10 wks+

Royal China
Alex had Thursday off, so we slept in with baby and then got up and went for dim sum at Royal China (no queue!) and then the China: The Three Emperors exhibit at the Royal Academy.

The tickets cost a bomb! £11 each. It was worth it for the scrolls of miniature paintings and some of the costumes (amazing embroidery) and objects on display, but I was slightly disappointed over the fact that there were quite few objects and a lot of paintings and calligraphy instead. It's quite hard to concentrate on reading the translations and all look at the detail in paintings (especially miniatures) when you're also reckoning with a squirming baby. Bel didn't like it as much as the photography exhibit.

Also, I guess the paintings and calligraphy don't seem so unique when you can think 'Hey that looks like the scroll we have back home in the hall.' My favourite pieces were an ink stone and a priest's costume but they, sadly, don't feature on the website so no pictures.

Bel was very good for most of it. She started fussing a bit in the middle, though, which was quite funny because you could hear her squalls echoing down the long halls amid the quiet and reverent whispers from the other visitors, 90% of whom were old-age pensioners.

I finally stopped and sat on one of the stools provided in a corner to feed her, using the pram as a sort of blind to shield her from view. Worked quite well and I was really happy no one complained.

We took the tube there so I finally got over my paranoia of taking her on public transport. The journey went fine, particularly after I eyed up every passenger and decided the only person even vaguely likely to be a bomber was unlikely to be scratching the side of his nose in the moments before the big event.

We're on a roll
Then Friday we visited Liss in Queen's Park. She cooked lunch, baby slept a while on her sofa and we watched Zatoichi. I really hope babe can't understand, much less see anything on a tv five feet away. V violent but also so funny.

Afterwards, since we went back by bus, I popped by Selfridges' food hall - didn't realise it was so delightful - and bought some sashimi to have chirashi sushi for dinner. Mmm.

And today was another big day out for Bel. First a belated birthday lunch with Weify at Yauatcha (which had lovely staff, was quite pleasantly only half-full at noon and no one objected when I had to feed her halfway through), and then off to hang around Liverpool Street while we waited for baby's Yiyi (sister of her mother) to arrive from her writing assignment in Lyon. Then, finally, home sweet home. I guess next week I should stay in a bit more.

Yiyi is here
Been quite impressed with my sister's ability to pick baby up confidently. And she's bought her some really cute birds. Never mind that baby has seven months to go before she's able to appreciate them fully. I suppose I'll overlook her constant reference to my daughter as "fatty" seeing as that's what I've called her most of her life even though she stopped being plump at about two. Plus she brought three bottles of wine with her from Lyon. Hmm maybe we can dump baby with her and go watch a movie after all, heh heh.

Breastfeeding in public
So. I've done it in restaurants, cafes and in an exhibition. All experiences so far good. I think breastfeeding baby in public is GO.

9 wks+

Baby's first exhibition
Dragged her to the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibit today, as an excuse to check out their Christmas fair, which turned out to be quite disappointing, except for one stall that sold made-to-order rocking horses. The horses were beautiful but so obviously expensive I didn't even bother asking how much they cost. Wow I just found them here; they do cost a bomb!

Anyway baby woke up as I entered the exhibition hall, so I decided she might as well make use of her free under-five ticket and look at the pictures too. Took her out of her baby carrier and built another level of bicep muscles lugging her round for the half hour or so we took.

She seemed to enjoy herself though, and looked at everything I looked at with as much interest. She particularly seemed to like these two pictures of a bear and a volcano by Hans Wolkers and Olivier Grunewald respectively and kept trying to look at them even after I walked on. Her attention only started flagging in the last 10 minutes or so. I'm guessing it's because her neck was getting tired due to her inability to look left for some reason. Then she sat quiet as a lamb as we watched some of the previous years' pictures they were screening as well.

Wasted all that good work hauling her around by having a chocolate and pistachio cone on the way back. A good day.

She anticipates!
Alex was playing with her, touching her nose with his finger and she just started chuckling when he did and then I noticed she was chuckling even at the approach of his finger - haha baby can predict! Clever babe.

Note to self: I am not Martha Stewart
Looking at my attempt to hem the edges of the slits on my home-made breastfeeding top, the scales are falling from my eyes. I may be a stay-at-home mom with an autumn bouquet on the table, but I am still crap at hemming - even with fabric glue and ribbon. Maybe I would have fared better with a needle and thread, but I don't think so. Am going back to my punk slashed t-shirt look.

9 wks+

I never liked dolls when I was a girl but, suddenly, visiting H&M to pick up things like this is becoming irresistable - especially now that the weather is turning frosty real fast. At least I'm not the only one though. Alex insisted on this hat.


You can see poor babe didn't appreciate being used as a doll. Maybe because this was the third time I'd made her try on the hat indoors since we bought it.

9 wks, 2 days

She moves, she moves
I think we can finally say she seems to know how to reach for something with her right hand. At least that's what it looked like when we dangled Magali's caterpillar in front of her yesterday. Couldn't see if she was grabbing for it, because she's constantly got mitts on now that it's cold and she keeps trying to scratch her acned forehead, but she definitely reached her little fist out and then contemplatively batted the caterpillar's legs and lifted one of them of the back of her hand appraisinglybefore losing interest in all attempts to persuade her to do the same with her left hand.

