Shoes glorious shoes

It is a well known fact that Yummy Mummy rather likes shoes. It is, therefore, with some delight that I approach shoe shopping for Eve now she is walking. I've read the toddler rearing books so I am well versed in the need to get sensible shoes for her. She shouldn't, for example, wear anything higher than three inch heels until she is 5. I am also aware at how fast she grows out of things at the moment and how stupidly expensive shoes are. Since she first started to walk, we have done pretty well on the cost front. There is a stall in Stanley Market on the south side of HK island where a nice Chinese lady makes lovely leather shoes for children. The sizes are all over the place so it's a bit hit and miss trying to find what you want in the right size, but Eve's first pair of red shoes came from there at quite a sensible price. The second pair were even more of a bargain because they were a pair of Crocs, something of an obligatory item for any child in Asia, but came from a market in the Philippines and I suspect are not entirely legitimate.

However, Eve has grown out of the red shoes and her toes are nearly at the end of the Crocs so we needed to buy a new pair.

I had every intention of going to Stanley and buying the new pair from the nice Chinese lady. However, the Boy and I were in a shopping centre one Saturday and I was looking at a new pair of trainers for me when my attention was grabbed by a whole rack of small, pink items. I am of the persuasion that branded items for children is an indulgence, but they were so pretty and I got more excited than during the Jimmy Choo sale as I asked for more and more to be brought for Eve to try on. We finally settled on the cheaper end of the Adidas range, but when it came to finding out the price I was horrified. They cost about 70% of what the adult version would and are tiny. Really tiny. We bought them anyway, Eve did look adorable in them.

The Boy has a cunning plan to recoup the costs by taking lots of photos of Eve in different sports brands as a child and then, when she reaches inevitable sporting excellence (in his eyes - Olympic gold medals, winning Wimbledon, the first female F1 champion), we can increase her sponsorship value by having actual baby photos of her in the relevant brand.

Feline education

The cat seems to be taking her role as surrogate aunty very seriously. After a game of book shop I played with Eve this morning (she puts her bag over her arm - at the elbow with one hand sticking out, just like Mummy - then comes over to the bookcase where I show her various books, she leafs through them and picks one for me to put in another bag for her to take away), Eve moved onto fashion but decided to be seller rather than buyer.

She picked up a pair of doll shoes, walked over to the cat, and tried to put them onto the cat's feet. The cat made it very clear that cats do not wear shoes. Despite Eve's best atempts to pick up her feet and put them into the shoes, the cat was having none of it.

Feline lesson for today - cats do not wear shoes

Diamonds are a girl's best friend

There are two things that the Boy doesn't like about me (well, there are probably others but he is too nice to say). One is that I snore, like a walrus in mating season if the truth be known. The other is that I have something of an obsession with shoes and jewelry. I say it is an obsession, you show me a woman who claims not to have a shoe fetish and have a liking for shiny things and I will show you a man (and not a gay man at that). However, I freely admit and have expressed on this blog that very little makes me happier than handing over my credit card to the lovely people at Jimmy Choo.

As Eve gets older she is turning into a little girl. She now cuddles her dolly and gets very upset if anyone takes it off her, Yooni the pink unicorn is back in favour, and one of the other nannies gave her a toy buggy which she loves to push around. She also loves playing with my shoes. She will happily open our wardrobe, a new trick learnt this week, and pull out my shoes. She holds them in her little hands, exploring their laces and spikey heels and pretty colours. She will then, like her Mummy, discard any she is bored with and turn to the happiness of a new pair.

She also adores my necklaces and positively leaps with excitement when I come home and crawls over to me and grabs whatever I have hanging around my neck. I generally end up taking it off and just giving it to her - I suspect Tiffany did not make it's necklaces to withstand 11kg of baby hanging from them.

I rather like that my little girl is turning into, well, a little girl.

She also snores like a train. I am also, in my own sweet way, proud of this too.

