November update

Just before LC's 5 month birthday, and he weighs in at 18 lbs. He's not rolling over yet, probably due to all the fat he has to move! But he's getting there and I expect he'll start doing it soon. He loves playing with his toys and is now getting mad at us if we take them away. His favorite toys are a vibrating butterfly that his nana gave him, a different butterfly that was also one of C's favorites, and really anything that he can hold and put in his mouth. He likes his bouncy seat although he's getting too big for it, likes his gymini and mobile. And now he's been introduced to the exersaucer and it's a big hit!



I think he's a pretty textbook kind of kid - generally happy and smiley but fussy when he wants something. He's given us a few wakeless nights and we pray that they become more and more common. Of course his dad managed to miss the worst of it. He left for a business trip to the US about 1 week after we moved into our new house. Well, all the changes with the Bali trip and the new house didn't sit so well with LC, and he turned into a Terrible Sleeper. It was a solid week or so of hell. New house with boxes unpacked, me squeezing in work whenever I could, and a very wakeful and screaming baby. All on my own. Thanks dear. Fortunately he's on the mend though and his dad returns soon. Just as things are calming down, of course.

C started swimming lessons yesterday, finally. It's something I've wanted to do for him since we moved here, and it's finally happening. All of his 3 year old friends can swim fairly independently, and so C has a long way to go. I don't like living in a place with so many swimming pools and C not being able to swim. I like that the swim instructor teaches them (or tries to anyway) how to turn around and swim to the side in case they were to fall in. Drowning is the second leading cause of unintentional injury-related death in the US, so I'm not totally paranoid. I'm going to start LC in early '08, so he grows up knowing how to swim.

Below is C in a bajaj. It's basically a shell around a motorcycle, and I think you find them all over Asia (this website says you find them in Africa too, but I don't remember ever seeing them there). C loves them! On the rare occasion when our car isn't available to pick up C from school, the nanny will go get him and bring him back in one of these. It costs like $1 for the trip and he he has such a good time. Of course, here I am rambling before about injury prevention, and I'm letting my son ride in one of these death traps. Oops. I guess that's where the silver lining in the constant Jakarta traffic can be found. He'd never pick up enough speed to experience much damage.

Worker bee

I haven’t really spent any time telling you about the work I’m doing here in Indo. Until last month there wasn’t a whole lot to tell as the amount of work I was doing was pretty minimal and only mildly interesting. However, as of 3 weeks ago my workload has been bumped up to half-time and has become much more intense. On one hand I am struggling to keep it to 50% because I could be doing this full time right now, but on the other hand I’m doing this largely from home and with 2 little kids in the house it’s proving to be very challenging to find the time. Plus, I don’t even have to be working right now. There are other things I want to be doing and I have to readjust my state of mind and schedules to find the right balance.

The work is very interesting though, and important. As some of you may know, more cases of human Avian Influenza (bird flu) have occurred in Indonesia (113 to date) than anywhere else. Because of this and the great fear around the world of this disease becoming either efficiently transmitted from bird to human, or even worse from human to human, the US government (and others) is pouring quite a bit of money and resources into learning about the disease and containing it. This is where I come in. USAID has a contract with my company to procure various drugs and supplies to donate to developing countries. In 2006 they decided to send some decontamination kits and personal protective equipment to Indo to help protect investigators when they go out to investigate an outbreak among birds. So for the last several months I have been doing a little work to help bring those supplies into Indo and track their use and reorder when necessary.

Now, however, the US government has decided that vaccinating chickens against bird flu may help reduce the viral load in chickens and therefore help contain the disease. Well, there are 3 million chickens born every day in Indo. There are 17,000 islands in Indo. Complicated and overwhelming task? Yes! So, my project has been asked to procure the vaccines and get them down to the district level. They are only doing this in 6-8 districts in West Java, where 60% of the chickens are, so that makes things easier. I don’t think they realistically believe all chickens in Indo will ever be vaccinated. We can’t even get all children in Indo vaccinated, much less chickens! This task is further complicated by the fact that vaccines have to be stored at a certain cold temperature (4-8 degrees Celsius in this case) until they are used. This is a huge task in a tropical climate and developing country where electricity is not always ensured nor working refrigerators present in all locations. Therefore, we have to figure out how we’re going to get it there under the right conditions (cold chain logistics). Another complication to this already daunting task is the fact they don’t have a really efficacious vaccine. There are vaccines (for chickens, not for humans) and they work against some strains, but not against others. Being influenza, the virus is always mutating, so the powers that be will continuously have to monitor the ever changing virus strains (just like you have to get a new flu vaccine every year).

