medicine

If you say you are ill then anyone, whether stranger or friend, will ask you "uong thuoc chua?"  which means, "Have you taken any medicine yet for it?"  This is all very well and it's ok to say "chua" which means "not yet", but when it's a baby that's ill the concern becomes very acute.  In fact we met some people at the weekend who thought the baby must inevitably die if it did not receive medicine for a slight cold.  The doctors apparently prescribe a course of injections, twice daily, for symptoms such as Bernard is experiencing, and no complaint is ever left to the body to sort out by itself.  I'm quite used to being confronted on my medical outlook in England, but this is a whole new level of disapproval, and it feels terrible to be labeled as a careless mother.  The nanny is especially worried that I am not dosing baby full of cough syrup.  I just feel that since he's turned a corner, no longer miserable with a runny nose, and he's happy and feeling well, there's no need to help his immune system along - it might even be counterproductive.  Plus that cough syrup smells disgusting.

first solid food

bernard properly ate his rice porridge last night - mixed with a bit of pureed carrot.  i had boiled some carrot and liqidised it and frozen it into an ice cube tray for convenience - actually it is a bit of a faff making one pureed carrot so the ice cube tray is a great idea!  he really licked and swallowed the miuxture, working on an alternating-spoon system where he held one spoon while i refilled the next.  if i don't let him hold it he cries. what an achievement - it didn't go in the bib; it went in the baby!

hue

I took the train down with Bernard.  Travelling alone on a night train with a baby is a bit of a challenge, but the guard was very nice and held the baby while I went to the toilet.  Next door was a tiny 3month old who was just returning from a trip to Hanoi for a heart surgery operation - she seemed very well indeed.

We went to the beach in a taxi.  The place was windy and deserted.  No birds.  A few hawkers plied the few tourists:  I bought a rather sandy plate of banh loc, water dumplings.  The sand was squeaky.

In the mornings we tried this litlle group of food stalls.  The first day I was really hungry and had egg sandwich followed by this one.  You can't see it but the noodles are square.

Spot the product placement on the table!  This was at Che Hem, where we had sweet soup.  Bernard liked Hue and tried to eat everything, including the above table.

bernard laughing with daddy

this one is about everything

argh where to start?  so much has happrnned since i last blogged that i can't even remember... anyway b is still into his feet but he has a new craze in taandem with that:  chomping on big things.  the bigger the better: arms, legs, doors, tables, chairs.  i keep having to re-configure the bathroom because he is getting more mobile and left alone will flip himself over and start grabbing stuff and trying to launch his open mouth onto it.  he's not crawling yet but he will stand on hands and knees rocking back and forth for  a second.  it is funny how quickly he can roll over no considering it used to take him ages of tugging and frustrated squeaks to pull his arm out from underneath his body after rolling over - now it's automatic. 


the conservationist has been paid!  we have just been out to the new japanese. Saru,  in our neighbourhood to celebrate a near doubling of our monthly income. it was supposed to be extravagant (prices were in dollars which is always a bad sign)  but we ate very well for 17.6 dollars.  the chef had worked at the Hotel Nikko and knew his way around a sushi knife; the waitresses were new and stressed out; they kept calling us "anh chi tay", the Western couple, which is a funny thing to say in our area.  b behaved very well, licking only his tree-shaped chew toy until the end when we gave him a piece of banana to lick.  now he is fast asleep on my lap.

feeding b solids has not been as successful as i had hoped.  at the weekends i try giving him his russian barley glopp but most of it ends up in the bib.  we (baby, mummy, frog chair, kitchen etc) all have to take a bath afterwards!  pureed carrot did not help to persuade him that solids are the way forward.  he likes the new tastes i think but he is just not ready to swallow efficiently from a spoon. it's not worth the effortse of cooking and blending. the nanny gets a whole bowl of glopp down him every day without spilling a drop, but i thunk she just lies him down and pours it down his throat. i'm not gonna stop her since she's the only one who can get it down him.  that daily bowl i think makes it easier to express enough for the day, and helps him to slepp better.  though he still is feeding at least 3 times per night,  we've found a kind of rhythm now though with the feeding, pumping, working and sleeping, so we'll stick with it for the moment. 