Helping hands

There are many things that are much easier in Hong Kong, but none hits you as a parent like having cheap, experienced, full time childcare. It is a sad fact of economics that thousands of women from South East Asia can make much more money working as housekeepers, nannies and carers for the elderly in Hong Kong or Singapore than they could make at home even in professional jobs. Hence H, our nanny, who has a university degree, lives in our home with us for less than half of what it costs my sister to put my niece in nursery.

The conditions for these women in Hong Kong are often very tough. Contractually they have to work 24 hours a day, 6 days a week for a pittance. The government stipulates that they live in with a family, but we are only legally obliged to provide a private sleeping area and in many instances this amounts to a curtain in the corner of the living room or a child's bedroom.

Aside from the conditions and appaling treatment some "helpers" get at the hands of employers and the government, I find the role they perform in many families to be quite odd related to the children. There seems to be a culture here of giving the child to the helper even when the parents are not at work. I find this wholesale outsourcing of parenting very odd and rather worrying.

For example, yesterday the Boy and I were out shopping. Shopping for the Boy is a tedious exercise as he hates making decisions and will never compromise on anything. Between the two of us we negotiated 3 hours of shopping centres, with the buggy. However, a surprising number of families had their helper in tow. Sometimes the helper was carrying the child, sometimes carrying the bags, sometimes just pushing the empty buggy behind the couple and their child. This posed the question "why?". What is so difficult about taking your own child shopping and carrying your own bags?

Then, in the evening at our pool we took Eve swimming. We were the only couple with a baby who did not have their helper with them as well. One couple brought their baby and helper with them - that is 3 adults to take one baby swimming. In one case only the helper was there with the child (it was a Saturday).

When I talk to H, our nanny, she is really surprised that we do so much for Eve - in her former jobs she has variously slept in the baby's room to do overnight feeds, taken the children swimming at weekends, and even gone on holiday to look after the children. It would be easy to think this is a Chinese culture thing until I recall two English couples I know who think nothing of giving their baby to a helper for the weekend so they can play golf or go on a junk for the day.

I just don't understand the concept of having a child and then not spending time with them. Aside from building a healthy relationship with your child, it is simply fun doing things with Eve. I try hard not to judge the choices of others, but this is something I can't help but do in these instances.

So last season

There is no consumer category quite so exploitative and laden with embedded branding guilt as that for baby. I can think of no other category (except, perhaps, healthcare) where every single marketing message is tinged with the underlying message of "this will make your baby happier/safer/more clever/walk earlier/sleep better and if you don't buy it then they will become a drug addled prostitute and die in a gutter and it will all be YOUR fault". In almost all other categories messages are carefully regulated precisely to stop people being conned or guilted into buying things but if for baby then it seems perfectly acceptable.

However, it is only once you have had a baby for a few months and become hardened to all of this that you realise how much crap you have or could have bought for your child. For example, we have lots of lovely toys for Eve (less than most of my friends have for their babies, however, so much so that I often feel we are depriving her), but her favourite two toys are an empty water bottle and the cat.

We did, however, feel that we had to purchase some of the childhood essentials and, when Eve was about 4 weeks old, we purchased a mobile.

Mobiles are referred to in all the baby books, you are supposed to put them on to help your baby to go to sleep. Being modern and, as we like to think of ourselves, trendy parents we refused to get anything too brightly coloured or noisy and went for muted natural tones and fibres with a nice gentle tune with a pseudo-classical lilt. It was such a "design" piece that the animals looked quite creepy, and the zebra only had one eye. And, yes, it was a bit more expensive than the plastic ones.

The mobile has not, however, been quite the worthwhile sleep-inducing investment we hoped it would be.

Phase 1 (4-8 weeks) - the music seemed to wake Eve up so we didn't use it
Phase 2 - (2-3 months) - this was the wind-down scream phase so we used to use the mobile as a distraction technique (my mum discovered this one), but it only worked twice and then Eve went back to screaming to get to sleep and the movement of the mobile seemed to make her worse
Phase 3 (4-5 months) - Eve used to wake up in the middle of the night and talk to it, or try to grab and eat it

Then, this week, came the final straw. At 5am I awoke to hear a thud, thud noise coming from Eve's cot. Upon closer inspection Eve had managed to get the mobile down and was happily whacking it against the side of the cot as if to say "I never liked this bloody thing hanging over my cot and, aha, I have finally got rid of it!".

