What not to wear

A slight deviation from the Mummy blog for a moment. I have been asked to be one of two MCs at our office Christmas party on 18th December. In my pre-corporate days an office Christmas party involved a boozy lunch, secret santa and inappropriate flirting. The latter was scuppered when I ended up running an all-female office in HK, in fact none of my team drank alcohol except me so that one went too, but it was still a small and intimate affair where we all knew each other and then went back to the office in the afternoon.

The Christmas party at Gnome bank, however, is an entirely different thing. For one, it is huge. There will be about 600 people there, including the great and the good from the business (read: people who decide whether I will have a career here or not). It will be held in the cavernous hall that is the HK Conference and Exhibition Centre. Normally this would not bother me. I have spoken at conferences with more than this number of people, heck I even tried to crack a joke at one conference in Japan (it failed miserably due to the abject lack of a sense of humour of most market researchers). I can do this. I won't be funny, or even comprehensible (although memo to self not to drink beforehand), but it isn't this that is causing concern.

What really daunts me is that I will be standing up in front of 300 of the thinnest, best dressed women I have ever met, the 300 men will be pretty dandy too. There is something about working for a private bank that means people are just so darned presentable. Usually I potter around the office with my body of wobbly bits and frizzy hair. In my day job this doesn't matter too much, it is my brain more than my looks that people care about, but on the 18th, in front of 600 people, it will matter - a lot.

Panic, panic, panic. Must book hairdresser, buy new dress and sexy shoes (could I wear my sexy red louboutins all night or would I fracture my ankle?). Dress must make me look thin (hard), demure (harder) and sexy (harder still if I am also being demure). It must, at worst, not screw up my career prospects. At best it must get me a promotion. YES, a dress can do this! Panic, panic, panic.

I need to get to the gym, lose weight, exchange my hormonal skin for one with no blemishes, get a bikini wax, pedicure, buy a new designer handbag...

Oh my god, what have I agreed to.

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

Repatriation

Anyone who knows me knows that I have something of a shoe fetish. Their pretty colours and shapes delight me. I, therefore, treated myself to the most gorgeous pair of red Christian Louboutin shoes in the winter sale. When I got home I put them in my bedroom. They were in their shoe bag, in their shoe box and in the store's paper bag. I left Eve playing with her toys in the lounge on Saturday for about 5 minutes while I checked on something cooking in the kitchen only to come back to find that Eve, in this time, had been into my bedroom, opened the bag and the box, taken out the shoe bag and carried it into the lounge and put it with her toys.

She may look 100% like the Boy, but she is most definitely her mother's daughter.

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.

Shallow Al

As I continue to get a grip on both my sanity and this whole motherhood thing, I find that little bits of my former non-mummy self are making a welcome return into my life. It was, therefore, with some joy laced with fear that this morning I left Eve for the first time since she was born. For the past 3 weeks, Eve and I have been together 24/7 and now that her physical umbilical cord has fallen off I thought I should make an effort to break the emotional one that has seen me with her all the time.

I had to go to the doctors this morning, and then Eve had an appointment afterwards. I arranged for the Boy to look after Eve for the 90 minutes I would be out of the house at my own appointment. I don't quite know what horror I thought would befall my daughter in this time. She was fed just before I left (and I had left gallons of expressed milk anyway in case she woke up), and with the Boy and H at home she would be perfectly well looked after.

However, it was really hard to leave. I took the bus, which I always enjoy doing, stuck the ipod on really loud to drown out my own fears and apprehensions, and tried to forget that I had left my darling daughter behind.

It was actually rather nice as I experienced the real world just as I used to and got some time not to think about the next feed or what every gurgle meant or when she would wake up and need a cuddle. Of course I called home as soon as I got to the doctor's - to find predictably that Eve had been fast asleep since I left.

Of course having her back in my arms was the nicest feeling, but I confess to rather enjoying my "me" time on my own.

The whole experience was made even more lovely by the fact that I can now get into my favourite pre-pregnancy jeans and tight tops and not look like a moose. There is still a bit of excess skin and my muscle tone is shot, but for someone who gave birth less than 3 weeks ago I am looking pretty good! And I got to wear my lovely black high heel boots too and tottered rather than waddled for the first time in 3 months.