i want to eat my feet

this week bernard wants to eat his socks!!!  he is confused why, unlike other toys, his feet don't come to his mouth easily and he finds them fascinating.
winter dropped on us suddenly and our house has gone from cool to draughty.  i have one of those watery colds where warm salty water just flows from eyes and nose as from a tap.  i have employed a yellow muslin.  i always thought hankies were too small.
the novel is a sprawling mess.  i am thinking of hiring a ggost writer.  appropriate as i am on the  letter g.

cot antics

i have been non blogging bcos b is hard to get 2 slepp.  he is waking every 5-10 mins all evening after his bedtime feed, and we've been trying all sorts of tadtics and learning a lot. nothing helps, although if he spends time screaming he doesn't wake often - but then he's awake screaming.  we have decided to relax and concentrate on being really present with baby while we can - most people i spoke to at work about it said they didn't bother with strict routines, and nobody said they got it sussed by 4 months.  so he wakes up a lot - it's hardly naughtiness!  otherwise we are doing remarkably well:  there is a routine there already and baby feels happy and secure.  he is slooowly getting used to the cot.  and he is waking less in the night, maybe 3x.

head skiing

swan boats for a picnic

Tui takes a bite

squealing

HELP:  the squeals are back!!!!!!

ghost story

So we're at home with a ton of stuff on the bed, passports on top, and downstairs is a beautifully packed picnic.  But suddenly we've called off our plan to go to Tam Dao.  We're just too tired!  Not sad though, as we're still relaxed from last weekend. 

At the minimart the other day, I came in looking for tortillas and Tuan was giggling by the door.  A Western guy was talking in rather good Vietnamese, and purchasing a huge bunch of bananas, costing him over 100,000 dong.  He was asking if he could buy half but they were saying no, no, you can't cut it, it's bad luck.  This sounded very strange to me as they are very honest in the shop and would never bamboozle someone into buying a huge bunch of bananas like that - they'll sell you just one banana if you prefer, or one yoghurt, or even one battery.  Tuan explained in a stage whisper that the man's house is haunted.  The electrics are up the pictures, lights flickering on and off, a bad feeling in the house and all housemates suffering from bad luck in their daily lives.  On advice from a friend, he was buying things for an offering table, which would consist of fruit and a whole boiled chicken with a rose in his mouth.  It's bad luck to offer anything partial or cut, so the bunch of bananas had to be whole.  When the man passed over the bananas they noticed one of them was bashed and black so they had to exchange the bunch for another "more beautiful" (and even more costly) hand.  He had also arranged to have a shamanic exorcist visit the house.  All the talk of ghosts made me feel shivery, so of course Tuan crept up on me while I was paying for my tortillas and I jumped a mile.

Nicholas has a minimart story too:  he was shopping today and a Vietnamese guy walked in and said, "Have you got that thing...?"  "?"  "You know, that thing?"  "Sorry, sir, what thing?"  "Er, I'm not sure..." 
Apparently the precise nature of the thing was not clarified before Nicholas left the shop.

vocals

i am wasted - exhausted - whacked etc.  just staying up so i can pump for tomorrow.  wanted to update on the latest developments:  when we were in Tam Dao Bernard did nothing but squeal. squeal for happy, squeal for tired, squeal for bored, squeal to get attention, squeal just anyway because it's really fun to make such  a loud and piercing noise.  The video i took is actually the moment when this squealing phase began: we had got bored of it by the evening of the same day.  We were wondering how long the squealing phase would last:  when i got home from work today, he had suddenly started experimenting with repetitive sounds like yayayayaya and ngangangagn occasionally, and the squeals had receded.  whoo hoo!

more tam dao pics

setting off

waiting for daddy to try and find the binoculars he dropped off a cliff

this is a leaf

hiding in the hammock

tam dao pics

having a laugh with the locals whilst waiting for a bus to Vinh Yen

our taxi driver became a member of the fan club

enjoying our hotel room

hiya!

mindy

my school life will be so much better now i have a good place to express.  mindy is back now and the proud mother of Aubrey (a girl).  she put in a work order while on maternity leave and her room is totally peek-free.  it's great because:

1. expressing in the loos is yucky
2. we can chat about mum stuff
3. having another person there is relaxing and therefore i get faster milk, and, under a time restraint, therefore more milk

yesterday i was so relaxed that i forglot to screw the bottle on, and got milk all over my trousers!

baby is sleeping better recently.  he is back to his twice-a-night feeding:  much better, though i still wake with a sense of outrage that it's already morning.

the novel:  9,110 wierds.  i mean words.

