Happy new year, everyone!

Alex is home early, which is nice. Reading and the rest of London seemed to have shut early today, for the long weekend. Izzy's nursery was open - the first time this week - so I took a jaunt into London. I don't know why, I didn't particularly want to buy anything, and nearly all the shops I went to are available in Reading anyway. But it was nice meeting Max for lunch like a real tai-tai. Mainly I think I was just getting a bit bored here in Reading. Even though there are still boxes of clothes to sort and unpack.

It was surprisingly quiet in town and Reading's roads were completely deserted when I drove up to pick Izzy from her nursery. I guess everyone's just taken two weeks off.

I'm off until the 5th of January and then I have two more weeks of work before I use up my final week of annual leave and begin maternity leave for oh, at least six months. At least. I'm waiting to see how it all goes with number two before deciding when to go back to work, and how many days a week.

I've got mixed feelings about maternity leave this time. Mainly relief that it's finally here because it's been quite hard sleeping these last few weeks - a combination of pregnancy discomforts and work anxiety - but also a bit of regret that I'm having to stop work on a major project - one I'd been waiting only oh a year or two to work on.

But mainly I'm looking forward to being able to rest a bit more. The ligaments around the hips are loosening and my stomach is being squished upwards. So if, like last week, I make the mistake of over-eating (we made a trip to London to eat Vietnamese for lunch and sushi for dinner, with gelato for tea... and all three meals were consumed in the space of five hours), what happens is I spend the whole night trying to find a comfortable position, feeling like I'm having to shift a canonball every time I turn from one side to the next. And then I wake up grumpy, with aching hips and having to wait for a painfully slow digestive system to lighten the load again. Ah the joys of pregnancy.

Izzy's favourite Christmas present

A white mouse puppet she's called Lucy and which she drags everywhere by its tail.

Eating at our fav Vietnamese ah pho bo

Christmas carousel

Each round punctuated with Daddy yelling 'Hold on tight!'

Izzy checks out the skating at the Natural History Museum

In the playground

Playing Izzy's favourite game - making a meal for us but taking an hour to do it because she has to get all the ingredients first.

Izzy at daddy's co Xmas party

But mostly she wanted to watch kids fall over at the fake ice-rink

Izzy discovers hotel life

Giraffe has opened in town

A letter from Nano

Izzy loves a Christmas card she's gotten from our friends Ali, Nadia and Baby Nano because the snowmen are dressed in sweets. Earlier this week, she was looking at the card approvingly then, after a spate of TV-watching, she picked it up again and turned to the back and asked 'Do you know what it says, Mummy?'

'Mm? What, on the inside?'

She put the back of the card up in front of her face. Tsked approvingly while nodding her head and started:

'It says: Dear Izzy, thank you for coming to my birthday party. I hope you had a good time (pause to nod her head approvingly and tsk at the same time). Next time maybe you can -'

Then she turned the card to look at its front again.

'Oh,' she exclaimed in a mix of horror and disapproval. 'It's upside down!' Which it was. She huffed disapprovingly, turned the card the right way up and started again.

'Dear Izzy. Thank you for coming to my birthday party. I hope you had a good time. I had a lovely time playing at the party. (Approving tut and head nod.) Next time maybe you can come to my house again and we can play some more. When I am five I will have a big party. (Approving nod.) With a cake. And all my friends can come and bring presents. Anyway. That's all now. See you soon. Love, Nano.'

She looked at me. 'That's what it says.'

I was completely flabbergasted by the length of time she'd been talking non-stop and making all this up in her head as she went along. But thinking about her indignation on discovering she'd been reading an imaginary letter that was upside-down is still cracking me up.

