cracker's room - work in progress

As you can see, there's the cot, changing table, bassinet and Rachel's feeding chair thingy.  The alphabet stops and starts on a new line partly because an unnamed person (not me) didn't leave enough space to finish the alphabet on the same line (!) and partly because we intend to put a large dresser in the spot that Rachel is sitting in (I'll probably get her to move before we put it there...)

i almost forgot!

the world welcomed little bella lonsdale hayes last week - congrats to kieran and anna.  kieran of course being the mostly naked man in the pink apron featured right here just a few days ago...  here's mum and baby stolen from bella's blog:

getting closer to christmas

...and that deserves christmas cat photos, and a random photo of a cool coloured cup (from FUEL espresso, here in HK). but before that, big news. just kidding - nothing really going on at the moment.  challis clan arrives on saturday night and before that we have a whole lot of nothing going on. shopping is almost done and rachel is down to 5 days of work before her extended "vacation".  we got woken up by baby crying in the apartment upstairs at 6am this morning. good practice i suppose...

as i type this, rachel is lying on the couch with poppycat purring away (pop is doing the purring, not rachel), and ben is skulking around the room, looking for attention.

right, those photos i was talking about:

ben's remarkable aim

our apartment has about 1800 square foot of space we have three main bedrooms, a "half" bedroom and bathroom out the back, and two main bathrooms.

the lounge is large and joins onto the dining room.

for two cats, it's practically a luxury penthouse - there is sooo much space for them to run around in and play.

so, when ben decided that after breakfast he needed a little bit of gut purging, where in this vast expanse of apartment did he choose to vomit?

in rachel's handbag.

i love that cat so much.

the belcher

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i currently live in a culture where blowing one's nose is considered to be gross - but chewing loudly, chewing with your mouth open, sniffing 40 times in 2 minutes and burping are absolutely fine.

i of course struggle with this weirdness, but am particularly struggling someone burping outside my door at work.

every three minutes for the last week or so, this colleague of mine (let's called her belchy wang) lets out a loud and proud burp.  no apparent reason, she just does it. ALL DAY LONG. she doesn't even look vaguely embarrassed. just sits at her desk and burps. and burps. and burps.

i am at a loss as to what to do.  my current strategy is to close my door, gently rock myself to sleep in fetal position, whilst praying that belchy wang's little spasms will soon come to a halt. i am not a violent person, but i'd consider throwing furniture at her if it stopped the burping.

EDIT: in the time it took to type this, she burped three more times.  i kid you not.

some random photos

top photo was taken last night (rachel scratching poppy's tummy) and the other three were taken on saturday night when I wandered down to sandy bay at dusk to take photos after day 1 of the social cricket tournament.

brrrrrrrrrrrrr

the temperature dipped below 20 degress celsius today, and the wind has picked up to around 8km/h, so i fully expect the local folks to be wrapped up in layer upon layer of wool, down clothing, fluffy pom-pom hats and - strangely - shorts accompanied by long velvet boots with all manner of dangly things wobbling off them. i also predict that the Hello Kitty store will completely sell out of their nose-warmers by the end of the day.

a few photos from saturday in the sun at discovery bay

today we're on a mission to go and get me some new sneakers (i'm going for some chucks this winter) and we have a few things to get from stanley market - it's a nice day, so it should be ok out there. had a great day yesterday in the sun at discovery bay. saw some of lisa's awesome jewellery, and then hung with the DB clan (sue, steve, calvin, rachel, helen and pete) and their respective sproglings.  here are some photos from the afternoon / evening of the little people (hermione, kiri, che, sue & che, sue & hermione):

saturday morning

nothing quite as nice as waking up to find a kitten purring softly under the duvet next to you... went to a japanese restaurant with cam and carolin last night, then hit the bond movie. japanese was umami @ cyberport (cyberport being a soul and charisma-free fake neighbourhood around the corner from where we live - and it's where i work).  food was really rather good and after i busted out several pages of vouchers (oh the benefits of working in the middle of nowhere) it was pretty good value too.

the bond movie was awesome (new bond girl might be entering the narly-top-5) even though i really didn't know what was going on for most of it.  action sequences were brilliant, although at times the product placement could have been perhaps a little more subtle - range rover and virgin atlantic certainly got their moeny's worth.

wandering out to discovery bay today to see lisa's jewellery exhibition and to catch up with sue, steve, helen and pete for a spot of afternoon tea (very civilised, i say old chap).  then back to central to catch mark and emma for a bit of dinner somewhere and then i'll park myself in front of the television to watch the nz v england rugby game.  miracle of miracles, it's being shown in hong kong.

here's popstar this morning in our bed:

little frederick cary

we had a great video chat with jonathan and laura last night and got to meet little freddie cary - what a cute little fella!  laura looks great and jonathan looks stoked with daddyhood - and the little guy looks as cute as a button.  i have taken the liberty of pilfering some photos from his website, i know he won't mind:

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on other matters, i survived through two hours of breastfeeding talk and videos at antenatal class last night.  it was actually informative and quite useful, although it would appear that if we give little Spawn of Narly formula milk, all three of us along with our families, friends and people that we meet at the bus stop will be struck down with the plague or the black lung, and then get run over by trucks.

or something like that.

bangkok - good timing on our escape

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as lovely as another few weeks in the hotel would have been, i'm quite glad that we got out of bangkok when we did.  a week later and we might have been stuck in the airport - protesters have blocked the roads to the airport, causing all flights to be cancelled.  ouch.

cracker in four dimensions

here's a 4d scan of cracker from last thursday's appointment with our obstetrician.  you're forgiven if you thought it was actually a mars surface photo beamed down from NASA.

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you can see an eye, nose and the upper lip - the thing on the left is the umbilical cord, and that thing on his/her left cheek (your right) is his/her arm.  i'm looking forward to january so i can stop saying "his/her" all of the time.

...and awesome news from a few minutes ago, jonathan and laura just had a baby boy. jonathan's text says it's a "beautiful" baby boy, but i've had no photo evidence yet... (just kidding jonathan - now hurry up and send photos). hefty little fella weighed in at 9 pounds 9 ounces.

liam

just thought i'd post an old photo that i only just got around to editing - a lovely little shot of liam (simon and kirsty's little guy, twin of paige).  this was taken at our place earlier this year.