solids

today i started baby on solids.  in my baby book it says to wait until 4 months (check) and the baby has doubled his birth weight (check).  the latest advice on the web is to wait until 6 regardless, but thereafter to watch for signs of readiness for food, eg. baby makes you feel guilty while eating as he looks on and makes chewing motions (check).. . they both say emphatically that baby's ability to sleep through the night is irrelevant.  however, b slept really well until recently. lately i have had to keep him in bed with me so he can snack at will wiyhout waking me too much.  it has been getting rapidly worse.  both mother and baby are tired and tetchy during the day.   last night he fed every hour which is worse than when he was a newborn when it was every three hours.  surely.... well, i guess when you're exhausted you'll try every avenue regardless of the WHO advice.

so, this evening b was treated to a runny paste which is either baby barley or baby buckwheat mixed with water and breastmilk, i'm not sure quite what the packet said because it was in russian.  i was wary of rice because i thought it might bung him up.  he seemed keen, althogh he got really frustrated trying to grab the spoon and bowl off me, and he made a variety of weird expressions as he licked and spat his first food.  predictably most of it went on his shirt.  still, at no point did he turn his head away; he just got annoyed with the spoon feeding process.

bernard singing

6,102 words

I'm sitting at the desk.  Bernard is asleep on the bed - we both collapsed there exhausted at quarter to six.  I tried to get us away from Hanoi for the weekend, but sadly failed.  By the time I got to the bus station this morning, it was nine a/m and the bus journey would have taken six hours.  Looking at the bumpy battered blue bus, I realised I could not subject the little baby to this, so took a rain check on our trip to Mai Chau.  We went instead to the Silk Village, a little adventure involving a friendly noodle shop in the back streets of Van Phuc.  It was sufficiently countryish there (in mentality as well as quietness) to make me feel we'd got at least a little bit away from the routine.  However, the big mistake was not to bring the buggy, because an eight (?) kilo baby and two bags was exhausting to carry and walking around the village took a lot of effort.  I never ever regret taking the buggy places!

I haven't been blogging - I'm writing a novel, or at least taking part in NanoWrimo if that is slightly different.  I have decided to cheat on November and start a little early with a view to trying to complete a 50.000 word draft by the end of November.  Ambitious? Nahh.   I'm handwriting this year because the Internet is too much of a distraction;  the novel will be born in  a small brown Paperblanks notebook decorated with curlicued gold: perfect for a weird Murakami-inspired alphabetised fantasy set in ... well, I'm not sure where it's set.   6,000 words down already but it's slow work: especially when I have to write some of it with my left hand...  the plan is to write 2,000 words inspired by a different genre for each letter of the alphabet, hopefully adding up to 52,000 by the end, though the letter "I" is a problem because the only thing I could think of was Indian History, which might make it a bit of a strange chapter.  On the other hand, all the first three chapters are strange already.  

Anyway, if you see less of the blog you'll just get a warm feeling knowing that I'm skribbling away and hopefully by the end of November, the Paperblanks notebook will be full.  

grr

b quite a little handful today:  trying now to sit up in his chair and buggy, and fircely teething.

Burritos

Last week I was really hungry after school so instead of going home for a sandwich I stopped off to try out the new brasserie on West Lake.  It's called Don's and it boasts an extraordinarily diverse menu from pizza to Vietnamese.  I ordered burritos because Nicholas had had Mexican there the other day and told me the food was "better than at the Kitchen but no more expensive."  So, the only guest at 2.30pm, I sat at the tall bar next to the glowing champagne fridge and the rotating cake deck, I ate my green burrito.  Don was staring gloomily into his Mac at the other end of the bar and asked me how it was.  I said it was excellent although I didn't know much aabaout nmexican food.  It was excellent, and as I ate I realised something very important aboutt burritos.  Burritos, it seems, are as much about texture as about taste.  The filling was smooth and gooey with the cheese mixed in, creating a whole new consisency unlike any burrito I've had.

So  I decided to make a vegetarian version at home.  For the sauce:

2 red onions,chopped
300g cherry tomatoes
2 tins black beans
2 cups water
cumin
paprika
turmeric
a bowlful of grated mild cheese

Fry the onions till golden on a high heat, add the tomatoes and fry briefly, then the spices and beans.  Break open the tomatoes then add the water and simmer till the tomatoes are soft.  Allow to cool slightly then put in the blender and whizz till just short of smooth.  Return to the pan and reduce or add water till it has an oozy, not liquid consistency, then turn off the heat and gently stir in the cheese.