Oh too good

This shot made Alex and I laugh out loud several times - first when we saw it on the news, then several times after looking it up on YouTube and the Beeb, which kindly provided it in slow motion too. Sadly the embedded video link is now taking about a million years to download as no doubt millions around the world join the laughter so here's the story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7782422.stm

The H bar

What IS it with this baby? (Izzy I mean) For months in my womb she would upend herself and dig her feet into my chest. Now, three years out of it, she's still doing the same thing. We all three squashed into our bed last night - we've been sleeping in relays of two and one in separate bedrooms recently to try to get Izzy back into her bedroom (no success). Woken at some point early in the morning by her casual laying of her feet on my chest, I saw she'd managed to do it again.

Alex and I were sleeping at the edges of the bed and our monkey had turned a full 90 degrees to wedge her head into Alex's chest, her feet into mine. Sometime later Alex gave up and went and slept at the bottom of the bed. A position I took up after he left the house early for his 7.30am shift, having had enough feet-in-face experiences for one morning.

Inklings on No 2

A colleague has already issued the dire warning: they never change. I was commenting on a slight worry as to whether Charley Dex's activity may translate into similar boisterousness once born. Izzy just got frequent hiccups and was quite content to shift herself around every now and then before she came out. Charley on the other hand occasionally seems to drum on the walls of my stomach, turns around quite a lot and kicks - and this is only at the 29th week. I don't seem to recall Izzy moving around very much until the last month really.

But maybe this is because I have also expanded about two months more quickly than I did last time (ie I think I looked, at five months gone, the same I looked at seven months last time) and consequently am more prone to waking up in the middle of the night from the discomfort of having to shift this watermelon around when I change positions. (Not helped when Izzy is doing her head-wedging thing into my face or chest.)

Am also worrying slightly as to what's going to happen to Izz when she realises she has to come second in priority to what I'm doing. She's going through a bit of an affectionate phase now where she'll latch onto my arm or something and go 'Maami! Mami! I luuuv you! My mami!' (not followed by request for food or favour!)

Yeah it's sickening, but only if it's not your child.

Trying it on for size

Izzy's negotiation skills are being used to their fullest. In the last two weeks or so, we've seen some attempts at tantrumming and, when faced with stern 'no's she's often resorted, following tears, to manners:
'I want a Tictac... (sobsob) but I want a Tii-ictaaaac.'
becomes
'Mummy, please, can I have Tictacs? Please, mummy.'

Full points for trying!

She is becoming a bit more bumptious as well - to the point where I'm starting to think of revoking all TV-watching privileges, because otherwise it seems to take us ages to get out the door in the morning, and for her to fall asleep at night.

This last one or two nights when I've said 'No more TV', she's run to get to the remote control before me, before returning to clamp a little hand over my mouth: 'Don't say it, mummy. We are NOT changing the channel, OK?'

And when Alex and I have occasionally acquiesed to her staying on the sofa while we watch the news or something else, she's tried propaganda:

'But your show is naughty.'

I accept this charge occasionally applies to daddy's choice of the sci-fi channel but in this case it was David Attenbrough on sea life.

'I don't like the snake. The snake is naughty!'

She really has a thing about animals. All her nightmares ever have seemed to involve animals - the spiders when she was slightly delirious with fever, the doggy in her bedroom, the toy owl on her dresser and, a few weeks ago, it was the snake on the book that she was certain she saw in the middle of the night.

Uses for child labour 3#

One very happy beneficiary

Of a lovely box of chocolates for my birthday, which was doubly welcome as I originally thought would treat myself to the same but compromised much more cheaply on a mid- to pricey bar from the supermarket.

Arctic winds

But at least there was sunshine so we got out to the playground for a bit.

Izzy approves

Of the ice-cream selection at my birthday lunch.

Yesss!

Geek daddy and daughter play some bubble game on the little laptop.

Izzy in her snazzy new shirt

Why is it, do you think?

A man working from home, who doesn't have time to do any of the dishes from his meals throughout the day, would think his wife, working from home AND taking care of their daughter AND preparing dinner for everyone, would have time to arrange and attend a viewing of a house the same day?

