2010 January — Tatter Scoops

10 Packing Tips For International Flight With Children

24 Jan posted by Maureen

From the age of less than 9 months old, Little A and I has been flying internationally. After a lot of researched on my part and from personal experience I decided to share you this list.

10 Packing Tips For International Flight(s) with Baby/Toddler

Snacks & Food: Pack enough snacks/foods to last you for 7 days on a boat from Alaska!

Change of clothes: Bring extras for your baby/toddler and also for you. You never know when you’ll get soaked with spit ups or worst vomits.

Bring a Tylenol/Benadryl: I’m not advising you to drug your child but some had sworn it works, better consult your doctor first. Benadryl never works for mine tho’ it makes him hyper!

Ipods: or other movie player that’s not too bulky. Make sure you get some covers at least to prevent those curious fingers from playing with it and just focusing on watching. This is useful especially if you’re on-board flights with no personal entertainment units (those little TV behind the seats). Portable DVD player is also favorable but it can be quiet bulky. I found this cute little movieplayer from Walmart and had put our portable DVD at home instead. They’re cheap but my son have a kick out of it.

Toys: If you can afford new toys for the kiddos on by all means go ahead and get some new toys but don’t give it all at once. One at a time whenever boredom strikes. Sometimes I ‘recycle’ my son’s toys by going through some of the toys that he haven’t played with in awhile and hide them, wrap them with colorful wrapping papers. Believe me, toddler get a kick out of unwrapping their presents. Doodle board, sticker books, crayons and coloring books are some of my son’s all time favorite. If you’re flying a really long haul flights with an overnight transit, put some more toys in your luggage that you can take out for the next leg of flights.

Plastic bags: Just carry some plastic bags from your groceries, folded them up and put in in your carry on. From stinky poopy diapers to wet clothes (if your child/baby vomit), this will comes in handy!

Sponge: Yes, wet the sponge, soak it with dish soap and let it dry. Once dried, cut it up into small peaces. Put these in a zip lock bag and use them one by one, throwing each away after use. Comes in handy when you have to take an overnight layover in a hotel inside (or outside the airport) so you can wash those sippy cups! This could be used for any trips away from home and not just flying.

Ear plugs: When your child started to throw a tantrum, kindly offer the ear plugs to other passengers closer to you or you can use it yourself!

Small treats: Like small chocolates, candies, etc. This one is especially for other passenger if your baby/toddler did have a meltdown and inconsolable. Handed them out to the nearest passengers before your flight end and maybe that will make them smile.

Pack your patience and prepare for the worst. If and when your child got a tantrum (mine cried for almost 6 hours from Korea – Jakarta because he was teething and I was clueless!) do put up a brave face, most people will understand and to your surprise will even go out of their way to help cheer up your child. If you got one of those ‘you’re-a-bad-mommy’ stares just ignore them, chances are you will never see these people again.

No matter how well prepared you are things can still goes very wrong when it comes to flying internationally with a minor. Try not to stress out too much because your child will pick up on that, I know it is easier to said than done especially if you are flying solo but believe me it can be done. It would be great if you can grab your spouse/parents/uncles/or other relatives to come along but sometimes you will have to just go solo. Also, don’t be afraid to ask for help and if someone offer a help, by all means take it!

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Filed Under: Toddlerhood, Travel

Day 1 – 31DBBB – Elevator Pitch

23 Jan posted by Maureen

After finding out about 31 Days to Built a Better Blog (31DBBB) from Mama Kat, I decided to jumped in the wagon and subscribe to the fascinating yet very informative course.

Day 1 Challenge is to Create an Elevator Pitch.

What is an Elevator Pitch?

“An elevator pitch is an overview of an idea for a product, service, or project. The name reflects the fact that an elevator pitch can be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride (for example, thirty seconds or 100-150 words).” – Wikipedia

Honestly, I have never heard of Elevator Pitch until I saw it on Mama Kat’s website and I’ve been reeling my brain trying to come up with an interesting-catchy-unforgettable elevator pitch. Making the long pitch was easier and I come up with this:

Colorful scoops of a mix-marriage couple, ex-nomads, with one toddler in tow. A place where the slightly Americanized wife/mom/woman channels her mundane sometimes knotty thoughts on mommyhood, toddlerhood, living back in her home country of Indonesia (in Jakarta to be exact), occasional traveling loaded with photographs from her aperture challenged fingers.