Place the sauce on lettuce leaves on freshly toasted tortillas and roll gently.

 Serve with the trimmings, ie:

hot crunchy salsa
guacamole
sour cream
lime

I found the camera charger!

a few of the tykes on United Nations day dressed according to their nationality

bernard's on the move ... well, he's trying very hard

baby andy and baby bernard

low batt

it's been rainy and cold the last few days.  today i wore SOCKS and B wore his Sainsbury's sleepsuit.
one more day to go.  today was like the worst day ever but how bad can the second last day be?  tomorrow it's half term and everyone can recharge their batteries. 
i get all upset but then i remember i'm being paid to spend all day working with kids.  the only problem is my foggy brain and lack of experience. i am told my brain will return.  only i can't remember if i ever had one?

baby Andy

We invited baby Andy (a month older than B) to dinner last night with Tim and his wife Nhung.  Tim is in conservation and Nhung makes beanbags....  last year we spent Christmas day together when Nhung and I were both pregnant.  Baby Andy is much longer-legged than Bernard; his big feet now look much more in proportion.  They were both in similar mode: tired and fractious.  Andy was really aware of his surroundings compared to Bernard, and when the two babes were put face to face Andy tried to eat Bernard's arm, whereas Bernard just stared off into the distance.
B is lately trying to crawl by putting his bum in the air and sliding along on his forehead.  I am not kidding you.

Alphabet of Hanoi

A is for areca palm
B is for banh xeo
C is for coffee
D is for dragon
E is for trung vit lon
F is for foreigner
G is for government
H is for double happiness
I is for Trang Tien ice cream
J is for juices
K is for Kung Fu
L is for law enforcement
M is for motorbike
N is for nha nghi
O is for opportunity
P is for parking attendants
Q is for jostling people who are younger than you
R is for rush mats
S is for shaman
T is for turtle
U is for ugly teeth
V is for Voice of Vietnam
W is for West Lake
X is for xich lo
Y is for youth
Z is for oi zoi oi


Can you make an alphabet of your home town?

all change

life is suddenly very different.  well, not in some ways: i am sitting in bed with baby who is having a good long bedtime feed.  but nights are less quiet these days, as baby finds his voice to registr disapprovalvof the cot.  he likess squealing for fun too.  in the dayy we cant leaave him on yje bed so hw goes on the rush mat i bought lasy wknd.  when tou come back he is always in a new positiom, usu. flipped onto his front, desperately trying to achieve locomotion. squealing with frustration.  when you catxh his eye you are always offered a smile. he is suddenly a person who can do things: and immediately and probably as a consequence, his awareness is also different,  b has started to get frusytated when feeding/  he even tries yo move over and grab the bottle of EBM sitting on the side, or to try and knock the 'yellow baby' off the other side.  he handles the rubber giraffe with dexterity, turning it to the side he wants to chew, and even occasionally dropping it when he wants attention.  bernard is no longer just a pretty picture! 

flip

he can roll...

i want...

.....to eat my giraffe

....to swallow my own fists whole

...iced tea!

mid autumn

I'm in bed - baby is feeding,  and i'm typing with the 2 longest fingers of my left hand. this morning i was grumpy and we went out for breakfast to a new cafe entitled cafe Hideaway, down 2 flights of steps fron the cookery school on Xuan Dieu. it had a fountain, spraying into a rocky pool which wound between the seating areas, nd a jungle of plants. Old-looking grey fish and a laid- back turtle nosed around in the shallows and a little bridge connected the seating areas. we ordered shakshouka, moroccan style poached eggs. instead of losing ourselves in our laptops, we started talking about plans for redecorating the living room. inspired by the cafe's natural surroundings, we made plans to buy plants and ornamental rocks. we stopped short of planning to install an indoor water feature!
Last night nicholas said very sadly: we are losing touch with vietnam. he is right. now i don't even work in a vietnamese environment, and we rarely go to the city centre. the result is that on a sunday we don't have a clue what to do. dad visited a couple of weeks ago and there was nothing, literally nothing, i felt like doing in hanoi which would be fun and interesting. we forgot how just walking in the old quarter is an incredible assault on the senses.