Top tip to new parents, don't bother with a mobile.

Born to shop

My favourite shop in Hong Kong is Lane Crawford. It is wonderfully glam, stocks all my favourite designers, sometimes has things in my size, and has a habit of inviting me to champagne and shopping evenings. On Saturday morning, while the Boy went rowing, I popped in to buy a housewarming gift for some friends, taking Eve along with me.

LC is normally staffed with, as my friend describes them, po-faced miserable assistants. They are dressed head to toe in black and talk into those funny earpiece things better suited to FBI men and actors on 24. Whenever you ask for a bigger size they almost invariably scowl and scurry off before returning with a size 6 that would barely cover my thighs. So, I was not expecting them to take too well to Eve.

However, I think I may have now found the flashest crèche in Hong Kong. Never before has Eve had so much fun and so much attention. As I walked through the shop, every assistant, without exception, scurried over to say hello and play with her. She, of course being a little tart and loving the attention, would happily chat and giggle back at them prompting more attention. They happily held Eve while I tried on some shoes, were fine as she chewed firmly on the Prada sunglasses I was trying on, and didn't even mind when she posseted up some milk on a dress and their sofa (and it was quite an expensive dress too). The gay male assistants were the best and I practically had to wrestle Eve away from one of them.

As we left, Eve insisted on holding the handle on one of the bags so we trotted out, all SATC-like, with her proudly brandishing a bag from one of HK's most expensive shops.

Ladies wot shop

I have a bit of a tendency to drag Eve everywhere with me that I can. I would like to pretend this is good for her development or some such, but in reality it is because I refuse to stop going out, and at the same time am acutely aware that my maternity leave only has one month left and I want to spend as much time with her as I can.

Usually when we go out people comment - ask how old she is and whether she is a boy or girl. If she is awake people, especially Chinese, comment on how blue her eyes are and she does have an adorable smile. Eve is pretty portable as she doesn't cry much and is such a glutton that if she's not eating she is often asleep digesting the vast amount in her tummy!

Earlier this week I found myself in one of HK's most glam shops (starts with an H, is named after a god and sells stupidly overpriced bags named after Grace Kelly). For the past 4 years I have been coveting, and I do not use the word lightly, a particular watch from the aforementioned shop. I have never managed to justify spending such a horrific amount of money but the combination of three factors, carefully rationalised, led me to the store.

Firstly, other than a pair of Jimmy Choos in the sale I have not spent any money on clothes, shoes or handbags since I got pregnant (the Luella nappy bag doesn't count as it's for Eve). Secondly, the bank was very generous with my bonus this year. Finally, I have just had a baby and deserve a pressie so I might as well buy myself one!

So, accompanied by my glam friend LottieP to guide me in case I had lost the designer shoppings skillset along with my flat stomach, I put on my best baby sling and pottered along to H. I believe that one should always walk into stupidly expensive shops as if it is an everyday occurance so I strode towards the door...

To find that nobody opened it for me! Even in dodgy little seconds shops someone opens the door if you have a baby, but not here. Inside the shop assistants were of the type of seem to float around without actually being responsible for anything. In HK, where shop assistants tend to jump on you with a sales pitch, this was refreshing but unnerving - the pink bundle on my front was not a growth to be ignored!

When we found the watch section and a lovely lady to serve us, she waxed lyrical about the products, helped me try on a few different watches, and even let me try hers to see what a different colour strap looked like. However, not once did she or anyone else mention the fact I had a small snuffling thing stuck to my chest.

The only person, in fact, who registered was a 60 something, Chanel-clad, blonde lady who looked utterly horrified.

I think I prefer the cheaper shops where people are a bit more human, although I have a very nice watch now.

Any colour your like, so long as it's pink

There is no denying that I have a lovely baby girl. She has strawberry blond hair (like the Boy), bright blue eyes and is cute as a button. Other than a slight double chin (also like the Boy) she is clearly a girl and pretty damn gorgeous to boot.

