Jevon is almost 2 years old and grows with every passing month. As any parent will tell you, when kids hit 2 years it can be difficult to control them, as their ability to explore is growing but their ability to understand lags behind. Friends have told us that Jevon is a pleasant kid to be around as he is mellow for much of the time. This afternoon he got into a make-up case and all kinds of stuff got spread around his face.
We have a schedule of inoculations at the local kids hospital (Puri Bunda) and he is up to speed on that. Each time we go cost us around 150,000rp, which is more than a local public hospital for sure. Jevon’s friends are mostly girls, which is not be choice, its just that everyone we know with a young kid (except 1 person) has had a girl in the last 2 years. Our neighbors are from Australia / Spain and have a 15 month old daughter, around the corner is a little girl from Japan and a little black girl is around the other corner. Add that to the slightly older Balinese kids and there are plenty of kids around. Ika is friends with some of the local pembantus (helpers) who look after kids. One of them said her employer wants her to take the child to the beach for 3 hours a day, but she prefers our house so she tells the employer they went to the beach.
Jevon was having some constipation problems which I think was partly due to not drinking enough water. He constantly asks for ‘nenen’ (breast) and Ika tries to feed him from a plate of food. Sometimes people mistake thirst for hunger and so we got a large jar of prune juice. At first he loved it, mixed with water and couldn’t stop drinking it. Definitely helped things move along and I must admit the prune juice tastes good. Ika has another strategy, she tosses a WeetBix into a blender with fruit and he loves it, the extra fiber coming in handy.
Indonesians tend not to have a separate menu for breakfast, but cook up the stinkiest, greasiest concoction they can make. I don’t know how someone can handle greasy noodles and veg with garlic at 7am, but then I’m just a ‘bule‘. Jevon gets stuck into his first plate of vegetable and an egg in the morning, moving on to other Indonesian favourites later in the day. Will be interesting to see how Jevon’s tastes change as he gets older.
