Some of her favourite things

Rosabelle has not really been taking well to her Avent sippy cup that we bought for her some time back, refusing to drink much from it - it's also rather heavy and needs her to tilt the cup up to get at the water, so after seeing how popular the Pigeon training straw cup is in the yard, we got her one last weekend. It turned out to be one of our best buys, ever.

Firstly, at 25% off, we got it at a bargain. Further, we managed to get a cute 150ml size that is less heavy than the other sizes - she wouldn't drink so much at one go anyway, right? Wrong.

Turns out Rosabelle likes drinking from the straw so much that yesterday, she finished off about 120 ml of water within 10 minutes!
Whenever she's hard at work drinking from the straw, we can see her draw her cheeks in and slurp thirstily from it, and when I want to keep the bottle, she will protest and start drinking again. Hmmm... anyone hear of OD-ing on H2O?

Of late, Rosabelle loves to ride on this duck tricycle, courtesy of an older girl, Qi Qi. She likes to press the buttons and dance to the music that comes out, and will often scream if we carry her out, wanting to go near if any other kid is riding on it.

Today, she hassled a two-year-old boy, Mai Dou, to try to get him off, and the boy actually lightly smacked her on the face. Our girl was very steady, and just soothed herself by patting/brushing her hand on the spot where she was hit, and continued wanting to press the buttons whilst leaning on the tricycle and on him, to the point where his mother had to carry him out as he was feeling threatened, haha! She now knows how to self-soothe, like when she hit her head against something, she will similarly brush her hand against the affected part to comfort herself before going on with her business.

Our girl also knows how to even undress herself - so scary! This has already happened twice. As we let her wear thin long pants in the home these days, many of them are rather long and big for her, so she will end up treading on the legs of the pants when she stands/cruises. This then pulls her pants down, and the nanny quietly observed her in the crib as Rosabelle slowly combined the motions of stepping on her pants, then pulling them down with her hands, to effectively remove her own pants. After doing so, she even called out 'Ah!' to the nanny and lifted the pants up for the nanny to see. So hilarious!

We'll be going to Amcare tomorrow to check on her iron levels - hopefully with the rigorous diet planning for the past 3 weeks, her anemia will be cured. I read that items like peas and lentils have high iron content, and so got some lentils for her at the supermarket today. Turns out that it's what the nanny has been feeding her, just that she calls it by some other Chinese name, duh...

I just need to really watch the nanny more carefully as she prepares the food, as I caught her adding water to the chicken stock - when questioned why, she said it was too oily, but I felt it then dilutes the chicken nutrition, and defeats the purpose of having chicken stock (might as well feed her the plain water, huh?), so I had to ask her to make sure she removes the chicken fats/skin before boiling the soup, and to ensure that she sieves out all fats in the soup (caught fat globules in the soup before)....sigh!

The nanny is also adamant that Rosabelle should be eating small quantities of salt already, saying that inadequate salt intake will lead to illnesses. Bullshit, I say. All other research I read say that children below one year old should not take any salts/sugars, and even then, only in small quantities. Rosabelle already takes things like children's soya sauce, and her noodles have some salt in them, and she also takes dried kelp (seaweed), so it should be sufficient.

I even told the nanny off today again for suggesting that I do not nurse Rosabelle before her breakfast, as it would affect her appetite. I told her that my mum, an experienced nurse who teaches weaning diets, and is an expert in nutrition, advised that I feed my daughter as often as I can (as long as she's eating well), and maybe the nanny, who does not have experience dealing with a mother who has been nursing for so long (in China, they stop nursing after maybe a maximum of 6 months), does not really know what she's talking about. I put it across to her in not the exact terms, but she got it - hopefully she'd stop hassling me about this.

For the first time tomorrow, we will attempt to use the countless packets of frozen EBM for Rosabelle's foods - I will be feeding her cornflakes with EBM for breakfast, and we will make her afternoon cereal with the EBM. Hopefully she'll take well to it, or I'm getting worried that the EBM from early May will be expiring soon in November, and the freezer is already packed to the brim!