However, society seems to have decided that as I have a girl she should be almost exclusively dressed in pink. I am not a big fan of pink. Other than some LK Bennet pink shoes (all rather mini mouse and fun to wear to difficult meetings) I do not have a single item in pink. When I was captain of the college rowing team (college colours being pink and black) I even went so far as to ensure the only part of our rowing kit that was pink was a small pink logo discretely on the chest of an otherwise entirely black rowing lycra.

Two days ago it became evident that we only have summer clothes for Eve so I popped her in a taxi to M&S to buy some more long sleeved suits. It was our first trip out by ourselves (no nanny or Boy) and it went very well. However, I was disgusted when I got to the M&S baby section to find that I had two options of colours - pink or blue. The damn display was even colour coded (blue to the left, pink to the right). There was no yellow, green, beige. If you wanted to buy anything in a size of up to 1 year old, it had to be pink or blue. I picked the least offensive items, with the least pink, and fled.

Why, oh why, am I supposed to affirm my child's gender by way of her wardrobe? Is it to help aged Aunts recognise what gender you have, or as colour coding for passers by so they can attribute a gender? Why is it assumed that parents will want to colour code their children?

The Boy, in rebellion, has bought her two blue suits, a blue hat and blue mittens.

Happiness in a size 41

This lunchtime I went for lunch in Harvey Nics with one of the most glam and fabulous women I know, followed by shopping with her and hammering my credit card in Jimmy Choo. For a while, as fawning shop assistants brought me a succession of beautiful shoes with spindly heels in lovely colours, I didn't feel pregnant or tired or fat or miserable.

I know I am shallow, but this made me very happy.

The home strait

With less than 4 weeks to go, I am finding life increasingly difficult. I need help now, for example, getting out of the car or off the sofa. Only about 3 items of clothing fit me, and they are all work clothes because when I was doing my Bump shopping I seemed to forget that I might spent a couple of weeks prior to the birth not at work and now don't think it is worth spending the money for a couple of weeks of use.

I am not sleeping, despite a fab bean bag sausage thing that S gave me to stick between my knees, and once a night I get cramps in my abdomen, throwing me into a panic about the fact I might be going into labour (as an aside, I read at the weekend that one shouldn't worry unless ones mucous plug has come out - and if you have no intention of ever having children, you don't want to know what that is).

You read in the books that the last month is the hardest, and never quite believe it while variously have your head over the loo (first trimester), loose all your balance and coordination (second trimester), or even when you start to get a bit tired (months 7 and 8). But, I can categorically say that the final month is the worst. You are huge, bored, everything hurts, and don’t get me started on the need to go to the loo every 30 minutes. I am also, to use an Americanism "so over" being kicked all the time, and am convinced that Bump is pretty bored with being stuck inside me as well. I am clearly now heavily pregnant and people at work are starting to look at me nervously as I walk into meetings looking ready to pop.

I was out at lunch with some of my most lovely and glam girlfriends on Sunday, and wished that I too could be drinking champagne, fit into normal sized clothes, and no longer have to do a funny wiggle to shuffle my chair backwards to get out from under the table.

I suppose this is why gestation is 9 months. You get prepared, you get bored, and then you get ready. Having her out will be immeasurably hard, challenging, and sleep deprived. However, I am ready for the next challenge now.

As an aside, I did manage to go rowing on Saturday, and Sunday, so life isn't all bad.

Showers with sunny intervals

One of the things about living in HK is the adoption of many traditions that would not be done at home as a result of the cultural melting pot that is this transient city. Halloween is, for example, a big deal and poor frosty turkeys hit the shops a few weeks earlier than they would at home to be sacrificed for Thanksgiving. Therefore, quite a number of friends of different nationalities informed me that I would be needing a baby shower.