While for the short one or some may call it the tag line it’s a bit more challenging and I had came up with this:

“Scoops on living, mommyhood, toddlerhood and everything else around the loop “

Updated on July 19, 2010:

I’ve been loving my tag line and elevator pitch but since I’m joining SITS for 31DBBB Challenge I have decided to tweak my tag line and elevator pitch:

My new tag line: Scoops on living, mommyhood, toddlerhood and everything else around the loop from an Americanized Indonesian woman

My short tag line: Scoops from two cultures, one heart

My elevator pitch:
Indonesian by birth, American by heart, ex-nomads, with one toddler in tow. This is a place where the wife/mom/woman channels her mundane sometimes knotty thoughts on mommyhood, toddlerhood, living back in her home country of Indonesia, occasional traveling loaded with photographs from her aperture challenged fingers.

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Filed Under: Blogging, Musings

Takes Two To Tango

22 Jan posted by Maureen

Last month we found a domestic helper. Let’s just call her “Y”. Explained to her what I needed and wanted also gave her a week of ‘probation’. A dear friend of mine told me about her ‘1 week probation’ that she’s been using for years with her domestic helpers. No string attached, if within that one week I’m not happy or vice versa then I’ll just pay her for that whole week. Simple as it sounds I had a hard time…

First, adjusting to have someone, a stranger in your house daily is pretty weird at first. We never have any domestic helper before although when I grew up my mom always has at least one lived-in helper. Secondly, it’s not easy to trust someone that fast.

A week passed and she seemed OK when it comes to the cleaning but I do notice how she interacts with Little A, there’s just something that doesn’t click, you know. At first I thought it was just because Little A would get frustrated from her not understanding his mixed language (he speaks both English and Indonesian but sometimes he mixed them).

Then on the 9^th day, she came and asked if she can have half of her monthly salary upfront, said she needed to pay rent. Told her I must speak with Mr. X first about this. He, who also never has any experience with having a domestic helper, urged me to help her. I was wary tho’ because I don’t think that’s a very good sign when someone who just started working for you asked for their salary upfront. But I caved it not wanting to get into an argument with Mr. X over this.

Since then I continued to notice the lack of enthusiasm when she had to deal with Little A like say when I had to get on the phone, when we went out to run some errands, which is one of the reasons why I needed a domestic helper. Just can’t help but comparing her with Ipah (my mom’s helper) who is just all over Little A. You can tell just from one glance that Ipah loves him, meanwhile Y was completely cold with him. My imaginative minds starts to wonder what’s going to happen when the two of them are alone…

In early December, not long after she went home, her husband sent me a text message asking what’s going on, why did Y came home from my place crying and refusing to talk? Honestly I was like “WTH???” but kept my cool when I replied saying nothing’s wrong, she was completely fine and nothing’s going on. He replied and continued to pester me over it which made me furious. I tried calling her cell phone but she didn’t answer so I texted her if she’s having some kind of problem that she needs to take care of, she doesn’t have to come to work. She quickly replied and said “I’m so sorry. Someone cut my purse on my way home and stole everything. The money I suppose to send for my daughter was stolen too and I was so upset when I got home.” That just made me so uncomfortable! If it was me, the first thing I would do if something like that happen to me would be to tell Mr. X not cried myself and got mad at him, right? Logically, that’s how I see it but who knows what’s going on I just have a feeling that she’s going to try and ‘borrow’ money to cover for what she lost.

Okay, it may sounds like I’m being mean and cruel but I would gladly and happily help out people that I know I can trust and have been working for us awhile. There’s just something that doesn’t feel right about the whole situation with her and her husband messaging me felt like a ‘conspiracy’ way to make me believe her story.

After a discussion with Mr. X, he too thinks that was probably a ‘conspiracy’ the way her husband pester me. He left it all up to me on how to handle this so I made up my mind and told her 2 days later that we have to let her go. I felt such a huge relieve after that (first time ever I had to fire someone!).

You see this is one of the many of common thing here, some people sees you are married to a foreigner then they’ll assume you have money trees growing in your backyard! Some will try to take advantage that’s why finding the right person to work for you is quite a challenge. It takes two to tango, even when it comes to this department.

Let the search continues…

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Filed Under: Jakarta Livin', Musings

Home – Writer Workshop’s Assignment

21 Jan posted by Maureen

Home…in my short 30 years of occupying the planet, I have had many places that fell into one of the assignment of this week’s Writer’s Workshop held by Mama Kat and there are:

Soroako: a small nickel mining town in South of Sulawesi (Celebes) island in Indonesia. My parents settled there when I was just a tiny wee baby and it was our home for 12 years. It is a beautiful place where I spent my childhood swimming a lot since the town is surrounded by 3 big lakes and one of them, Lake Matano is the deepest in Indonesia. Was a tomboy back then and you can either find me on the lake (either swimming or diving or kayaking) or on top of my neighbor’s tree (my personal hiding spot when my mother came looking for me). Used to sit there on the tree or on the rooftop for hours just day dreaming. One day, I would love to come back there with hubby and Lil’ A.