Small things make me happy, whether dressed in pink or otherwise.

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.

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.

A life under canvas

Hong Kong is, as anyone living here will know, the place where the term "fashion" has a wide definition. Mostly this involves every single one of this season's fashions occuring all at once on one person. Only in HK can one see, as I did at the weekend, a girl wearing those odd ankle boot things designed to look like trainers but with high heels, with black leggings, a puffball skirt and an off the shoulder baggy top. This subject has been covered at length by my good friend LottieP in her blog so I shall not go into more detail other than to set the scene.

While you at least have to admire the creativity, if not sense, of your average 16 year old Hong Konger in her attempt to be up to date, your average pregnant woman in Hong Kong sits at the opposite end of the spectrum. No yummy mummies for you here, it seems that almost every pregnant woman in Hong Kong decides to don a large, cheap, cotton, smock-type dress as soon as she shows a bump. Prior to coming to HK the only person I had seen wear such a garment was Homer Simpson in the episode where he decided to become clinically obsese to get benefits. Sexy and gorgeous they are not.

Which confuses me even more. The women who, overnight, try to turn themselves into a pale pink or pale blue scout campsite are in the main gorgeous. Your average Hong Kong woman is stunning, so why they seem so keen to adopt these hideous afronts to fashion is beyond me.

I am most certainly not looking at my best at the moment. Although Greenpeace have yet to come to repatriate this particular beached whale back into the sea, it is only a matter of time. But even I, in my largesse, can't see why I would want to look like something you would erect in your back garden for a wedding (although the rapidly increasing size of bump means I am available to hire should you be looking).

There are exceptions. S, who I work with and is due in 4 weeks, has adopted a series of lovely tight tops and sexy trousers and looks amazing whenever she comes to work. P turned up at a ball, 8 months pregnant in a gorgeous silk pleated number showing her toned curves and lushious bump - and proceeded to boogie with her husband until the wee small hours. However, these are the exceptions and you will still see the majority of pregnant women of any nationality in this city adopting this shapeless, unappealing, almost unisex, uniform.

And of course, they are always wearing flat shoes.

The new social leper #1 - the mum to be

I hate to start my new blog on a whinge, but the most annoying thing about being pregnant (well, perhaps not the most annoying thing, that would be the large bump, being tired all the time, and your body doing and leaking things it really shouldn't) is the way other people treat you. You become public property and a social leper.

A pregnant woman, as my mummy friends also tell me, means that you have now been elevated to the divine status of nurturing the next generation. I quite like this idea, and my bump kicks me regularly to inform me of her importance. However, I feel that I am nurturing MY next generation - and the Boy's - not the wider world's. Despite being in the cosmopolitan city that is HK, and most of the people I know are pretty high powered career people, I seem get as much attention and unsolicited advice as if I was living in a small village community up a hillside in Vietnam.

Amongst the "should you be eating that?", and "should you still be running/rowing/swimming?" is my favourite "should you be wearing high heels?".

It's not just my friends and colleagues. Every baby book I have read seems to tell you that around about 5 months I should be in flat, comfortable, Clarks shoes. Preferably of the horrible black and brown ilk that my Mum used to make me wear to school when I would rather have been wearing a pair of Kickers.

Apparently it has something to do with my sense of balance, or lack of it now, and fear I might fall over. How utterly ridiculous! The most walking I do in this city is when the Boy drops me off each morning at the bottom of the escalator that leads to my office. I can manage to get in and out of a single scull or outrigger canoe, and move the damn things with quite a high degree of balance and poise so I am not sure why high heels are supposed to be a problem. I have been wearing high heels since I left school (being the shortest in my family and the Boy well in excess of 6 feet, I have no option unless I want to look like a dwarf) and the only time I have ever turned an ankle I was in flats.

One my my lovely friends, who is a lover as I am of all things high and spindly that one can place on ones feet, has been happily supporting me (not physically, however) as I continue to totter around HK on the highest heels in my wardrobe. Now, whenever anyone has a sharp intake of breath and asks me whether I should be in heels, I am wide-eyed and innocent and ask them why. So far, no-one has given me a reason.