And seeing as I’m the only project employee living here, I will be doing much of the work dealing with the logistics of vaccinating a whole pant load of chickens. Plus I’m on a huge learning curve here. I do not know much about vaccines or chickens or cold chain logistics! It feels overwhelming, especially since this came as a huge surprise. Three weeks ago I had no idea I’d be thrown into this. I was going on my merry way thinking that come March or so I’d start drumming up some more work. And now I’ve got more than expected. Fortunately I'm working with some really great people who are doing other components of the work required to get this thing off the ground.

There are other things that have been added to my workload as well. Like organizing a workshop for the government's bird flu committee on emergency preparedness. Again, what? Zoinks scoob...

It’s exciting to be doing this work though. It’s an emerging disease and I’m living in the epicenter. I imagine I’ll gain a lot of expertise and will be at the forefront of what’s being done to combat it. The drawback though is that it’s taking me farther and farther away from my true passion of maternal and child health. That is what I got my master’s degree in, and yet my career so far has been related but not directly linked. But I do like it and it’s a good deal for me right now, and it’s certainly exciting!

Moving on...over

In addition to the many things that happened in October, we moved into a new house. It's something we had been considering for a little while, and finally we got around to talking to our realtor about it. Well, the first people to see it loved it (which made us reconsider, of course). The following few weeks was a roller coaster. There were several complications to our moving, including the 2 year lease we signed when we moved in (very common here), the requirement that we could secure our new house at the same time we finalized the sublease, the landlady agreeing to the special considerations that must be given to the new tenants as Belgian embassy staff, the new tenants' willingness to not have much done to the house as a condition of their move, and the timing of moving around idil fitri and our trip to Bali. One day it looked like we'd move, and the next it wouldn't. Well, the day before we left for Bali it all came together, and we moved 3 days after we got back.

Why, you may ask, did we go through all this pain and agony? At the time we wondered that ourselves. But now that we've moved we feel we were right in doing so. One of the main reasons was that the motorcycle noise was annoying us, and it was on the kids' side of the house and we worried about it waking them up. The last thing J wanted to hear after spending 1 hour in Jakarta traffic to get home was the sound of the ever present motorcycles. A big reason for me to move was the constant mosquito problem in the house. It was an older house and not well sealed, and no matter what we did there were always lots of mosquitoes in the house. We had to have it sprayed once/month to try to get rid of them, and god knows what those chemicals might do to our young kids. Then again, I also didn't want them to get dengue fever or malaria. In addition to these big reasons, there were many other minor inconveniences that all added up to a desire to move.

Our new house is in a complex of about 35 houses, just a few blocks away from our old house. There are 3 playgrounds (very sparse in Jakarta) and lots of children. C is able to ride his bike on the streets and take walks without inhaling exhaust fume and dodging motorcycles. He has already met several of the neighborhood kids, one of whom is an older girl. That's right, C is charming a sweet 7 year old down the street. We'll definitely keep our eye on him when he hits puberty! The house is much more conducive to family living and the management company is amazing. And while the mosque's call to prayer is actually louder here, there is NO motorcycle noise! We've given up the grandness of our other house, an incredibly gorgeous yard, and more exposure to Indonesian culture, but we think we made the right decision.

I have lots of reasons why I haven't been blogging in so many weeks, the move being just one of them. I'll try to get to all the other reasons soon.

Halloween

Happy Halloween!

Super C to the rescue! That is, unless he's at school for the Halloween party... Once again, C decides to not wear a costume. It has been an ongoing refusal, but I thought we had finally broken through whatever anti-costume feelings he had. This time last year he refused to don his cowboy costume at school or for trick-or-treating. Then at his end-of-year concert he refused to wear the costume. But this year he has been wearing his superman costume in the house and wore it to the Halloween party with his playgroup. So, I thought we were over this, whatever this is. But no. This morning at school he got as far as putting the shirt on before he decided against it and demanded it to be taken off. Despite my and the teacher's attempts at convincing him otherwise, he celebrated the Halloween party in his street clothes. Ah well, I guess I'll save money and energy in not having to get a costume for him every year...

In the meantime, again

Too busy to post, and yet I have so much to say, so much catching up... And the list keeps growing which makes finding the time to update you all on our activities even more challenging. In the meantime, here is a photo taken yesterday. I don't want you to think I've forgotten about you all...

Tummy time squared

Bali sunset

Ahhh Bali...what's not to love?

Spudlyness confirmed

It is confirmed that LC is a spud. I checked C's baby book and he weighed 15 lb 8 oz at his 6 month visit. LC weighed the exact same at his 12 week visit. Definitely spudly.

J's parents arrived safely on Saturday and weren't even too exhausted. They have been busy, busy getting their fill of grandsons. C isn't giving them much of a break and I suspect they will be ready for a vacation after their vacation. Both boys are trying their darnedest to charm the pants off of their grandparents and I'm pretty sure they're both smitten for good. Of course, I can't blame them.