What a week

Straight after Halloween last Friday and Boo's birthday party on Saturday, which knocked me for six in themselves, our young lady picked up a stomach bug and now has the sniffles like 95% of all the children in the country I think. Worse, she gave Alex and I the stomach bug. The full effects hit me Tuesday morning, and Alex Tuesday mid-day.

Poor man. Was quite cross that he came back really late (as usual) on Monday night as I'd started to feel quite tired and achy all over by 7pm, while Izzy was obviously on her way to recovery and quite boisterous in two-hour spurts. The whole night I ached and tossed and turned in sleep. So when I woke up Tuesday morning and spewed, I left him entirely to look after her and slept until 4pm.

Then I came downstairs to find him poleaxed on the floor, shivering under a duvet. He said he'd felt a bit ropey in the morning but it wasn't until lunchtime that he really suddenly felt he couldn't stand up anymore. Izzy behaved quite well, he said, when told Daddy was poorly too, and needed to sleep. Except she would come over every 10 minutes or so, kick him and scold, "Daddy! Stop snoring!"

I was looking up "rotavirus" on Google and came across some health website that said it could cause diarrhoea up to 20 times a day in children, "which is distressing for parents as well as the child". Talk about understatement! It made me laugh out loud. Boo fortunately only had the runs at worse three or four times Sunday - it worried me more that she was emptying her stomach every half hour or so between 1.30 and 4.30am - but at least it then went on to note that as distressing as the diarrhoea was, the laundry that it necessitates "can be very exhausting". Too. Damn. Right. What the heck did people do before washing machines? I shudder to think.

I'm still not sure whether to put down Alex's tentative suggestion on Tuesday - that we perhaps wander out for Bonfire night if she was alright - to ambition, delusion or obviously not doing enough of the housework. Then had a few days of panic wondering if we'd poisoned all of Izzy's little buddies at the party but, fortunately have since found out no other child had a dodgy stomach and so it must be a blinking bug rather than something we ate.

Night before last was another scare as she went to bed complaining of ear-ache; then kept whining to go to the toilet and saying the lights were "too bright, too bright!" everytime we took her there. A 40-minute wait at the GP's office later on Thursday though, the GP confirmed she had a sore throat but no ear infection, thank goodness.

And, all things considered, given that I rather foolishly agreed to have her at home today to keep an eye on her while I tried (partially successfully) to read several documents for work, she's been quite well behaved. Especially since our TV cable box died. Fortunately she hasn't seen her Pocoyo DVDs in a while and children's TV websites have proved quite a lifesaver (see picture below).

Now I am only hoping the sniffles are not the same thing that knocked out two colleagues for four or five days each. They are the kind of colleagues who normally have to be dragged kicking and screaming from their desks.

On the plus side we took some nice pictures and when we get round to installing the (replaced) camera software on our (replaced) laptop, will get round to posting them. Finally! An end to the very blurry pictures our mobile phones produce.

This weekend we'll be seeing Aunty Elaine and Uncle Vik. And I'm really sorry to say the memory of this little elephant is very much intact. On being informed we were visiting people on Sunday, immediately on hearing it was Aunty Elaine, her face clouded over ...

"But not Uncle Vik?" she asked.

"Yes, Uncle Vik too," I said.

"But he pinches..."

Elephant. Memory of.

Jelly for tea

Only three more packets to use up from the party.

Her father's daughter

Some of Izzy's cupcake decorations

I think they have a certain anarchic quality that makes up for the flood of pink.

The invalid

Poor Izzy - don't know what she's eaten but she spent most of last night vomiting and the most of this morning with the runs. I think you can guess how bad it's been when I say we've only staggered out of bed and it's almost 1pm. Fortunately she appears on the mend and has a tonne of presents to amuse her. Am really worried now in case we've poisoned any of her little friends as well with something at the party.

Party time

Izzy is spending her first night at a sleepover which gives us loads me free time - bless the parents who suggested it - to get food ready for her party tomorrow. These are the better looking cupcakes I've made so far. Overloaded the first tray so they came out misshapen but at least now I have enough good looking ones to form their birthday cake stack. Only the fruit salad, sandwiches and chicken drumsticks to go. Alex came back from a training course today and fell asleep on the sofa after insisting he could help. Well there's always the washing up.

