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.