But reading blogs like sticky rice reminds me that it is possible not to feel jaded, and indeed that our jadedness can only last so long before we rediscover this amazing place.  Last night was the Mid-Autum Festival. Instead of joining the fun we went to an Indian restaurant with N's friend Sarah who is going into the forest for 6 months to search for rhino dung. In the taxi on the way back we saw a dragon dancing with a man who was juggling fire. We saw gangs of teenage boys roaming the streets wearing masks; we saw community groups drumming dragon processions; we saw people on motorbikes with exotic feathers in their hair. We didn't dare to go to Hang Ma, the centre of the action, where the streets would be full of families watching the dragon dances and buying paper toys and lanterns. Because 'full' means completely insane, with motorbikes and people gridlocked to a standstill and loud drumming everywhere, and I was worried that the baby would be frightened.

stats

OK, enough of the qualitative stuff.  Sometimes you want the figures.  So, on Bernard's 3-month birthday, I measured him.

Length:  65cm (sorry about exaggerating before) 98th %ile
Weight: 7.5kg - 95th %ile

length of foot 98mm
head circ - hard to measure

i put foot lentgth on because it's likely 2 get  a lot bigger soon judging by older babies who are his size.  Their feet are usually much bigger than b's.

hair: monk's tonsure style, i.e. thick around the lower parts and thin and pale on top.
eyes:  blue around the outside with tawny flecks in the middle.
favourite toy: bracelet giraffe
favourite game: having his legs wiggled by daddy

B now giggles uproariously when raspberries are blown on his tummy.  Still can't roll off his front but it won't be long...

milkmaid

today was like a normal day at work.  like how it was last term... that's a good thing.

that is a good thing when u compare it to madly rushing around in an isolated haze. since it's friday i gave myself a break from pumping and haaad a cup of coffee in the staffroom. it made so much difference to how i felt a bout working.  i sat on a sofa full of adults, albeit not wack dudes like a my previous job!

on the other hand, unlike last  term I got to sit on a mattress with eight kids reading them a story, and watch them try to eat the pictures of spaghetti off the page.


it's so hard to keep up with baby's demand. the reason is that he drinks more from a bottle than from mummy. and when i get home full as a drum from work, though he has consumed 3 times what i've pumped in the same amount of time, he is ( like the hungry caterpillar) still hungry enough to drink me dry, even crying for more. so then i don't have enough to pump in advance for the following day. on the days when i don't work, it's even harder to cream off any extra, because he's there drinking it! hopefully this weekend baby will sleep a lo and i'll get some milk into the freezer.

stuffed baby peppers

We went to the airport to fetch Nigel, N's supervisor.  Talked about Cambridge.  He's nice. 

For lunch I cooked stuffed baby peppers.  I got a mixed selection of baby peppers and scorched them black on the open gas flame.  Removed them to a plastic bag.  Then I made a stuffing by roasting pine nuts and spices, adding oil,  onion then rice and slowly added a tamari stock.  Then I peeled the black bits off the peppers and  stuffed them with the rice mixture, and cooked them lying down in an inch of stock with the addition of lemon and olive oil.  The idea was based on the recipe for home made dolmades, and suits us well as we don't have a decent oven.  I forgot sultanas and tomatoes, and we had no stock cubes, but it still worked.

grandad's visit

looking up to his grandad

bernard meets a real chinese panda

a swim at the intercontinental

elsa

today i played with little elsa.  She's swedish; she's 4; she has bright white curly hair and olive skin.  She is rather sad because she doesn't understand anything at school.  Every morning she goes to the mini-whiteboards and writes her name several times, then her sister's name, then her mummy and her daddy's name (though I'm not sure her dad's name is really PVCVS3). Today I talked with her a bit and we went to the mirror to see what colour eyes we had.  After that she felt really good and decided to put the pink princess costume on.  All in a day's work.
I think I'm gonna love this job.

rollover

Mum's first day at work!  I was really stressed today and forgot everything I was supposed to bring to work.  I couldnt' find anywhere private to express and when I finally found somewhere, I didn't have enough time to do it properly.  I had to dash home at lunch because all the reserve milk in the freezer had gone off, and when I got home the baby had a full tummy so I had to express at home instead of hugging my baby!!!  I was so sad and cross because i didn't even have time to say hello or kiss b before heading back to work.  But when I got back in the afternoon it was just for a lesson and then I went to the library and got out a brand shiny new fiction book by Ursula Le Guin and it was all ok.  I got home at 3pm and expressed again; the landlord installed a new washing machine the same day it broke, I gave Bernard a bath and left him on the bathmat (on the floor) while I went to get his towel.  When I got back I found him lying on his side.  His very first roll!  He lifts his legs and uses their weight to roll onto his side.  We'll have to be careful not to let him roll off the bed now...