The cutest little witches

Izzy's guardian angel Alessia had her over for tea and then another mum did some face painting before they hit the neighbourhood. We came back loaded with goodies. The four kids looked so cute. Three witches and one wizard.

Ah the ghosts of several Peanuts comic strips are exorcised

Ta daa all set for Halloween

Tonight's entertainment

I can't believe it but it's snowing outside. At least I won't have to worry about the pumpkin dehydrating or rotting before Friday.

Play dates are go!

Izzy has her best buddy Felix over and it's bliss! They've been happily playing with each other for the last two hours or so, without bugging me at all! We made some honey biscuits together for a bit and, since then, she has been, I'm afraid, instructing him in the niceities of the domestic arts.

'OK Felix, you be baby, and I'll be mommy.'

'Felix, squirt here, for the ironing! Squirt now, Felix!'

'No, Felix, I'm looking after baby!'

Fortunately Felix seems to be wisely ignoring her for the most part. And Izzy, when pushed, reluctantly does share her squirter, the monkey, and lets Felix come into the school; ie the dining table, under which they have popped two pillows to lie on, arranged their school bags and a handful of soft toys they are co-parenting.

I'm getting a bit worried by the number of times I keep hearing heads bop the bottom of the table but neither one has complained so far.

Izzy is now wailing that I keep waking her up with my typing and they are flying the nest, hurrah! 

'Shall we have a sleepover and a bedtime party?' asks Izzy. 'Mom, we're having a party! Then you (that would be her dad and me) have to go home, so we can be here.'This is only a continuation of a worrying trend that has seen Izzy take over our bed, and Alex and I regularly sleeping on mattresses in her room.

Baking diversion

I went slightly mad in Tesco the other day and wound up spending £84 in one session - I did buy a lot of staples that needed buying - but also spent a good chunk on baking accessories. But boy have they been useful. 

The two silicon baking mats (£5 each; bargain considering they were £10 and £12 in John Lewis and House of Fraser) came in really handy for the two monkeys this morning to roll out their dough on. And the palette knife REALLY helps when you need to lift soft cookie dough from one surface onto a baking tray. Who knew? Can't wait to try icing a cake with it as well now hahaha. 

I keep forgetting how used Izzy and her nursery friends are to what I consider exotic fun - ie baking biscuits - because they do so much of that sort of thing at nursery. I'd hardly plopped two lumps of dough in front of them before they were both reaching for the rolling pin and, without any instruction, cutting the shapes out with the cookie cutters. 

Similarly we bought Izzy her bike last week after meeting Alessia at the playground and a demonstration by Alessia of how she could now cycle without training wheels. Wail after wail we decided Izzy's legs were probably long enough now (we tried a few months ago, having had vague thoughts of getting her a bike for her third birthday and she couldn't reach the pedals when they were at the bottom) and took her to get a bike.

You can see in the picture below that though it was almost dark when Alex finished putting it together, she insisted on taking it out for a spin. I was napping so didn't see her. But when we went together to the playground yesterday I was really surprised by how adept she was on it. But then she has been riding the tricycles at nursery for ages. 

So anyway what with the baking and playground visits you can tell suburban domesticity has totally taken over. Given the lousy weather (it's raining again today although yesterday was alright) I've worked out the only refuge there is, is baking. 

Last week we tried to get up to London but exhaustion, some lousy bug going round at work, and Izzy acting up (to be fair after she'd been to view four houses with us all morning) combined to make me give up in a strop. Now I reckon we can try again another weekend but not until both Alex and I have recovered a little bit from the current spate of serious busy-ness at work.

Am looking forward to this Friday, which I've taken the day off, partly to use up a lot of leave before January, and partly because Izzy's birthday party has finally been organised and is on Saturday afternoon. 

