An “Aunty’s” Saturday

We let the nanny take only half a day off on Saturday as Wayne had some work on during lunch time, and I wasn’t keen/comfortable on having to cope with Rosabelle’s lunch time alone. So as usual, Wayne joined us on our morning walk, but it looks as if our girl’s more interested in the camera case -__-".

At the yard area below our apartment, Rosabelle spotted a 4.5 year old girl, Hui yang, somebody she had not seen before. Strangely enough, she was very attracted to this older girl and called out to her from afar, chuckling excitedly when I brought her near. The girl seemed very embarrassed and shy of Rosabelle’s over-whelming warm-heartedness, and hid away. I made Rosabelle appear in her face to peekaboo, resulting in her laughing and waving her arms excitedly, but causing poor Hui Yang to turn away.

The nanny took over from me to carry Rosabelle, and when the latter could not see the older girl, she even whimpered slightly until she managed to catch sight of her.Now, the nanny has been teaching Rosabelle the facial parts (e.g. eyes, ears, nose, mouth) but she normally only reaches out to grab noses but on Saturday, the girl decided to do us proud and accurately pointed (note: point, she did not grab) out Hui yang’s facial parts. We were all so amazed – clap clap!

Hui Yang’s grand-aunt asked the nanny if she was the mum, and was surprised that I was the mother. She later asked me how old I am and said I look too young to be a 32-year-old mother, haha! This old lady sure knows how to make my day man!!! (But on Sunday, at Pizza Hut, after I’d kindly offered a teenage girl next to me some complimentary coupons to use for exchange for foods whenever you order a pizza, she thanked me and told her also-not-very-young friend – “This Ayi (aunty) gave us this coupon.” Me?! An Ayi?!!! Hello!!! Grandmothers think I look 20-ish ok?!! I had a good mind to snatch the coupon back from her…GRRRRR…) Guess youth (or rather, lack of it) is all relative…

Anyway, I detract.

After lunch and her nap, we brought Rosabelle to the nanny’s office/dormitory, because I wanted her to get an idea of the nanny’s home, and of course meet with more people. On her off days, the nanny heads back to her office, a rented apartment with many rooms for the different nannies to sleep in. Her colleagues took turns carrying Rosabelle, who was more interested in the fish in the bowl, and the colourful Chinese New Year cow decorations on the opposite neighbour’s main door. They all kept commenting how young Wayne and I look (erhem…cough cough…).

After that, we headed to Joy City at Xidan - nine floors of shopping, dining, and entertainment. Wowee! I told Wayne if we did not have Rosabelle with us, I can spend the whole day shopping! Alas, we only spent an hour there as we had to rush back to prepare her dinner, and the only shopping we did was to get a discounted top and shorts for her from H&M there (I will just go crazy with the women’s wear sale there…must…con…tr…ol…). We did justice to ourselves, however, with a treat of kaya toast, milo dinosaur and barley drink at ToastBox (yes, the Singaporean branch). Rosabelle was more enchanted with the ceiling fan, and her biscuit snack…

By the time we got home, I had already nursed her in the car (and she also took a short 30-minute nap), so I had ample time to prepare her dinner of pumpkin and potato. She had enjoyed this puree before, but this time, she did not go beyond 3 teaspoonfuls – arrrgh! I ended up feeding her plain cereal instead when she refused to eat anymore of what I’d prepared (according to the nanny, she had OD-ed on this previously, and from then on, it made her wary/weary of sweet purees – in other words, sick of it!).

Oh well, at least she still takes pumpkin in other forms (e.g. with porridge), and she has a huge variety of other foods to take from – she started on avocado on Thursday (doesn’t like it), silver fish in porridge on Friday (likes it), and on Sunday took ground rice (likes it too). Even with the nanny in for the earlier half of the day, it was still tiring for Wayne and I – we only had our Domino’s Pizza dinner close to 10 pm at night – we are so not cut out to take care of Rosabelle independently on our own – yikes!