Sangatta: As a miner’s daughter, my father’s job took us to this very small remote town tucked in East of Borneo Island, a coal mining town. By road, it used to take longer than 7 hours drive from the city of Balikpapan (now it’s approximately 7 hours since the road condition is much better than when I lived there) or a mere 45 minutes flight by a small single engine plane utilized primarily by the company who also built the only airport there. Officially, I ‘only’ spent 3 years in this town for Junior High since there weren’t any High School back then so my parents sent me to Jakarta but I would come home for every school holidays. Although it’s literally in the jungle, there were a lot of expatriates there, mainly Australians. The company had built a small yet independent town for their employees and families, from schools down to the supermarkets. Outside the company’s territories, life was shockingly still very traditional for the people of Sangatta. Electricity was scarce, houses were built high above the river beds with mostly outside bathroom, and it would flood on a rainy season as the river got overflows. Company’s houses are beautiful; built on mostly high platforms, our last house there (yes, we lived in 6 different houses there in total) was my favorite of them all because it’s located up on a high hill with big ceiling to floor windows that overlooked the bay. I still miss that house a lot!

Jakarta: The big capital city has become home since I first moved here for High School. No matter how annoying this city can be, this is the place where I mature, went to college, got my first date (yep, I did not have any date let alone boyfriend in high school! LOL), fell madly head over heels in love with several guys, found my very first job, had my wild times, met my husband and now settling back with a family. Sometimes I think I have a love-hate affair with the city because I would miss it terribly when we were in the US but I suffered some reverse culture shock when I first moved back.

Latham, New York: This was home for me for over 6 months after I first came to the States to married hubby. We lived very close to the airport since that’s where he used to work. The town would forever hold a special place in my heart and I still miss it from time to time. From the beautiful memories of marrying the love of my life to actually seeing and touching (also made snow angel!) my first snow and the beautiful colors of autumn. Found my first job in the US there too, this was unforgettable!

Dothan, Alabama: Due to the facts that both hubby and I are originally from warmer climates cities, we wanted to find a place where winter doesn’t chill us to the bones so when the opportunity came, we decided to pack up and drive down to Dothan, AL and make that peanuts capital of the world a home. It’s truly different down there compare to up north. I had a hard time settling in due to the facts that their southern accent was very thick and rich; also to put it mildly, the town was kinda hard around the edges for me, there is no public transportation like they have in Upstate New York to help me going places independently (was too afraid to drive LOL). But there, I met some of the friendliest people in the States. In this southern-bible-belt-small-town, we settled down and made us a home for almost 3 years. This is the town where my son was conceived and born.

Guangzhou, China: Although I did not stay there long due to paper works reasons (who knew a resident permit is harder to obtain there than back in the US?!) I still considered it was home for a very short period of time. It took one month to get over the initial culture shock there. Even though I am of Asian heritage, China was like a totally different world for me. Hubby stayed there for a year and had surprisingly picked up the Mandarin language quite easily while I can only master two or three sentences. Moving there was a bold move since we both never been there and doesn’t really know much about the country. There were a lot of great experiences there, plenty of TCM (This is China Moment) such as the Kaidangku, our daredevil Air Con repair guys, and many more that still made hubby and I laughed when we relived the amusing sometimes maddening times we had there.

Those are the 6 places I’ve called home in my life and I’m sure there will be more places to be called home in future but I will never forget these places.

Why don’t you join the fun Mama Kat had provided and blog away.

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Filed Under: Musings, Photoblog

New Year’s Resolution? Not!

20 Jan posted by Maureen

Had wrote about this before, when I was still living in the US. Part two revolves in the big girl living back in Jakarta…

My weight had went up again since we moved back to Jakarta with all the delicious Indonesian delicacies and the fact that it is a lot easier to order out or dining out.

I know, I’ve been slacking in my exercise routine since my dad who was my morning walks partner went back to Africa for work. Before, we would take a long walk around the neighborhood every morning and that helps keeping the pounds from creeping back to my tummy.

In China, walking was a daily informal exercise for me since everybody walks and the sidewalks is 100x better than Jakarta when it comes to its sizes. Here, when you get on the sidewalks you will either risk yourself from being hit by the crazy motorcyclist or the sidewalks are completely blocked by those ‘kaki lima’ (street vendors). In some fancy housing complex might be better as they’ll usually have a designated jogging track.