daddy's home

daddy is home!  a very jolly morning since n arrived back from vinh.  baby is happy to have both of us there and our excitement rubs off on him. today he has started chewing on sophie the giraffe - but he is still a bit dubious of her because of her funny taste.  fingers are still the number 1 choice.  no progress on his teething though; those teeth are playing peek-a-boo.

rainy day blues

raining all day today.  i went out at lunchtime on a mission to discover the new location of The Kitchen restaurant, which is now down a steep slope and has outdoor seating, but is otherwise identical to when it was in its old location.   I knew everyone who was sitting in there, but nobody said hello; guess they were in their hangover antisocial mode.  It was raining pretty hard but was only dripping when I left.  When I got home, I met the landlord's wife in the front yard.  She told me off roundly for taking the baby out:  "Raining and you still go out to play? Well I never."  I couldn't even reply with the required baby's greeting; I was too annoyed.  I went out later and was relieved that the people in Hung Long Minimart didn't criticise or blame; however, they did suggest that baby ought to be wearing his bootees. I'd taken them off earlier because his feet were hot, but forgotten to put them on before we went out.   Advice is actually supposed to be seen as kindness in this country and it's so easy to take it as criticism; in fact I sometimes get really upset by it.  At the minimart one time Bernard had to wait outside with one of the shop ladies while I went in, and I got caught in conversation with the checkout girl about finding a nanny.  When I finally extracted myself he was all sweaty in his buggy, and the shop lady was very disapproving.  "You shouldn't take him out in this hot weather," she said, and I said hotly, "If I don't go out I'll go crazy!!"  But I felt bad.
Bernard has been chewing on stuff all day.  He's in his cot now and keeps waking himself up, chewing on his hand a bit and going back to sleep.  I've been criticised by our housmates for letting him do that; they say he'll become addicted to it, but what else is he supposed to chew on?  He's rapidly learning to hold things and put them in his mouth but he hasn't quite got the co-ordination to put things where he wants them yet.  He's working on it but meanwhile I'm letting him do it; it's only fair.
At some point you have to make your own decisions about how to bring up your kids.  "'Western' kids get a lot more freedom" - is this true?

towel shot

mmm.... eyes right!

sweet

b is groaning gently, balanced on the crook of my arm.  he's teething.  he was also fed rather a lot by mrs nhung and now, tired, after feeding from mum is bellyaching.  poor lil thing.  mummy is much happier though, since finding out her timetable.  mondays off, thursdays all day and just mornings the rest of the week.  SWEET.  now my arm's going numb as b drifts off.
the house has never been so clean ; i keep having to give mrs nhung time off!

Mrs Nhung

Here she is!

sapa pics

a lady in the KOTO restaurant takes charge while we eat
on the train
orchids in the botanic gardens

ethnic baby

sapa

we're in sapa, staying at the hotel cat cat as usual - only now it's a swish place with a swanky reception area and a lift.  the prices are the same in the comforting restaurant and we're well known to the management.  right now i'm in the reception area, where there's a lovely half-vietnamese baby playing with his mummy.  We've had so much attention today my head is spinning:  everyone likes to say hello to the baby and not just sell us stuff as usual.  earlier i had two ethnic minority women running after me in the rain, all of us carrying babies and umbrellas!  we went to the botanic gardens and enjoyed the orchids glistening after the rainfall.

the ultimate combination

(from left): star anise, caramel-salt, chilli-chocolate.

colic

it's grizzle time. a violent wind is blowing rubble off the building site next door. b has been crying since 4pm when he had a bottle from mrs nhung. he was the same last time he had a bottle. mrs nhung said it was the fact the milk was more than an hour old. n says it's colic. it seems to be worse than his normal colic. i don't know - maybe it's to do with the way he feeds from a bottle? what's all this about anti- colic teats... are they for real?? ?

Cafe Nola

A new cafe for our delectation: Cafe Nola on Ma May street. I had chicken avo salad followed by chocolate banana pancake; N had to leave to go home for a sleep but I decided to stay here and try to figure out how to put pictures on this blogggggg

a few pictures