Inaugural Dili "Bub Club" event

When you live in a tiny island nation in the middle of nowhere, there tends to be a lack of organized kids gyms, classes, and other group events (among other laking amenities, mind you).  From our perspective though, this simply means more opportunity to be creative and figure out how to survive this babyhood sans Ikea, pediatricians and the FDA (I did notice today that drugs here are sold conspicuously closer to their expiration date than manufacturing date, and that Listerine bottles do not have child-proof caps - and people wonder why we need full-time nannies to watch our children??)

Some of the babies at the inaugural 'Dili Bub Club'

Anyway, back to the point of baby groups.  When we were in South Africa, Chris, Luka and I attended a few classes of an organization called Kindermusik.  As the title indicates, this involves kinders and musik.  I was so impressed with the whole approach that for a fleeting moment considered doing a course to become an official instructor - then remembered - right - 'working mother' and did what I have had to learn to do so often recently, lowered my expectations (of myself that is).  Truth be told, I would love to do a course to teach me how to adequately stimulate my child, but reality is that I don't have the time.  Instead, all the working moms in Dili came up with a concept to do a once-a-week gathering of babies (mostly Class of 2011, with a few honorary members from 2010 thrown in).  The idea is that we would get together at a volunteer's house every Sunday afternoon to engage in a baby-oriented activity.  The host would be responsible for 'facilitating' the activity which can range from music-oriented, to yoga, to a walk, to massage, to cooking, swimming - whatever they feel comfortable with, so long as the focus is on stimulating the little ones.  For s short clip from today click HERE.

For today's class, I downloaded a bunch of Kindermusik and other baby play songs from iTunes, and put together a simple program of approximately 20min.  The idea is that the group sit in a circle, babies on lap, or in front of the parent, and we sing songs to which we can gesture, sway, or play.  We used rattles, standing and swaying, blankets to do peek-a-boo, and physical touch with our babies.  All eight babies seem to love the experience, often squealing with glee.  

I did take a step back from the whole group for a minute and caught myself thinking how different my life is, as I watched this explosion of babies take over my living room...what a ride it's been!