Hand busy, feet messy

That's the literal translation of a Chinese saying 手忙脚乱 - that's what Wayne and I (well, mainly me) were today when our nanny went on our weekly day-off. She did not get a day off for the last week as my family was here and I needed a helping hand to be at home base and prepare Rosabelle's foods whenever we were outside rushing home, and to look after her when we went out for dinner. So, the poor lady had her well-deserved off day today, and left me to do the cooking for Rosabelle.

She'd actually cut all the ingredients for me last night, and even left a note with brief instructions on how/what to cook for lunch, and I'd also verbally gone through with her. However, it's been a fortnight since I last prepared Rosabelle's meal, so I even forgot how to boil the egg (putting the egg in only after the water boiled, resulting in mushrooming eggs that could not be used, and then taking the egg out too early, resulting in undercooked egg). After the third attempt, I gave up (Wayne and I each had an egg for breakfast, and could not finish the third one, throwing it away), and Rosabelle was already making noise from the hunger/wait. She'd woken up at 9:30am today, and I spent one hour making a simple brunch of cereal with chicken and carrot/broccoli. I even called the nanny to confirm if I needed the water to boil before or after adding the chicken for the first time to get rid of the smell - ARRRGHHH! I am so not cut out for the kitchen man!

Anyway, thank goodness Rosabelle enjoyed her brunch nonetheless, and we headed out for a late lunch with the Choons. After the past two weeks of various outings with my family, I think Rosabelle enjoys the experiences, even though it makes her tired at times, so I will try to bring her out at least twice a week, apart from the walks in the park, and even took her on a new walking route the day before, making her and the nanny run errands with me on visits to the bank, bakery, and photography studio within our apartment, all in the name of opening her eyes to new things.

The Choons and us met at Element Fresh at Sanlitun Village, a restaurant I've been wanting to visit (but Wayne wasn't too keen on from looking at the menu), and Rachel was still asleep in her pram (Rosabelle had actually fallen asleep in the car seat but after 25 minutes of waiting, I decided to carry her up and woke her in the process - thank goodness she was still smiley and happy!).
Poor Rachel got disturbed and woke up grouchy, and by then, I'd fed Rosabelle a third of a banana (she chews from the banana herself these days, so we don't have to scrape/puree it), and she also finished a whole Wakodo rice cracker. After we finished our meal (I had steak sandwich whilst Wayne had cheese macoroni with chicken, which were both yummy), I fed Rosabelle her gripe water and we took photos. Rosabelle is very sweet and has learnt to share foods with other people, for example, clutching at the nanny's nose to get her to also eat the banana, or offering her mushy cracker (saliva included) to somebody else when she is happily munching on it. How nice of her!

Now, I had blogged before about Rosabelle's likeness to Wayne, especially the eyebrows, but alot of people have commented that she has my chin - doesn't this photo show it up clearly? *beam*

That's our happy girl doing a jig!

After that, we headed to Herbal Cafe for some desserts, and got a seat near the entrance, where the little ladies' idea of fun was to tug at each others' socks.

After we headed home, it was another mad rush to bring Rosabelle for her walk, then coming upstairs to bathe her. Seeing that she had not slept much in the afternoon, my plan was to nurse Rosabelle to sleep after her bath, but she strangely was still alert and happy after her bath, so I quickly got down to cooking her dinner of noodles with egg, brinjal, broccoli, and spinach. I did not botch up this time (especially on the egg), though Rosabelle was hungry by the time I was done and managed to finish up most of what I'd prepared - yaaay, what a sense of accomplishment!

Till now, the nanny does not dare let me prepare porridge for fear of me spoiling the pot, haha! But she does nice porridge for Rosabelle - letting her try red dates yesterday by putting some in her porridge, though not feeding it to her directly, just adding it for taste and nutrition.

Luckily our girl slept early enough before 9pm today, so that Wayne and I could take a breather. Phew! I am so not looking forward to the nanny's next rest day man!