Mrs Nhung is to be our nanny. A huge sense of relief to have found someone with the following attributes:
1) Gentle
2) Experienced
3) Non-judgmental/critical
4) Good listener

i'm in a coffee shop; b is on my forearm. he's kind of woozy today with the intense heat: he slept all morning and all afternoon. the nappies will be drying to a crisp on the roof terrace.
kim can't worh 4 us because of her studies. yesterday we interviewed a 4th nanny: no go either, as I found her intensely annoying. An excellent nanny, it seems, but I felt hugely threatened by her. A sort of alpha female thing, I think, because b and n liked her a lot. plus she was a motormouth, not what i want if i have 2 be in the house with her 2 days a week. reluctantly rejected because she is the closest we've got.

Kim the Nanny

Now I'm lying on a clean sheet on the bed with the fan and the aircon. The bed seems minimalistically empty. Bernard's in his cot. It's funny; he seems to like it more than he did the moses basket: he gives a sort of smile when he's lowered into it that he never did with the moses basket. I like the cot too: it's got a custom-made mattress and a soft yellow fitted sheet like the ones we used to have on our beds as children.

Nicholas is away in Laos. I'm a single mother for the week. But the mission of finding a nanny has kept me busy; the first two were hopeless: buck-toothed Rose was rather lacking in - well, anything, really - and the second was a real strict Madame with tight lips and a hatred for the male species. Yesterday I interviewed the third candidate, Kim, who is younger, much more intelligent and speaks English very well. I felt sheepish when she started speaking fluent English at the end of the interview - I'd just assumed she wouldn't because her Vietnamese accent is rather countryside-ish. She's young so not very maternal, but I think I need someone I don't feel shy about ordering around, and older women have a higher status in the Confucian order and therefore can't be told what to do.

The last few days Bernard has been colicky late into the night but today and yesterday, touch wood, he's been positively happy and relaxed. Today he was content just to sit and I didn't worry about putting him down in his chair or on the bed while I did the chores. I also spent a long time just cuddling, playing, wiggling his arms, smiling and so on. I'm going to have to appreciate every minute of this short maternity leave because life's gonna get a lot more complicated when I start work again.

i am in the local italian. bernard has been sitting in his buggy for the last half an hour, kicking his legs and watching the umbrella wobble. he was so fascinated that he did not even respond to my voice. i left him to it!

we three are here

We are here. The three of us asleep in our bed in Hanoi, where we lived when we were just two. Now we are three. The two of them face to face on N's pillow, the one just tiny and wearing a T-shirt and a muslin. It's sweating hot here. Why haven't we got the aircon on? Oh yes, because there are no batteries in the remote. I remember when we were in the student digs how I slept on bare boards with a rush mat when it was hot.
The journey here was a sleep-deprived hallucination, full of wacky characters which rightfully belonged in an anime cartoon (a man wearing three hats and a troupe of Japanese people wearing facemasks, for example). Bernard slept beautifully in his SkyCot.