This is not really a concept I am all that familiar with. I come from a family where the baby is celebrated only when it actually comes out (family background of high blood pressure seems to make us a little more cautious about this perhaps), and it is considered bad luck to buy very much before the first scream confirms the little one is alive and healthy. As a result, the Boy and I have been quite abstemious in terms of what we have bought so far. We have focused on the basics, such as somewhere to sleep, something to travel in, and something we can take her running in. We have a few clothes, although most of those are second hand and have been given to us by friends. Not a single toy has been bought and the baby's room is still functioning as our study.

However, the combined excuses of me being pregnant, not really celebrating my birthday last week, and the Boy leaving for a business trip in Macau yesterday afternoon meant that I had three excuses to have a little party. So I found myself yesterday evening hosting 12 of my closest friends in HK and plying them with champagne and nibbles - except me and the other pregnant woman who drank a lot of water.

Another thing about living in HK is the way in which your little circles of friends, all of whom you are close to, don't necessarily cross. So last night I had three distinct groups of friends together who would not normally meet - those from work, those from sports, and those from other places (mainly dancing in bars in my pre-Bump days). To break the ice, I had concocted a little game where everyone had to answer a question picked at random. They ranged from the easy (name five things you like about HK), to the embarrassing (what is the worst date you've had), to the baby related (what is the first word Alice's baby is likely to say). It turned out to be great fun, as I found out a few new things about my friends.

What really struck me, however, is how despite being from all sorts of different backgrounds and nationalities (8 nations were represented, 9 if you think Scotland may eventually find independence) how similar our concerns are. We talked about body image, peer pressure on teenage girls these days, finding Mr Right - and what to do with Mr Wrong - and our families. Despite being a group of some of the most successful women you could put in one place (as an aside, I am incredibly proud to call these amazing ladies and one gent my friends), we were discussing things that most likely our mothers, their mothers and many generations back also talked about. There is something humbling, and also rather nice about this.

Of course we also talked about shoes, handbags, and shopping. But then I suspect previous generations of women spent a lot of time discussing these too!

Lady who lunches... or rather has a very hectic day

I have always wondered what the many ladies in HK who don't work and don't have children do all day. Very early on in my stint in HK I was at a dinner party (I was still playing the corporate wifey at that point and attending work functions with the Boy). At the dinner party I met a lady who, to all intents and purposes, spent all day pottering around. Her husband had a busy job and travelled all the time, she had no children, and did no charity work. We were sitting with a couple who are rather high powered lawyers and we were all a bit drunk. As a newbie to HK I was asked what I did, and we had a nice chat about the difficulties of setting up a business and the legal system in HK. Then the attention turned to the lady in question, and the perfectly normal question of "so what do you do?". Without a moments hesitation she told us all about her days spent at yoga, pilates, she was learning to play tennis, lunches with friends. Growing ever more incredulous, the lawyer lady cut her short with the question "but what do you actually DO?". After a further explanation, I was still at a loss to understand how this lady filled her days and found meaning in her life.

Anyway, I took a day off last week and spent it pleasing only myself and living the life of one of these ladies. Initially I had no idea how I would fill my time. Without meetings or calls or deadlines, how would I structure my day? Would I end up having endless hours sitting doing nothing - and could I cope with that?

It started off with me leaving the Boy (who was off work ill) at home and pottering into the centre of town for a croissant and cup of hot chocolate. When there I spotted a nice exhibition of items from the British Museum over at the HK Museum of Art so took myself off to have fun looking at random cuniform stones and the odd statue. Before I knew it, it was time to come back to town to go to my antenatal yoga class. Normally I go on a Saturday, mainly with other working ladies, but midweek I found myself with an entirely different set of very lovely ladies who were friendly, amusing, funny and we exchanged phone numbers and promises to meet up soon. After all this chat, I was nearly late for my special pre-natal massage (generously given to me by my wonderful friend R), where I was pummeled and stroked on a strange bed with a huge hole in the middle - more of that in another post.

It was then that I realised I hadn't had lunch, so just had time for a quick bite to eat before meeting the Boy for our visit to Dr D and then an early supper with another friend.

