes the national culture of Indonesia (traditional houses, parks, a miniature of Indonesian archipelago in a lake, museum, cable car, etc.). We took her to ride the cable car, took picture at the children's castle (Istana Anak-Anak) and visited the fresh water museum. To be honest, I was a bit afraid riding the cable car, worried about the safety (the cable car was very old, maybe around twenty to thirty years old?).

Then by the time we arrived at the Giant Golden Conch (Keong Mas), she was asleep in the car seat. But since we were already there, might as well took pictures in front of it hehe..

Overall, I would like to take Faith back to TMII again and visit other parks. In my opinion, TMII is a good destination for children as it offers open space educational recreational parks.

The weather was very hot, so we brought her a yellow hat. She liked to wear it, even at home :)