season of mould and mellow stickiness

19.54pm.  b asleep in his cot.  baby alarm on the table in front of me, beeping intermittently as the batteries in this country don't seem to enable a signal that satisfies the hungry British-made alarm.  sitting looking at the jungle stickers we have on the wall of what is currently the 'playroom'. 

on thursday jae hee whispered to me a real word - the first i've ever heard her utter since she started school in August.  she is an infuriating student because she refuses to work with me at all, and does not speak at all despite the fact that she understands English perfectly well.  she is just taking the tiniest of tiny steps towards speaking.  She squeaks for attention now, and she says 'meow' when playing the infinitely exciting game of kittens with her friends.  but yesterday she drew a picture of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, and I asked her which billy goat she had drawn and she whispered 'big' in my ear.  I screwed it up because i couldn't hear properly, and she had to whisper it three times.  but she is actually starting to talk to her class teacher, which is amazing.

today i went to the flower market with the class.   hanoi is entering that spring phase of mould and mellow stickiness, typical tet weather - however it's a shade too warm and the special peach blossom trees being sold all over our locality are 'going over', and won't be at their peak for the Tet break; the tree farmers are at their wits' end.  Things that have gone mouldy in our house this season include baby's soft books and some toys, his baby carrier, the underside of his highchair, one or two pairs of shoes.

bernard's chest infection is on the mend but he is still not sleeping well.  my current theory is that he is hungry, because I don't know how to feed him.   i have some lovely videos of him self-feeding but not much is going in, and definitely nothing off a spoon.  this evening he was extremely interested in sucking a banana and two pieces of tangerine.  Unfortunately when my back was turned he also found the dishcloth and started sucking that!  he looked very pleased with himself.