I didn't manage to do half the things I had planned for - I failed to make it to the baby shop to buy unmentionable items to cover my leaky bits after the birth, I failed to take something the Boy wanted to get fixed to the relevant shop, I even failed to go and buy the pair of very lovely Alexander McQueen shoes I have been coveting for a couple of weeks.

In fact, I had almost no "down time" at all.

The next day it was back to work and I found myself twiddling my thumbs a bit.

Perhaps I could take to the expat wife life more easily that I had initially thought. Let negotiations with the Boy commence.

Things not to do when you're pregnant # 20091 and #200092

Normal, everyday, life takes on a whole new slant when you're pregnant and normal things like, say, walking, take on a new comical turn. So, today I found myself in two perfectly normal situations that were somewhat altered by the presence of bump.

Firstly, I went to Church at lunchtime. I do this every Thursday with the god-father-to-be G. It is always a slightly comical event, partly because it is held in a small chapel and usually only 6 or 7 people attend. A few weeks ago the sermon was about a saint who seemed to be beatified for nothing more than mistaken identity (he was on a polynesian island and was mistaken for a slave trader and killed before, presumably, he could preach any part of the gospel). There are also a few odd characters, such as the gentleman who over-ennunicates every t, and slightly out of time with the rest of us. There is also the man who insists, during prayers, on shouting the name of every person he is praying for at the appropriate (or inappropriate) time. So, it is always a rather amusing affair. Today during the prayers, which for those heathens among you (including the Boy) are the quietest time in the service, the bump started thumping me. I am still at the stage where I find this rather amusing so, during a particularly boring point when we were praying for lawyers (only in HK, what on earth do lawyers need our prayers for??) I found myself staring down at the gymnastics all too visable through my top. It made me smile and, as she managed to tickle me, I had to supress giggles. Unfortunately I got very distracted by this and was still smiling and giggling my way through the prayers when we got to the bit about the sick and departed. This is clearly something that is not funny and in rather poor taste. When I realised where I was and looked up, I found Matt the friendly vicar looking quizically at me. He has three children and so clearly put it down to hormonal madness.

The second event came at the end of a rather fun post-work shoe shopping trip with LottieP. After trying, and failing, to find any shoes in my size (for which my bank balance is very grateful) we popped along to an event at Harvey Nics to which she had an invitation. We were hoping for a glass of something sparkling and a bit of canto-pop starlet watching. Sadly, it was the launch of a new version of a rather poor whiskey beloved of those who don't know any better and have only a hazy idea of where Scotland is. This was the only drink on offer, and despite being obviously heavily pregnant the waiters kept on cornering me and insisting that I try some. It seemed ungrateful to ask for a nice glass of water. Perhaps the launch party of a high alcohol content spirit is not the best place for a pregnant woman to be. The bump made my choice about how long to stay when a man playing the bagpipes walked past me (subtlety not being a strong feature of events in HK) and the bump reacted so violently that I thought I was going into labour.

LottieP and I scarpered and I have come home to more normal pregnancy things like eating jaffa cakes.

Transporting a heavy load

There has been much talk in the HK press about a recent survey that hailed London as having a better public transport system than HK. As one who has experienced both, I am siding with the people of HK. Despite London's undeniable range of coverage (unless you live in South London), HK public transport is a beauty to behold. It is frequent, safe and very clean thanks to a ban on eating and drinking on any mode of transport - what a brilliant idea. In addition to all of the usual public transport options, taxis are also dirt cheap and plentiful. Red Ken would be green with envy.

However, one London tradition has not come to HK, that of politeness on transport. It is a lot of fun watching tourists on the MTR (metro in HK) as they go to the doors to get off only to find a wall of people pushing and shoving past to get on. It is especially amusing if the tourists have rucksacks as they become stuck between a door and a rabid old granny intent on getting her exact spot inside the train. When I go home Mum has to physically restrain me on the Tube as people start to mutter and tut at my HK-born habit of failing to let people off first.

Absent too from HK is the tradition of giving up ones seat on a bus or train to a pregnant woman. I know from my London mummy friends that this is by no means a universal habit in London, but that at least one can shove your bump into the face of a seated businessman and most will give up their seat. Not true in HK. I travel quite freqently on buses and trains and, while people are happy to gawp at the bump stuck in their face, not one has felt compelled to give up their seat.

