19 weeks -- at 6", baby is the size of a large mango

84 cms and counting...

The day before Jason's birthday -- which I might add, I honestly thought was American Father's Day -- I had a screaming headache. You know the kind where it hurts so bad it make you want to throw up? The kind where when you're pregnant you're not supposed to take anything for it? Well after scouring the internet, we decided I could take one Tylenol as it seemed agreed upon by all pregnancy sites and online medical whatevers that it was the lesser of all evils. It also said I could eat dark chocolate of high cacao content -- 75% or more (is there any other kind?).

So naturally, I did both. I don't usually have Tylenol in the house as I'm not a big fan of the company or the drug but a while back, someone gave me the leftover contents of their medicine stock and there just happened to be a bottle of Tylenol in there. So I took one. I'm so drug free apparently (or sleep deprived maybe), that one was enough to knock me out for a couple of hours. As for the chocolate, I have a really bad headache, I'm pregnant, I need to eat dark chocolate...who needs more of an excuse than that?

I needed to document all this hair I have! And lets talk about finger nails.

I'm going to lap it up while I can because I know it all falls out after birth. Thanks Baby!

Now, I do not in the slightest way condone the use of drugs while pregnant. I'm already kind of beating myself up about it because I wanted to make it through drug free. But Saturday, I was a mess...and now I have a ridiculous cold and bothersome cough. I had to be ok for Sunday (the birthday party) so I had to sleep.

The way I see it...doesn't look so big from my angle.

Now whether it was the Tylenol or the chocolate, I don't know, but later that night:

"Can you feel that?"

"Feel what...WHAT??? WHAT WAS THAT? WAS THAT THE...???" at which point he started laughing hysterically. Jason has this 'OH.MY.GOSH. I can't believe that just happened but it's really exciting' look that I wish I could capture on camera for moments like this but simply can't.

My response is as follows:

* It feels like I swallowed a live gold fish.

* It's weird.

* It's a lot stronger than I thought it would be. We can already see it from 'the outside'.

* It also moves a lot more than I thought it would. Especially when I want to be sleeping.

* There really is something there. I'm not just getting fat. These thunder thighs will be worth it after all!

* We can see it move (did I already mention that?!).

* We have never 'wasted' so much time staring at my stomach before.

These are Jason's birthday present from Jason's fashion designer friend. So now our baby has one off, designer clothes!

I tell you, only for your first kid can you be given baby clothes for your birthday and be excited about it!

Jason doesn't like me to poke it back. But it's too much fun getting it to move! Seems like since it started on Saturday, Bubs has only stopped for short intervals ever since. So between this dreadful cold and the gold fish in my stomach, I'm not getting much sleep. I'm exhausted already and its not even born yet!

I might be biased but I think Bubs is the cutest fruit salad in the world, don't you think?

Upon entering the park, we were confronted with this sign:

I don't know about you, but I want to go to the 'hippty hop'!

This is the story of the never ending packets of Cole's Mud Cake mixes.

When you live on the 'other side of the world' with few conveniences from home and a very, very little paycheck, and someone from Shanghai offers you a bag of 'food stuff' to take home with you, it brings new meaning to the phrase 'never look a gift horse in the mouth'. Even if you don't eat it, which to be honest, most of the imported dry goods we can get here aren't things we usually eat due to the copious amounts of chemicals and preservatives needed to keep them good enough to last being imported (think the scene in the movie Wal-E where the whole earth is destroyed...but there are still Hostess Twinkies), somebody will. Or they'll come in useful for something. Or even if you don't particularly like cake for your birthday, you'll be getting it...for this birthday and any subsequent birthdays until you run out of packet cake mixes.

I thought Jason's would be the last one, but somehow, there is still one more box. I think they're breeding.

Don't get me wrong -- I am really grateful. That same bag o' goodies included things like sun-dried tomatoes, couscous, museli bars and some seriously good pasta sauce from Marks and Spencer. I just can't seem to use up these dang packet cake mixes! On first thought, they seem like a good, inexpensive way of baking a birthday cake. Except that one packet cake mix uses over 250g (that's more than a stick) of butter turning it into a not very inexpensive birthday cake after all. Times that by four or so packet cake mixes and you see that some improvisations must be done.

I've learnt a lot about cooking since being here. There's so many different ways to, excuse the expression, skin a cat (or a dog if you live in Guangxi), that there's not really any excuse to say "I can't make that because we can't get (insert ingredient here ie: canned pumpkin...dear Lord, do you know how many times I heard that one at Thanksgiving?!)" Not that I'm your regular Jamie Oliver by any stretch of the imagination, but for example, yoghurt can replace sour cream in almost anything, butter (thanks to the lovely vegans out there) can be replaced by applesauce and bananas, and legumes can bulk out just about anything. My personal favourite is that you can make sour cream from UHT whipping cream and a dash of vinegar. The chemical reaction gives you a thick, sour cream-like subustance. Amazing. Maybe it really is. However, the UHT whipping cream in and of itself is pretty gross and outrageously expensive so I have never done this one personally. The internet is my best friend.