I figure I can spend some of the day preparing food. And the rest of it doing me things like getting my hair cut and shopping for (sigh) maternity clothes. I'm really growing out of my jeans and things and I hid my last maternity jeans so well I can't now find them, which is a pain in the backside. Anyway I need a few more work-type trousers as I am definitely expanding faster (damn the loss of muscle tone) this time than last (sigh sigh).

Izzy preparing for Halloween

She painted a giraffe for me

Izzy sulking

After having the tv channels switched on her and being thwarted in a tantrum after she realised any more tears would mean the end ofthe butterfly painted on her face.

Izzy gets her bike

Insisted on going for a ride on her new bike even though the sun had gone down

At the playground again

Where she insisted we all had to sit within her house and I had to apologise for imaginarily hurting Daddy.

Izzy and a posy of blackberries

Last days of blackberrying

Izzy's wiles

They grow ever more cunning. In the mornings now I sometimes awake to her cooing and stroking my face going 'Mummy, I want a cuddle.' And when I roll over to give her a hug, she gives me a big kiss on the cheek and goes 'Mummy, I looove you!' Then, duty done, she briskly notes 'It's bright outside now. Can we go downstairs, Mummy?'

Doesn't help that our wills these last two weeks haven't been particularly strong. I'm being slowly worn down by a major project at work, which seems to mainly involve convincing managers to put their money where their mouths are and actually make decisions, instead of constantly putting off the decision-making moment with the almighty phrase 'Well it has to be configurable, doesn't it?' 

And Alex was on call last week - bad timing, so he left the house at 5.30 in the morning four days a week and came home only once before 10pm. It's hard to be firm when all you want to do is space out in front of the TV.

And sleeping at night is a little uncomfortable now. Can't sleep on my back and every time I turn to one side I have to position the bump on something otherwise the weight drags my back into all sorts of awkward positions. Am pretty sure this wasn't the case until the seventh month or so last time, darn it.

On the plus side all the old stretch marks are currently stretched out and hardly visible. Silver linings, eh? Hah!

Izzy and the TV

Sadly she is cementing their old relationship, pre-stolen TV. Am starting to think that being without a TV may not have been a bad thing. Well... except I remember having to read her Winnie the Witch five times one night. She's always been a bit wary of participating in the TV. When Dora says 'What was your favourite part?' she normally gives her a slightly incredulous look. Just now though I heard her shout 'Izzyyyyyyy' after the TV instructed 'Shout out your name if you're a friend of rabbit's!' But when I cheerily asked 'Are you rabbit's friend too, Izz?' I only got an embarrased silence. Good girl. At least I know she's kind of got one foot on the ground, haha.

Here's to play dates!

She spent most of Saturday morning at her best buddy Felix's house and was actually fine for me to leave her there. Bliss! Three hours in which we quickly shopped for a new laptop and then had a nice lunch at a restaurant on the high street. Unfortunately Felix's mom says he is likely to be less inclined to be left behind like she is but we will have to try. Having a Saturday morning to ourselves is definitely desirable!

Answers on a postcard please

I am dying for a holiday. Alex doesn't think he can stretch to a week, the spoilsport, but a long weekend away is definitely do-able. And I'm thinking I might as well start taking a few days off to myself to do things like cut my hair and shop for maternity winter wear. Any suggestions for a child-friendly destination, anyone? A bit of sunshine wouldn't go amiss either.

We've been baking again

Am quite soothed by baking with Izzy on weekends. Am quite impressed by these honey cookie recipes simple but definitely yummy.

Everyone, meet Onglette II (due 13 Feb)

We finally had a scan on Wednesday (24 Sep) and confirmed the baby looks alright and that I am indeed almost 20 weeks gone. So it's a good thing I stopped footie a few weeks ago. I kind of had an inkling while we were in Bali, but really only confirmed it when we got back, when I spent several weeks coughing through the afternoons at work because I felt like throwing up but ever only dry gagged. I'll be publishing two previously written secret pregnancy posts now, if you can be asked to trawl back the last one or two months (there were only two) to look.