Baby's first passport photo
Well I've well and truly inducted her into the hell that is crappy ID photos. I would have made the woman at the shop take another picture but the flash on the camera was so bright and she was taking the pictures only about three feet away from poor baby's face, I didn't want her to go blind.

She got this shot on the second attempt and I figured she might look like a real sour puss, but at least she wouldn't continue to be dazed by the flashes. I hope it fits all the requirements and that they're not going to come back with something ridiculous like 'we can't see her ears'. I am also really tempted to draw Lat's generic fat lady perm and Nana Mouskourri glasses on the picture. I think it would suit her to a t. Hahaha.

The incredible expanding baby
Everyone who visits says she's grown so. I can't tell seeing as I see her all the time. But then every so often I look at the pictures of her a few days old (see far left) and then I do a double-take. We took this other picture tonight. She's about doubled in size from the look of things.

Breastfeeding tops
Having gone shopping round some of the usual suspect websites and shops for breastfeeding tops, I've decided I'm going to make my own instead. The breastfeeding tops cost at least £15 each (those from H&M) and, while that's cheap enough, it's the fact that they all tend to be tent-like sweatshirts, t-shirts and silly shirts with implausible-looking pockets over your boobs. I wouldn't mind if they were nice tops, or if the tops looked like they wouldn't swim on me, or if the t-shirts looked like good-quality ones, but they don't/aren't.

Also, anyway, I've seen about three other women with the exact same black breastfeeding top I bought from Blooming Marvellous at the hospital and in the doctor's clinic.

So, anyway, my plan is to buy a couple of fitting, cheap t-shirts or tank tops, cut vertical slits at the appropriate spots and bind the material in place with Bostik SewSimple - maybe hem the edges with ribbon if I feel energetic - and then wear them under everything.

I already tried this with one cheap tank top and it kind of works. I learned I should put the tops on before marking where the slits should go, but I can yank the top over to fit when I need to so it'll do.

Oh, baby's in a bit of a mood now, having been all smiles and gurgles earlier when Uncle Simon visited, so am going to go relieve Alex.

2 mths+

The payoff
Baby had another wakealot night last Sunday. Finally realised it was down to wind early in the morning when I saw her valiantly trying to lift her knees. The sleeping bag we put her in rather inhibits this, poor thing. Was quite grouchy because she'd slept late and woke up at least three times in the night with what seemed to be inexplicable but acute crying. Then she went and did this (see left).

That smile really makes my day. I've not had so many ungrouchy mornings for years. For some reason she doesn't cry out loud when she wakes up now, so sometimes I'll come out of the bathroom to find her sobbing softly, face all screwed up and tears pooling in her eyes. I go 'Hello sweetheart, what's wrong?' and get this. Woo hoo!

Short-term memory huh?
They say it goes and they are right. I feel like getting a big whiteboard and marker so I can remember things like 'put puked-on blue cloth in washbasket, not under baby's head' and 'the jeans you are wearing have been peed on' and 'comb your hair before leaving the house, you slattern'. They're my own Memento moments.


We're going home
We've booked our flights home for Chinese New Year, hurray. Can't wait to show her off to the family and now I have a decent goal to achieve: get baby's passport photos taken and then get her registered at the Malaysian High Comm and get her a British passport as well. I reckon this means we can skip the 'Other nationalities' queue at the airport and breeze through with her in the 'UK citizens' one. Well, I'm hoping anyway.

Bathing baby
We've started giving her showers now - one of us sits on the edge of the bathtub without any pants with baby on the lap and the other person manages the shower hose. Saves lugging the bathtub to the middle of the living room, plus holding a naked fat baby on your lap is one of those things that makes everything else better. Even if she pees on you in the process.

2 mths+

Autumn in Holland Park
We made it to the park today, finally, on our third attempt this month, before it got dark or started raining. It was a nice, crisp day and the maple trees around the waterfall in the Kyoto Garden were beautiful.

That's not them on the left, unfortunately - just another pretty red maple - I only realised after we left that I'd taken all the waterfall pictures on my non-digital SLR. So no pictures of those for a while.

We saw squirrels, black bunnies, a newly married couple filling the photo album, and visited the children's adventure playground, fondly thinking how nice it will be when baby's old enough to run around in it. Baby, in the meantime, was enjoying herself by having a great old snooze against daddy's chest. Alex tried in vain to rouse her mildly once or twice but we only got the odd coo in her sleep every now and then.

We wrapped her cozily in the hoodie and track bottoms Sue and Dave kindly bought her. Later, I tried the cute ladybird socks I bought her from H&M. At £1.99 the pair they were worth every penny for the way they enhance her lovely, chubby honeyed drumstick legs. And the ladybird at the end is darn cute too.