So it was a Banana Mud Cake. I think, after practically sitting in front of the most temperamental oven for 40 minutes, it came out pretty well. I only substituted half of the butter for bananas (one day, I should be brave enough to do the whole thing). Now we have a Mud Cake, a birthday boy...ah yes, we need some guests.

Neither of us are really party people. Hilarious considering our chosen profession is so people oriented. And Chinese people LOVE parties. Especially birthday parties. They take great pride in being invited, showing up with a 'cute' gift (wrapped in paper with strange, strange Chinglish sayings on it), and playing games. You know the kind where you have to follow the instructions and if you mess it up you get to stand in the middle and belt out karaoke songs. Its not much of a punishment because this seems to be the favourite part of the game. So after much consideration of the fact we are living in a borrowed house and that since we're leaving soon, a small party would be a good way to spend some time with our closer Chinese friends, but we had to make it so there was no karaoke. I hate karaoke. I really do. But we needed people to eat this cake. So we decided to see how the board games would go.

In a word, marvelously. In fact, long after most of our foreign friends had left, our Chinese friends were still on the floor playing 'Ticket to Ride' with Jason banning all other languages bar English and Mandarin (you gotta keep your eye on those Cantonese speakers...) and me just trying to keep my eyes open when they decided 11.30pm was a good time to take photos (I was done taking photos at that point so I have none of those unfortunately). However, the party was a roaring success with everyone saying they loved the Banana Mud Cake.

Well, there's at least one more where that came from...

(NB. This was supposed to go up a few days ago...apparently to further illustrate the point of this post, I clicked only the 'save now' option instead of the 'publish' option)

1.	placenta brain

Confusion and short term memory loss that happens during pregnancy.

"Hey placenta brain, what's the soap doing in the fridge?"

"My wife is such a placenta brain. Yesterday I caught her eating chalk. She said she needed the calcium."

"I gave a presentation to a group of women when I was pregnant. And I forgot my name! Must be the pregnancy brain."

2.

D.I.P.S.

Acronym for Dumbness Induced by Pregnancy Syndrome. A state of forgetfulness, confusion and mental retardation commonly experienced during pregnancy. Other symptoms can include but aren't limitied to - clumsiness, memory loss and difficulty in retaining information or learning new things

"I've got such a hardcore case of D.I.P.S., I tried to unlock somebody else's car in the parking lot."

From Urban Dictionary

Pregnancy Brain, Placenta Brain, D.I.P.S...whatever it is you want to call it (and really does anyone know what "it" actually is?), apparently I have it bad. Not all the time. It seems to come and go in waves. Much like my experience with the nausea. It's like having a brain most of the time but then when its gone, it's gone. And there's not really any telling when it will be back.

Insert sympathetic looks from other women: Honey, it only gets worse from here.

So it's Jason's birthday this coming Monday. A little over a week ago, as I was replenishing my stock of dry crackers (still necessary for bus rides of over half an hour), when I glanced up a shelf and saw the peanut butter Oreo cookies (biscuits but since they're American, I'll refer to them as cookies from now on). Now the man can prove to you that man does not live by bread alone...but peanut butter and bread is possible...at least before he was married it seemed possible. Oreos are a childhood favourite of Jason's and since we never eat them, peanut butter is one of his most favourite things, and lastly since his birthday was coming up and I wasn't sure when I'd be back to this store or even if I'd remember again before his birthday arrived, I decided to go ahead and buy the Oreos and hide them in my bedside draw while I thought of it. So I did. And promptly forgot about them.

Fast forward a few days till last Sunday. It really wasn't a long time. I'm pretty sure I only bought the Oreos Wednesday, last week after I went to the gym. At least I think that was the last time I subjected myself to that sauna, but I digress. Back to Sunday. Jason decided to ride his bike to our friend's house which left me to take the hour bus ride by myself. So naturally, I wanted to listen to the ipod but do you think I could find either of my two pairs of headphones anywhere? In the midst of turning the house upside down, Jason walks into the room while I'm emptying the contents of my bedside table on the floor, holding the oreos in one hand, rummaging through everything else with the other.

"Have you seen my headphones anywhere?"

"Are those Oreos?"

"Um, what? Oh..."

The sad thing is, I actually sat there thinking to myself why are there Oreos in my bedside table? Of course it took me few seconds to remember at which point I was so mad at myself for ruining my extremely organised surprise. Then I was shocked for not even having any clue as to why I had Oreos in my possession. Finally I was extremely embarrassed because I knew at that point I must have looked like some Oreo bingeing pregnant woman with a serious case of denial...my only saving grace being that they were peanut butter flavour and I haven't been able to eat peanuts or peanut butter since I've been pregnant.

Well, Jason just thinks this is hilarious and sweetly assured me he would 'forget' about it till his birthday anyway. Which is ridiculous because I know it's not true. It completely messed up my day. "It" being...well, I'm not sure which I was more upset about -- the surprise I messed up or the total absence of my sound mind. I let you know when I remember...

And I still don't know where my headphones are. They're not in the fridge. I already looked. Twice.

It's possible that only the Americans will get this one...

Let's just say, it could be worse.