Izzy has known for weeks now, and has even named the baby after her favourite TV show/book - Charlie and Lola - and her best friend Felix's younger brother, Dexter. She's quite pleased about it although has been slightly less so since the following...

Izzy finds out Charlie Dexter is a girl

And this was better than her initial reaction...

We've had some very apple-y days lately

Our friends Charlotte and Sam gave us some apples from their tree, which we made into a pie.

Apple day at Greys Court - these organic heritage varieties (imperfect) were free for the taking.

Izzy the health monitor

Izzy normally pours our milk into our coffee and puts sugar into it for us too. After she put the first round in for Alex, she didn't see him pour himself another cup and sneakily start putting sugar into his own cup, to bypass the faff of her shaking the packet, tearing off the top, tipping half of it onto the saucer etc. Then she whipped round and saw him guiltily emptying the sachet into his fresh cup. 'Daddy! Is that ANOTHER sugar?!'

That's Izzy, mystery friend, me and Alex at the playground

Izzy and new best friend at the playground

Given up

Sod it we are so not having a summer this year. It was 11 degrees this morning. I'm no longer going to wait for a late Indian summer. I'm going to start having marshmallows with my hot chocolate, roasting pumpkins and buying expensive mushrooms to make meals with. Stews are going to feature on my dinner menu. The sun on Sunday was just probably the equivalent of a desert mirage.

Perhaps we'll be able to take a week off in November and go somewhere vaguely warm. I've been so busy at work though it's really hard to work out where to go and what to do! I still haven't organised Izzy's birthday party! Arrrgh!

Partly it's because a major project I'm involved with at work has just kicked off. So we're scrambling around getting that organised. Partly it's because of the Malaysian political shenanigans, which have meant that I've been hanging onto websites and blogs in any free time at work and at home.

I had some really nice chicken soup from yesterday warming up on the stove today and I wound up burning the remnants after losing track of time sitting reading the websites. Izzy's been sweet as pie, because Alex has broken out the Barney DVDs he bought her back home and she LUUUUUURVEs the evil things. That was really sore. I've never burnt soup before and I was going to use it to make risotto tomorrow. Grrrr.

Anyway got to go take a bath now, get Izzy off the Barney and apparently get her a plaster for a finger injury. Today Izzy went to nursery with three plaits. Two just won't do anymore now that she's a big girl.

Secret Pregnancy Post II

Well I've finally seen the midwives and I'll finally have the first scan of the baby next Wednesday, after which I'll happily announce it. Was a bit shocked when the midwives went 'Hmmm if you think your last period was in April... you could be 18 weeks gone.'

Because I was all like er I think it's been 12 weeks. I'm reasonably certain, god only knows why, I conceived around mid-May. So in my head at worst I'm going to be like 16 weeks before I get this scan. But I suppose er they could be right in which case I could be 20 weeks gone and actually, it would be no bad thing to be halfway through pregnancy!

Just in case, I've stopped playing football, dammit. I'm over the sickness really, and the belly is definitely showing a bit, and I'm no longer falling asleep quite so instantly after work, but I'm still a little tired. Last time round that meant I was definitely in my second trimester. Anyway we'll see after Sep 24.

Izzy is a cutie. She's constantly wanting to see the bump - which she has definitely named Charlie Dexter - and she'll kiss it and croon 'Chaaarlie.... Charlie Dex....' to it. Less endearing is when she bounds onto the bed in the morning, demands to see Charlie Dexter, and then proceeds to throw off my duvet and pull up my t-shirt to see the bump. I've resorted to saying Charlie Dex sleeps when I sleep. But she's a cutie. I think she can't wait to have a little baby to boss around.

What happens if I take too long brushing my teeth

Daddy insisted on attempting a saxon hedge maze

Izzy wasn't in the best mood as she had a filthy cold - we all do, damn the weather - and whe maze was harder than we expected so we missed having cakes in the cafe after. Boo.

