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