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.