The easiest way to get round town

Izzy quite likes her bike seat.

We visited the local fair

Where Izzy spent about 90 per cent of her time playing in this bouncy caterpillar.

Izzy's birthday cake

She made it at nursery with her friends and they decorated it together, which is really nice. As usual there was a more-than-generous slice left for us, which she insisted on cutting up and serving to us. The difference between this year and last is that she was actually managing to cut rough geometric shapes for us. Last year she just left enormous slashes in the cake.

A few minutes later...

Oh. My. God. Moment

Last night there was a knock on the door and when I asked who it was a man said, 'Er... I have something which belongs to Alex Ong.' So I got the keys out while simultaneously preparing to poke anyone in the eyes if they looked suspicious and there was this guy looking like a very tall Billy Conolly, holding out Alex's backpack in front of him - the one that got stolen a month ago!

'Erm yes I'm one of the nice people living around here,' he joked. 'I saw this by the children's playground and there's a wallet in it, which is how I knew where you live.'

It turns out it didn't contain just Alex's wallet, but mine, as Alex found after leaving the bag out overnight (it was crawling with earwigs). Only now does the stupidity of doing this strike me, but honestly there were a lot of earwigs.

So gone are our worries about ID theft at least, gone my need to take a half-day off to go report my missing IC at the Malaysian High Comm. We'd replaced everything else by now of course but pheeew. So Mom, maybe there has indeed been something about my carrying around all those temple charms for years in my wallet!

Yiyi borrows our blog

hallo hallo

facebook is being a rather big pain in the ass and i cant upload any photos from the last week. which is a pity because they are all rather cool. i went to the field islands (jandayan - so small you wont see it unless you look at a blow up of the visayas islands), spent 3 days there getting used to diving in the environment and learning how to ID fish and estimate their sixzes underwater.

now, i'm on a little holiday island called panglao, which is just off bohol, which is where rean lives, rean being one of the community officers who works with the foundation as well. he basically deposited me at my hotel and visits periodically to check on me and take me sightseeing. on monday, we return to jandayan. next week, with any luck, i'll be able to either get somewhere with a better connection or get my hands on a laptop so i can shrink the photos and then upload them.

love you! glad everything's returning to normal for you!

can't tell you how much i appreciate flushing toilets now. i mean, i've always been grateful. but it aint till your sphincter refuses to budge till the 4th day that you begin to really, really, really appreciate them. sigh.

Later...

hi dad! hi mom! i went snorkling a lot today on panglao island, where i am for the weekend. it's a bit of a resort type place. the fish are amazing. moorish idols, pipefish, millions of anchovies and tonnes of damsel fish. clown fish, and this weird thing which was kinda flat with a long flag-like projection on it's forehead, and it swam with the ocean surge, mimicking a dead leaf. very exciting. it's a lot more impressive than pulau payar i can tell you, and even some of theeast coast islands.

i pickedup lots of urchin skeletons for you today, partlybecause they were so pretty, but partly to replace theone izzy broke haha. i've taken a photo ofthem but none ofthe computers in the internet cafes here can cope with the size of the images and i dont have a computer on which i can shrink them with me. i'll just have to wait for the next tmie i'm in cebu and i can use one of the foundation's computers.

everything's giong fine here, the seahorse epopel are very friendly and encouraging and i'm ot ebing pressured to do ahything beyond my abilities or stamina. am elarning just how weak i've become in tbe last 5 years of working at a desk! my real survey dives have not begun in earnest, but i've gone for two dives on our house reef to get familiar with it and the visibility (which isnt too good - apparently the other sites are a lot betetr). i've also been doing fish ID, size estimation and coral life form ID classes with the biologists. mom, dont worry - i'm diving with jesus. literally. jesus rey dongallo is one of the biologists har har har.

anyways. if you want to call me, reception's kinda dodgy on Jandayan island, where i will be mon-fri. best bet is to try me on the weekends - i'll either be back in cebu or bohol, where the reception's much better. walter managed to call for a few minutes one day when i was on jandayan, but that was more frustrating than functional becaue there were many moments of hello??hello?? hello???

that be all for now from me. am hungry after a day of swimming and swapping life stories! tomorrow morning we head back to jandayan and work :|

love you all! hugs!!

thanks carch!!

