Maclaren stroller for Liv Tyler's baby

Seen on july 19th, Liv Tyler and husband, Royston Langdon are enjoying the evening walk at the west village with baby Milo on a Maclaren stroller (stop picking on your nose boy!). The star stroller are also available here in Jakarta throughout many specialty children stores. Try The Children Store (senayan city 4th floor), Mothercare (various malls), and Mom's and I (Kemang Raya 18C). I promise I'll try to make a directory of all the cool children stores in Jakarta soon.

Pediatric Opthalmologist

In plain english, it says Eye Doctor for Kids.
A few weeks ago I spent one whole saturday afternoon in line for my daughter's appointment with Dr Rini Mahendrastari Singgih.DSM.
Supposedly she is one of the best eye doctor for children in town.
She got a nice little clinic in Bintaro, and if you want to make an appointment with her, you can only call the clinic on Thursday, and be prepared to wait for over a month!
But after the long wait, once you met her you'll know why parents flocked to her clinic.
She called herself 'Oma' and was so kind to us that she spent almost half an hour explaining the importance of early check up for babies and good habits for healthy eyes.
She got modern eye checking tools and stuffs and will check your child thoroughly. She said that once she diagnosed a four month baby who got a minus 14 for her eyes!
check out her site www.mahendraindonesia.com

Shiloh Jolie in Madame Tussaud

More celebrity baby to spice up this blog.
At just 8 weeks old, Shiloh will be the first baby that inspire the Madame Tussaud Museum in New York city to make their first infant replica. The figure will be displayed soundly asleep below the gaze of Brad's and Angelina's wax figure. And to honor Shiloh's parents' commitment to charity, the museum will donate $1 for each picture of the family that visitor buy.
Source: People

Gwen Stefani in Gucci baby carrier

I called Gucci store in Plaza Ind, and they said that the baby carrier is available here in Jakarta. Cool! The price is even more cooler. Rp 7.250.000,- anyone?

Shiloh Nouvel Jolie Pitt

Can't resist putting up this picture, after all they are probably the most famous family on earth right now (and certainly one of the most beautiful). I just hope that Kinokuniya on Sogo doesn't run out of this edition of People magazine. I heard that they paid millions for these photos and the Pitt family is planning to donate the cash to a charity which has not been named yet.

Weekend Escape

Weekend destination is definitely one of the toughest decision to make, especially if it involves tiny people who need humongous space to run around and enjoy themselves. I have discovered these amazing places to escape from the lure of the glittering malls and restaurants in Jakarta.

1. Novotel Coralia Bogor. (pictured here)
About one hour drive from Jakarta (weekend time). Go there early to catch the breakfast buffet while the kids can run around on the beautiful landscape with cold and precious fresh air. I found out that sometimes you can even let your kids swim there even without staying for a night (unnoticed by the attendant of course.)

2. Taman Sari Lippo Karawaci
This is an open space amphitheatre with restaurants and foodcourts surrounding it. The food is good with lots of choices, especially traditional snacks. My son especially enjoys running, chasing the pigeons that flew around there. And the best part is the bill, it is so unreasonably reasonable.

At dawn, you can also check out the nearby Benton Junction, it is a beautifully lit, long row of restaurant with tables outside on the street side, almost Paris like :)

3. For a late afternoon walk, try Pantai Mutiara, an ultra exclusive real estate complex at the west of Jakarta (huge houses!). They have a long sidewalk by the sea, where families are seen walking their dogs and enjoy an afternoon jog. Afterwards, the seafood restaurants and small cafes nearby are not a bad choice to spend dinner together with the juniors.

I welcome any comments to add on these lists.

The Safe Nursery

Caution! for all the new moms. Please read these booklet and know them by heart. This is really the safety handbook that every mom should read, it includes some situation that we don't even think it could happen, to any kids.
Go to http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PUBS/202.pdf , download it and print it.
And if you'd like some more info regardig safety issues in consumer products check out their main website at www.cpsc.gov . Its the American Consumer Products Safety Commission.
Too bad we don't have any of that here.

Stroller Parade

The current trend for strollers in Jakarta is simple. It just has to be cool enough to make other moms look twice in their direction..with a look of envy. And as Jakarta is currently enjoying the effect of globalization, the choices for such strollers are plenty.
You can see the futuristic Quinny stroller, the modern Maclaren, even Stokke (*gasp!) zigzagging across the malls. Oh yes, malls. Of course, the only terrain that those strollers have to endure is simply marbles, carpets and wooden floors, that is why sometimes it feels ridiculous to see petite moms with perfect hair trying to lift up their bulky strollers up the escalators.
The latest edition of the strollers parade is by Aprica (pictured above), a cool Japanese brand that recently just opened their flagship store in Plaza Indonesia 3rd floor. They have lightweight strollers that can be fully reclined (thank god!) and you can even change the direction to which the stroller is facing (backwards for infants and forward for toddlers).

Million Dollar School

One of the easiest topic to start a conversation with another Mommy is about school in Jakarta. As we all know, new schools are popping out like wild mushrooms in every corner of this crowded city, and most of them are ..expensive. Lately I felt that I have been brainwashed by the media marketing of this new schools, that laid out new perspectives on how a good school should be. It should be national-plus, affiliated with some overseas school, it should have new buildings and astounding facilities, English language as the first language, expats teachers and so on and so on. And it just grew confusing for me. I mean, after all these are all new schools with no experience in producing say, champions of the World's Physics Olympics (not that I have that kind of ambition for my kids).

Anyway, I have to admit that my daughther is registered in one of these new school, and yesterday a friend of mine gave me some points to ponder. "it's definitely like gambling" she says "And the bad news is we would not know whether we make the right decision until about 20 years of time." Well, that is one scary thought.

Check out some of their website (I discovered that some of the new school does not even have a website)
www.globalnusantara.org
www.globaljaya.com
www.binabangsaschool.com
www.highscope.or.id
www.lenterakasih.com

Plan Toys

Plan Toys is a remarkable toys company from Thailand (yes, Thailand) who makes ultra cool wooden toys. They even have a whole tiny wooden city with everything in it (Just don't count that they'll stay as cool after your kids finish playing with them). Check out their website www.plantoys.com

I recently bought this Plan Toys pull along car from The Children Store in Senayan City (it's a half done mall, mind you) for my son, and he just loves it. Though I'm tempted to ban him from playing with it after a while, as the poor car flew here and there and suffered from major dents.

Welcome to Baby Ape

Being an urban mommy in Jakarta is never easy.
You can never imagine how we can survive those days where we have to divide our time between works, kids school, home cookings, piano lessons, Zara mid-year sale and our regular hair treatments. And don't even ask about all the bad traffic jams in between them.
Anyway, this blog is dedicated to all the urban mommies out there who love to find out cool kids stuff and new things to do with their children.
Enjoy