Finally we capture a day at the pool

Henry and I went to the American Club pool today to meet up with Katherine and Olivia. Henry wore his body swim suit which are all the rage here.  Have they caught on in the US?

Katherine had a inner-tube thing for babies and she let Henry borrow it while I ran to get my camera.  As you can see, Henry was having a great time!  I just love the photo of Olivia and Henry holding hands.

Halloween in Dhaka

Today we celebrated Halloween in style.  I was getting nervous that Henry wouldn't have a costume but, miraculously, our freight shipment, with a cow costume handed down from Henry's cousin, arrived just in time yesterday morning.  Before going out and meeting the crowd I decided it might be smart to take some photos of Henry all dressed up. Who knows how long he would last once we left the house. He handled being in the costume surprisingly well - at least for 10 minutes. 

I took the costume off and we headed over to our friend's house where the festivities began.  I realized when we were at their house that if Henry stayed in the sling perhaps just the cow hat was adequate for a costume. He actually didn't mind wearing the hat at all; he was a proud cow baby!

After we all gathered at this first house we headed out. Our house was the first stop.  The 10 or so houses we visited were all within a mile of each other but we still organized some rickshaws just in case people wanted a little breeze on the way to the next stop.  Most of the time we walked though.  Just imagine the throng of interested folks that gathered as ~15 kids dressed up in costume walked down the street with their parents, half of whom were also dressed up.

 

Jamal, Erica, and Sophia:












Many of the parents utilize the tailors around town and have elaborate costumes made.  Check out the jelly fish and princess costumes. I'll have to come up with a fun costume to have made for Henry next year. Any ideas?

At the final stop there was a party complete with a pumpkin pinata

We came home after a great outing to a meal during which we used a new bib that we received just in time on Wednesday sent by Tad and Charlotte - what a fun surprise to get in the mail! (It says "Baby's 1st Halloween".)

  

Nothing like a tissue box

Henry's inch worm move has begun to resemble a crawl. He still belly flops after each forward motion but he's gaining control of the movement day by day.  The best way to get him to practice is to put his favorite toy, a tissue box, out of his reach. Why he has selected the tissue box as his favorite, and kept it as his favorite for many days now is a wonder to me.

He can also sit now:

PS - He's playing with the kleenex box.

Group activities in Dhaka

I'm still waiting on the swim class instructor to send out the class photo she took in the pool, but I thought I wouldn't hold off longer on sending out photos from the baby group we're in.  The group of moms and a dad and kids meet weekly for a play group. 

Of course I had to be on my business trip when they brought the camera for the group photo. Henry is the youngest of the bunch (but not by much) and so far has spent many of the play group session sleeping. The get togethers are held at a very convenient time of 10am - just when Henry wants to nap.  I've missed the last few but hope to go again soon and see how much more Henry may interact now that he can sit and almost crawl. 
The baby community is rather small and tight knit and pretty much all of the people in the play group are the ones in the swim class.  It's fun to see familiar faces...

Henry has a new bathing suit that he'll be sporting at the next swim class. It's a body suit made with SPF 50 material.  We've already used it during a random afternoon at the pool and he loves it.

Henry's first taste of food

Today was the big day, the day Henry tasted food (oatmeal infant cereal) for the first time.  We thought he was ready because he seems interested in food and certainly has a great appetite.  He chowed down! We were impressed. I thought he would dribble most of it but instead he swallowed a lot.  We still haven't received our shipment from the US - that we sent on August 3rd! - so we don't have a majority of Henry's things including a soft, small baby spoon. We could buy one here, I'm sure, but I figured that a teaspoon can fill the supply void until we get our stuff.  The only catch is that the teaspoon was a little wider than ideal but that made it more fun for us to watch Henry eat. Right after the first spoonful he kept looking to the bowl for more.  After about 6 or 7 spoonfuls he seemed a little distracted and we stopped the Epicurean adventure.    Here is the slide show:
Everybody is ready

First bite goes in

 

Lets consider whether we liked it or not

Oh yeah, ready for more

All done

With all of his new energy Henry went on to play with Guinness

And show us just how much he enjoy his first adventure with food

Before bed and early morning

Here are some photos from Henry before he went to bed:

And from this morning:

He loves his books!  Last night and this morning he bee-lined it straight to the stack of books and started pulling them out and spreading them all around - and chewing them.  I can't wait until the day when he thinks to flip them open himself.  he's learned how to turn pages; when we're reading lying down on the bed he gets his whole body into turning the page rolling from one side to the other with the page in his hand.  This morning when he was roaming around the bed I held up one of the books and called his name.  Once he saw what I was holding he booked it (ha, no pun intended ;) ) over to me and laid on his back ready to read.  He's taking after Scott with his love for books.

The ride to work

Scott lives the life of a "Boro Boss" (Big Boss or Head Honcho if you will) and gets picked up by a company car at 8:15am to go to work.  My organization, on the other hand, does not have a Dhaka based car to take me to work.  However, this isn't a problem because I work from home most days. When I do want to go to my office, it's only ~1 mile away and I can get there by staying on small back streets.  Yesterday I decided to take some photos of my commute to give you an idea of the scenery.

My rickshaw-wallah and I head down my street:

And get passed by a "school-bus" (notice the richshaw in front of us with a cage on it and imagine 10 kids fitting inside that!):

And pass a embroidered blanket shop (this one moves just about every day but I see it 90% of the time I go to my office):

And pass by a bunch of snack stalls:

And pass by a relatively new recycling center complete with about 5 dairy cows and some goats hanging out.  At this "recycling center" I wasn't quick enough to snap photos of were the specific processing stalls I had just passed by.  There is one for 2L and bigger plastic water bottles, one for paper, one for tires, etc. What I did get a photo of was the area where bigger items, like Styrofoam boxes and damaged woven basked are left - notice the toilet seat in the front center :)  One entrepreneur even set up a craft shop, the roof of which you can just start to see on the far right.

 After this my office is just around the corner.  


Yesterday they were also applying new "carpeting", the Bangl-ish word for pavement, to a neighborhood road. Making the pavement is a very labor intensive process as you can see.  The general summary of the process is that they stir gravel over huge fires fed continuously by ~saw dust until the gravel melts into a tar like substance which is poured on the road.  The pollution is horrendous and the heat from the fire is intense. Just imagine that they are working on this when it's 90 plus degrees outside.  (I have to admit that I found them "carpeting" the road during my return ride home when I didn't have my camera. These specific photos were from the last time I was in Bangladesh.)

And there you have it - a commute through small backstreets in Dhaka.  Now we'll just have to encourage Scott to snap a few photos on his way to work.