Until that is, the weekend. On our way from one traumatic shopping experience to another, we got the MTR. I was moaning to the Boy about how I've never been offered a seat (I think he was nodding and ignoring yet another hard-done-by story from his wife) as we boarded. I surveyed the carriage and not only were there no seats but someone had pushed past me to get the one remaining one. I was about to start another moan (the Boy was rapidly struggling to find his ipod to fend off the inevitable onslaught) when a lady poked the man next to her in the ribs, nodded in my direction, and with a sigh he got up and gave me his seat. I was profusely over-energetic in my thanks in two languages, and utterly shocked at the turn of events.

It was only when the couple got up to get off that I saw she had a good sized pregnancy bump too.

Born to shop

Shopping is a national pastime in Hong Kong, however I have never been one to "enjoy" the process of shopping unless it involves very expensive shoes or handbags and a suitably deferential shop assistant who brings me things, thus negating the need for me to move. I generally find the whole experience quite traumatic and unfulfilling, and would rather be sitting in a nice bar somewhere (drinking soft drinks, of course).

So, it was with some surprise that I found myself this afternoon in the worst possible combination of places. Firstly, I was in Causeway Bay. CWB is the busiest shopping area in the world and the mecca for all shoppers in HK on a weekend. It is hectic, hot, busy and generally horribly unfriendly as people cram onto the streets and push each other out of the way to rush to the next shop. Secondly, I was in IKEA. IKEA is a truly frightening place, designed to ensure you have to walk slowly around things you had no intention of buying before you went in, becoming increasingly frustrated with both the slow moving traffic and the inability to actually find what you went on for in the first place. Despite the best of intentions to only buy one or two items, you invariably come out with something plastic and colourful that you don't need. The Boy has it worse as the HK store insists on hanging key signs from the ceiling at head height if you are 6 feet or taller. So, while being shoved and slowed and generally hassled, he has the added benefit of hitting his head constantly. In the end all we discovered was that IKEA don't stock a bed of the right size for the room our new nanny will live in. And that we don't need a green plastic stool.

So, to the second task of the day, buying baby "essentials". Already very frazzled, we went to a baby "store" (if someone had told me I could have simply bought one in a shop, I could have avoided all this sickness and fatigue!). We thought we were prepared, we had read websites, books, asked the advice of friends. We knew what we wanted. Right until we got to a wall full of car seats. We did what any slightly bemused new parents to be when faced with this, we clicked the belts, we rocked them, we pushed the padding as if in some way the tablets of stone with the magic solution would appear to us. Choosing the cot had been easy, we went for the cheapest one that did what we wanted - but car seats are a more technical and costly purchase if you get it wrong. After a fair bit of squishing and rocking, we realised we needed professional help. In the absence of a man in a white coat with prozac, we found a shop assistant. So grateful were we that we then spent half an hour following her around the store as she told us what we needed. Two normally sensible, critical people blindly nodded and smiled as she informed us of the most popular brands of a range of items, why we needed a sprung matress for the cot rather than a foam one, and flashed a series of pink, yellow and blue items in front of us. Thankfully the Boy took over on the technical specs of baby monitors, by this time I had a strong urge to flee or find a dark quiet space and rock myself gently.

To say I fled once the credit card slip had been signed by the Boy would be an understatement. All I could think of was getting home to normality. There is now a very large bag hidden in a cupboard in the spare room, I am a bit scared of it if the truth be known, and think it will stay there until the Bump actually enters the world, preferably under lock and key. I am not quite sure what we actually bought in the end. I think there is a box with the word "nipple" on it, and something called a gro-bag. I am a bit worried about the latter, as formerly I always thought this was something you grew tomatoes in. I am not sure why my Bump needs fresh veggies, but I am sure it will all beome clear.

I am now going to have a little lie down before two friends, who have no intention of ever having children, come round tonight for supper to drag me back to normality.

Whimper.