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#