Overkill of hypermarts

Rosabelle has slipped into a fairly good routine - that of taking 10-hour night sleeps before 10pm (still waking up at least thrice for feeds though), and taking a 1.5 hour nap after her lunch and bath in the afternoon. I'm hoping this isn't just a passing phase, and this means we have time to while before dinner time. With the Beijing summer being unpredictably hot, the nanny and I have been bringing her on trips to the hypermart, like yesterday, when we visited Carrefour.

But first, I made a quick stop at the baby's hypermart we got cheaper stuff on a Sunday ago. Turns out the 'on sale' set of four wooden toy cars had a defect - one of the taxi cars had a chip off the corner, and the pull-along crocodile had a splint on the wood. Fearing that they wouldn't let us exchange after X number of days, I decided to go yesterday.

Whilst waiting for them to check the defects for me, the nanny brought Rosabelle to the rather dingy-looking play area at the baby's hypermart, where she happily crawled around and did her usual 'Thank you' gesture by moving her hands in a 'Gong Xi' position.
I then let her try her first-ever kiddy ride on a toy aeroplane, which served to only jerk her forwards and backwards, with the risk of her smacking her face against the steering wheel. In the end, we carried her out before the ride even ended as she was more interested in the toys on the floor than in the ride itself.
They let me change the crocodile, but told me they'd run out of stock of toy taxis, also adding that it was hard to determine when the car suffered the chip, hinting that I might have damaged it only to come and get it exchanged. I was quite cool all along and got hot under the collar when they insinuated I actually could be bothered to take a RMB20 cab ride to change a RMB6 toy, and they said I could still play with it since the spoilt part was glued on quite firmly. In front of them, I broke the chipped part off and threw it on the table, asking them 'Would you let your child play with this? Forget it, throw it away for me, I don't need it.' With that, I turned to leave when one of the stuff said, 'Please, Miss, take this, you can still play with it.' I told her to then leave it at their toy area and make sure that no child chokes on the defective part. How. i.r.r.i.t.a.t.i.n.g.

We then went to Carrefour just across the road, where I proceeded to clean the handle of the supermarket trolley diligently. Just when I'd scrubbed it clean and wanted to sit Rosabelle in it, I then realized that the defective trolley had no child seat - grrrr. So I went on to clean rigorously yet another trolley, and lined her seat with a soft, white bath towel from the linen section before we let her sit in it. That's our Carrefour ambassador with her smile of sunshine.
We pushed the trolley around to show her fishes in the aquarium, Ultraman figurines, Barbie princess cut-outs, plush toys, and the various food sections.
Rosabelle was pretty much still excited by it all, and hopped in her seat at times. But today, the nanny and I overdid it when we brought Rosabelle to Tesco again, thinking she'd like the supermarket trolley and mannequin experience. She seemed pretty jaded five minutes into the trip, giving us a rather bored look with tired-looking eyes, all the time looking downwards at the trolley wheels and wanting to gum the trolley.
Yikes. We now know better than to give her too much of a good thing, no matter how much she enjoys it!