Us these days

Last Sunday, Wayne was sleeping in in the morning, from having a six-day work week (adjusted from the Mooncake Festival hols), so by the time I brought Rosabelle up from our morning walk, he had gone out for his usual chiropractor’s appointment, and to get groceries. Our girl was naturally very happy to see Daddy dearest when he got back after her afternoon nap (I am happy to report positive results from our schedule adjustments – we’ve been successfully putting her to sleep before 11:30pm every night for the past few nights – yippee! Except for one night where she slept close to 12 am… now to strive for 10:30pm…). However, he had to leave shortly after to go to the office for some OT before coming home for dinner, and our girl started getting clingy, wanting Papa to carry, and wanting to follow Papa. So when Wayne closed the door on her, she was crestfallen, pursed her lips and looked at me pitifully as she cried ‘Mama’… oh dear, tugging at the heartstrings…

Soft-hearted me then whipped out something new for her to try – I have a stash of little knick-knacks for occasions likes these (and bad weather days), like taking out a pair of tongs for her to practice pincer-grip with a tool, a new sheet of stickers, and the other day, experimenting with sticking raffia onto ice-cream sticks as I drew them up to resemble guitars, and placed them in order of 1 to 4 so that she could paste the corresponding number of strings on.

This time round, I took out a roller and stamp pad I’d purchased online some time back, and got her going at it. However, she wasn’t very adept at picking up ink with the roller, instead banging on it and using it like a stamp, so of course I helped with that, and took out some cookie cutter shapes for her to stamp with. She was also more keen on removing and replacing the rollers with the 3 inter-changeable designs that came along with it. Subsequently, we got into finger/hand printing, and I improvised by drawing faces and hands/legs onto her cute fingerprints so that they became little people (and even turned a swoosh of fingerprint into a bird, haha!). That turned into another game altogether as I drew faces on hers and my fingers and started stamping onto the paper as well.
As usual, all these go up onto her Wall of Fame, and she requested for me to take a photo of her with those as a backdrop after she donned her Xinjiang costume hat on another day.
After she asked Nainai to tie the scarf around her, she asked that ’妈妈, 照相吧' – heh!
Of late, I’ve been busy with making sure that photos back from August are being developed – I develop them from time to time in batches, so that there isn’t a huge backlog, but getting them done in bulk means that I can get free framed photos thrown in, and I also updated our photo wall with some new ones from our recent studio shots. It sure is very cute to see photos of Rosabelle a year ago juxtaposed against those recent ones of her – my oh my, you can really see her grow…
All these photo developing meant that I was running to the photo shop quite a fair bit whilst on our walks, so that even Rosabelle now knows where it is (she can even point/lead me in the direction of home when in our yard area – at least I know she will not inherit Mummy’s hopeless directional sense…). With the sun setting by 6pm, and with no kids hanging out after that, it means that for evening times these days, I need to be innovative and keep her occupied on our lone walks around the estate.

On Tuesday night, we ran a few errands, like going to another photo shop to develop the studio photos into photo books (cheaper and nicer than those done at the usual photo developing place). Whilst in that shop, me being me, I was browsing through their knick-knacks and ended up with a new sheet of foam stickers for Rosabelle (she chose Disney Cars over Winnie the Pooh…), some window decals, and a scrunchy for myself. Rosabelle was most happy to help me carry the plastic bag of items home, and we stopped by another imported goods minimart on the way back for further shopping.

I wasn’t really planning to buy anything, but came out of the shop with some alphabet pasta, frozen fishcakes and fishballs… our girl also chose a new toothbrush for herself. Her current toothbrush is a little out of shape, since she chews on it at time, and even sucks water from it… so I took a few down for her to choose from – Lion Anpanman in 3 colours, and Disney Winnie the Pooh in another 3 colours. She wanted another design of toothbrush hanging on the shelves but after I told her those were for adults, she handed me back the Disney ones and said those were too big as well. Though it’s suitable for her age, I took a look and true enough, they did look much bigger than her current one, so she took her pick of a blue Lion one from the remaining options. Nice.

We had fun with the window decals that night – these are what they look like from the pack – a boat scene and a bee/butterfly scene.
After some creative rearrangement (I am so proud of myself at times… haha!), I fixed together a man and a rabbit (there was a girl on a skate scooter even, but we had to do her in for the rabbit… R.I.P.). We had a blast of a time changing around the man’s shoes (big pink shoes, or black leather shoes like Papa wears when he goes to work?), what he was holding in the hands (a big pink man bag, or a cup of water?), adorning him with a hat, or a bowtie etc. I can imagine loads of fun and creative play with this one!
Other fun things - Rosabelle can crack me up with simple comments like ‘Mummy so naughty’ when I pretend to roll over when I am supposed to nurse her. In the past, whenever I rolled over or pretended to sleep, making her start to whine, I would say to her ‘Mummy’s so naughty, right?’ – guess she picked up on that!

Since we are on the topic of milk, I gave her her first taste of cow’s milk on Tuesday morning, or more specifically organic milk from Green Yard, which has been given rave reviews on the Beijing Mamas Forum. I ordered it on Sunday and got my carton on Monday afternoon (minimum order of 8 – so I got 4 full-cream, 1 low-fat, 2 sugared yoghurt, and 1 non-sugar yoghurt – the deliveryman took and extra full-cream packet, and since he said he has to go all the way to bring it back, I nicely took the extra one, and of course paid for it – RMB12 for milk, RMB14 for yoghurt). So that morning, I warmed it up in hot water (like how I used to warm up EBM), and poured about 100ml for her. I had advice from other Beijing Mamas that she might not like the taste (she loved it! Maybe it’s because the milk taste is not too overpowering…), to watch out for allergies (she had cheese and yoghurt before, so should be ok), and that I should be offering full-cream milk until two years of age at least.

Phew! If all goes well, milk will be a staple breakfast food (she had another try on two other mornings and similarly gulped the whole cup up, and she also seemed to like the yoghurt – hope the novelty doesn’t wear off!), and I will likely add another feed of milk at night, before she sleeps, so that she can hopefully be filled up enough and finally sleep through the night without needing to wake up and nurse! My main reason for adding milk is of course I worry about whether my milk is sufficient/nutritious enough for her since it’s already been two years, and I do not wish to introduce formula because it has way too much sugars and processed ingredients.

Another funny remark she made was when we came back in the lift one day, and a man followed in with two big bags of groceries. When he left them on the floor near the entrance, Rosabelle immediately remarked, rather worriedly, ‘过不去呢...', and the man was rather embarrassed, apologizing before shifting the bags to make way for us. Haha!