Being back in Jakarta where the girls are mostly skinny and the fashion are addressed for that very body type — it is a pain-in-you-know-where just trying to find any decent things to wear. Please, don’t advice me to shop at maternity store like one of my aunt suggested! Ugh! And I am stingy, will not spend $200 over a branded dress just because it comes in numerical sizes instead of the oh-so-famous XS, S, M & L! Yeah, the big branded stores sometimes carries these sizes but when you know too well the same thing will cost 150% cheaper outside of Indonesia, you might wanna hold on tight to your purse, at least I did! Unfortunately, there are times when you got no other choice and had to pay what the tag asked because you need something to wear, pronto! Almost had to close my eyes when I handed my debit card to the cashier!

Sadly, there aren’t very many options available for girls on the larger size here. Found a specialty shop but OMG their stuffs are too frumpy for my taste and I refused to look like I am wearing my grandmother’s curtain! Sometimes I wish there are more Indonesian designer who specialized in large size clothing lines and please oh please don’t make it so frumpy! Make room for us women, who have curves, please…the fashion industry here seems to only belong to those skinny girls with flat chest! You, yes you the designers need to know some Asians also have racks!

Online shopping? Great idea, sadly not very many stores (read: the store that I like) offer shipping to Jakarta and even when it does ship here you will face the horror of waiting and praying that they’ll get here in one piece. Indonesian postal service is notorious for their invisible thieves and hidden charges that will make you furious. One time, I bought a bra, yes, the very basic necessity for us women from Ebay. It arrived safely and rather fast too that I was impressed – I thought hey, maybe the postal service had improved but no! That was just my one time luck because the next shipments from my in-laws almost disappear if I had not moved quickly and track them down. Will write more about that later.

The new fancy mall next door to our place will have a gym open very soon and I’ve been thinking of enrolling myself to get back in shape. Problem is since Mr. X is working long hours and we are still looking for a domestic helper, finding the time to sneak there and lift a few weights or do some other exercise regiments would be difficult for now.

A good friend from Las Vegas brought me an exercise DVD that had helped her lost so much weight and toned up her figure, unfortunately I’ve been slackin in the ‘move your butt’ department and I know I will have to motivate myself more if I really wants to see the scale went down to a more desirable numbers.

Nah, I’m not going to jot down ‘lose weight’ as my New Year’s resolution since that’s been on the list for years now I just need to crank up my motivations.

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Filed Under: Jakarta Livin', Musings

Sippy Cup oh Sippy Cup

10 Jan posted by Maureen

Many mothers will be familiar with sippy cups but here sometimes when I asked around for them not all the shop attendants knows what I’m talking about and I had to literally describe what it meant.

As most toddler, Lil’ A started using a sippy cup when he was 7 months old and by 12 months old he’s completely had ditch the bottles with huge success, part of it was luck I guess because he was never that attached to his bottle, it was just a tool to drank his milk so the switch to a sippy cup was a breeze.

We experimented with several brands of sippy cups before I finally set ‘my standard’ on Nuby Sippy Cups. It’s just easier to clean and doesn’t spill also very durable when it comes to enduring the toddlerhood torture (read: being thrown all over the place).

When we first moved to Asia, I scoured baby stores in Jakarta looking for Nuby sippy cups to no avail. Then came to find out, they had changed their design and I found them at Mothercare store, although the priced are more expensive than back in the States, I still use them because I tried other brands here and nothing beats Nuby. The last time Lil’ A and I went to the States, I bought so many sippy cups my MIL must’ve thinks I’m addicted to them. Now there’s been a scarce in Nuby sippy cups in Jakarta, I went to several different Mothercare stores only to find out that they’re out of stock.

Any moms will know that cleaning a sippy cup can be a pain in you knows where. The lids, straw and the tubes are the trickiest. My cleaning would involve toothpicks to reach those pesky little corners inside the lids and Dr. Brown’s Natural Flow Brush, it wasn’t exactly meant to clean sippy cups but it works amazingly great to clean the tubes and straws. For those molded juice, curdled milk or some other form of gunk in Lil’ A’s sippy cups, I soak it in warm soapy water for a few minutes then starts brushing and diggin with toothpicks. Once a week I would dump them all in a hot boiling water just for a few seconds to kill the germs. Unfortunately they don’t sell the 4 pack brushes here, after some search I found them but they are sold with the replacement tube for Dr. Brown’s Natural Flow wide neck bottle and at the price of Rp. 80,000 something (almost 8 bucks) just for 1 brush and a tube that I don’t need its expensive!

When I searched about these brushes I found this neat website called Sippy Stuff who sadly but not surprisingly doesn’t do international shipping to Indonesia. Their brush set looks so neat and perfect. Will definitely have to figure out how to get them here either thru our families or friends back in the US or simply start to wean him off his sippy cup completely.