Baby's vocabulary
Speaking of which, she now makes some really sweet noises regularly:
Meep! when she's indignant
Aiyaiyaiyaiyaaaiii when she's kind of annoyed but can't be asked to go into an all-out bawl
Aihhhh when she's satisfied
Aiwaa in general (can her first word be Arabic?)

Innoculation
She's also had her first jabs and was a little trooper with them. She did her 'aiyaiyai' bits on being jabbed in each thigh rather than bawling, then forgot all about them by the time I put her back into the baby carrier. Sweet little pig.

Also, thank goodness, no fever developed overnight, though the nurse was really good and gave me two sterilised syringes with which to feed her Calpol if needed.

The cold's still here
Poor piglet is still choking on her own snot though. She's learning to be less averse to us trying to clean out her nose but the sight of a white tissue still makes her face curdle in dismay. She's started coughing a little bit independently of snot choking though so I only hope this means the cold is on its way out. Otherwise, she's eating normally and still pretty active and smiley when she wakes from a full stomach-induced nap, so I'm not worrying yet.

The great banana-wind experiment
The experiment is over and I have concluded that one banana a day makes no difference to baby at all. Two bananas I'm not so sure about, because the night after I finally broke the banana fast and had two she had quite a lot of wind. One banana, however, nothing. Also, during the two weeks I had no bananas she had two attacks, one severe, one quite mild.

Anyway baby seems to have learned to pull her dimpled knees up to her chest on her own (to facilitate the farting) quite effectively now. Perhaps Alex's training (he does this for her while singing 'Bicycle/Bicycle/I want to ride my bicycle/I want to ride my bike') is paying off.

2 mths+

The germs are here
Phew have been meaning to blog for days but couldn't, first because I got some kind of blocked duct infection, so went down with a fever for a day and a bit (at least I'm presuming that's what it was since the two happened at the same time), then because baby caught a cold around the same time and still has it. Thank goodness for flexible working - Alex's boss kindly let him work from home for two days to make sure we were OK, so I got to sleep the fever off quite quickly.

Poor little snuffleupagus has occasionally been swallowing her own snot and coughing herself awake. Sometimes the choking causes coughing that brings up breakfast too. She did it twice this morning, prompting much guilt and more laundry.

At least the cold is going though. The snot is decreasing, which is a relief because boy does she hate it when I try to wipe her nose or remove ant dried snot fluttering out of her nostril. I keep pointing out that after I do this she gets to breathe freely but she's only getting the message very slowly.

When baby spits up
But at least this has given me ample opportunity to practise my spitup technique. The first time it happened, I held baby at arm's length, in fascinated horror. This meant the milk went everywhere: on her, me and everything in between. Now, when it happens, I clutch her to me in the hope that my clothes catch most of it. Then I only have to change, not mop up any mess or change sheets.

We made it to the high street
So last week I managed to take baby on a short shopping trip to get some new glasses made. Not so impressed with Boots, where I chose to go. The optician (female) who did my first tests was patient enough when baby woke up in the middle of the eye exam and started howling the place down, but the male assistant who took over later - pfft - you could just see he couldn't understand why I'd chosen to haul a screaming baby out and about.

After two attempts at the stupid blowing a puff of air at your eyeball he went to the optician and came back saying we probably didn't need to do it as I was young and at fairly low risk of glaucoma. I agreed but I just didn't like the way he said it. Anyway my flinching at that stupid test had nothing to do with holding the baby. I had no idea when we were doing it until it puffed - usually the opticians warn you so you know to hold still - and of course I'm going to flinch at a stupid puff of air in my eyeball!

Then, after being told that it'd take a week (a week! Specsavers can have them for you in an hour!) for my glasses to come back, I went back this Tuesday only to find just the one pair ready. Apparently the other pair might have been delayed because I decided not to go for the screw-you-for-all-you-can-get thin lens option.

I'm rather fedup having to pay immense premiums for apparently thinner lenses without knowing what the originals look like (though Alex said Specsavers were able to show him the different options, maybe I really should have gone there) . So I ordered a pair of lenses at the original thickness. Since they are for a plastic frame anyway I figure I might as well see what they're like. Bottles are coming to mind.

Anyway back to the original whinge, not only did he not apologise because they weren't there despite my being told to come back in a week, he was decidedly snotty when I asked when the other pair was likely to be ready and whether there was any way I could check they were definitely there before coming out (blank look).

"Can I call the store, for example?"
"Oh yes, you can call." Pause.
"Could I have the store number?"

Duh. I hope when he finds a woman unfortunate enough to mate with him he has quadruplets.

Otherwise
I am currently obsessed with the song playing over that Sony Brevia TV ad which shows a tonne of colourful rubber balls bouncing down San Francisco streets. Cynical me thought it was all CGI but apparently it wasn't. I actually collected those rubber balls when I was eight, so I get an especial nostalgic kick watching it. I've even made baby watch it with me. I think it's like a lullabye.

You can see an extended version of the ad here - but be warned it took forever to download, even on broadband - and listen to the full version of the song, Heartbeats, by Jose Gonzalez here. I've heard it about ten times and I'm still not sick of it. Mmm. Mission tomorrow: try to find something worthwhile to do that's not laundry or dinner preparations!