'I'm not a young lady! I'm Izzy'

Izzy is getting funnier and more exasperating. I suppose that, sadly, this pattern is only going to continue for the rest of her life. For one thing, she's parroting my phrases back to me more and more - and she's not just using the words but the tones as well. As I'm typing this she's just gone 'Tsk. I think you can sit there. On. Your. Own.' I'm setting a bad precedent by saying 'If you say so.' And she's just said 'You. Sit. There. You just DO your work.' And she's tutting repeatedly.

I am accused of the horrendous crime of changing channels on her. Although all that's happened is that Looney Tunes has finished and some British teen sit-com has started instead. She is sighing and tutting at the other end of the sofa all the time. Also ticked off because I'm not giving her Squiglet on the laptop.

'Mom. Change the channel back. I told you to leave it on. And now, look at the TV. Look Mom. That was your fault... &etc etc etc'

I've already told her I didn't change it about a million times. And the 'I told you...' came from two days ago when she upset her dinner onto the floor, after continually tipping her chair back despite being told three or four times not to do so. It's all so funny but makes me want to drive a spike through my eyes.

Is this what happens? You raise yourself and the punishment for that is: yourself.

Well I whinge but there are also times when - several times a day nowadays - when she launches herself at me while exclaiming 'I LOVE you!' Sometimes because she wants me to do something for her. But sometimes for no reason I can see. And that's kind of nice.

And although we've replaced our stolen TV now she still asks for stories before bedtime, which is also a nice change. Her favourite at the moment is one called Tiger Ways, about a little girl Daisy pretending to be a tiger. And Izzy's face all through the book is a good reason to have memorised it so I can watch her instead of read. She's so solemn. Absolutely serious about the whole thing, and obviously taking in - probably too seriously - lines like 'I'll only eat people I don't like...'

The cartoons now make her laugh. So she no longer just watches enthralled. Goofy falling over and ending up with a smelly shoe hanging from his nose inspires a really deep-throated gurgle of laughter from her. And, having watched it so frequently, she now often explains the plot to me, very earnestly: 'They have to find Donald's little chicken. But the naughty giant has it. I don't like the naughty giant.'

She also likes singing all her songs and changing words round to involve us. She was just singing 'I dry, a boogie-woogie-woogie, that's the way he washes his hair...' and then, jumping up on Alex's back, this became 'I dry, a boogie-woogie-woogie, that's the way the daddy washes ... his ... glasses!' And this is also very, very funny.

In the last two months or so she's also become a lot more mobile. She's running headlong at everything, jumping off things, and climbing others. I'm quite impressed at her new agility. There have been several times I thought she would tip forward onto the ground, because she was running so quickly and with her head so far forward, and she hasn't. But she also has any number of bruises on her knees and shins from all the hurtling. I suppose she is truly ending her toddler days ahead of turning three.

It was fairies and heroes fun day at nursery today


I volunteered to help out and wound up doing the face painting for all the kids. I like to think the results improved as the day went on, largely to do with the water I put into the paints finally seeping in and creating a thicker, more mask-like consistency. Izzy, who was my first customer, had a very thin outline of a butterfly on her face and my last customer, Sam E, had a pretty groovy thick, red Spiderman mask, if I do say so myself.

Unfortunately I was so busy painting I didn't have time to take pictures of the results. But Izzy seemed pleased enough to immediately demand another butterfly when we got home, since we wiped off her first butterfly after she walked into the car door a bit and had to have an ice-pack applied to her head.

When we got home Izzy insisted on another butterfly

This is what Izzy painted on my leg for me - a doggy.