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Thursday, November 4, 2010

Angel in his eyes...

Yesterday, I brought Rosabelle for our usual Mommy & Me session at 3e, and it was another fun-filled hour as she got flour all over her clothes from one of the activity stations (as I always say, ‘I’m glad all these mess isn’t happening in my house!’), and knows the class routine of quickly running to grab a musical instruments bag and sitting in a circle once the teacher takes it out at the end of the class for sing-along sessions.

After class, she obediently sat with me at the school lobby area and ate some tangerines before we took a leisurely stroll to Element Fresh again for lunch – no rushed errands/things to buy this time, not like last week. It was a nice walk there, and I’ve always liked the surroundings in Lido area – Wayne thinks it’s like he’s overseas, haha… rightly so, as there are so many foreigners, foreign schools, restaurants and shops here.

Rosabelle wanted her mushroom soup again but that wasn’t on the menu, so we had pumpkin soup instead (halfway through drinking the soup, she proclaimed, ‘玥玥要喝水。南瓜汤可甜了,得漱漱口呢。' Heh! She seemed to also enjoy the pork wanton and chicken/mushroom ravioli I ordered (note to self – don’t order things that are so similar in future – both are meats wrapped in flour skins, though one’s Eastern, and another’s Western…), and nicely fed herself so I could finish my lunch at the same time.

However, I had a different waiter this time round, and he wasn’t as attentive as the lady we had last week – not clearing plates fast enough, not getting kids’ utensils to me before the food even came, not preparing more napkins for me etc etc… and one bad thing was the washroom was upstairs, a spiral staircase up. So I had to carry Rosabelle twice (yes, she wanted to go to the toilet twice in that short span of lunch) up and down the steps. In my leather high-heeled boots. Thank goodness I did not stumble over on my face… But all these aren’t going to stop me from going back to Element Fresh for their nice food and generous portions – though I might give it a miss and try something else next week.

Today, we headed out for Kindermusic classes at Familier, decking her up in a boy-style gear of camo pants and a bomber jacket, haha! Tres cute, no?
As we were getting down from our car, we saw another Mummy, Gina, wheeling her son, Yi An(?) in his stroller as the boy cried away. They are Koreans and live at Central Park just next door to Chaowai SOHO, and poor Yi An absolutely hates coming to class, bawling away as his mum headed towards the direction of class. She had to carry him, and Rosabelle enjoyed helping to push his stroller on up to class, and as we were preparing for class to start, he was crying away.

I had bought an orange madeleine from Comptoirs de France yesterday for our girl to eat for breakfast in the car (after drinking some of the Green Yard yoghurt), and she was holding onto half of it still. Deciding that she did not need too much sweets, and not wanting to have to deal with cake crumbs on the classroom floor, I quickly peeled half for Yi An and that made him stop his crying. Immediately! Bravo!

And so whenever he started crying, I would feed him bits, and that seemed to work somewhat… heh! Thank goodness sweet Rosabelle was very willing to share her treat, and we started class soon enough, learning new songs, and having distracted kids running all over the place.

Rosabelle had so much love to give that half-way through a song, she went over to another Mummy’s lap (as she was carrying her son Jonas on her lap) and laid on it, even hugging and kissing him till he cried, oh dear me… At another point, she rode on a huge teddy bear and started singing ‘To market, to market’ (because we had used the bear to bounce on our laps previously), and then ran away – another Mummy asked ‘Is she always so happy?’ – haha! Yes, I should think/hope so!

Class ended soon enough and as the kids munched on cookies, I quickly gave Rosabelle her Yakult to fill her up (with something more healthy) but Yi An remembered her favor and quickly came over to also share some of the cookies, so sweet of him. His mum later told me that he told her - 'Rosie漂亮' – haha! She must have been like his angel for giving him such nice food when he was crying away earlier…

We had lunch at Familier where she wanted 蘑菇汤, and I ended up being the one drinking every single drop of it as she did not even finish her spaghetti with broccoli/cauliflower (I pinched chicken from my BBQ Chicken Pizza for her as well), and was distracted by the grapes I took out for her and Yi An to share. That’s why Mummies get fat so easily/quickly, polishing off food they have no heart to waste when their kids don’t eat up…

The kids played around awhile more, stringing straw necklaces (see her donning it?).
She was also supposed to glue a bird and paste feathers on it, but she just left it at the gluing part and left the feather affair to the assistants there, heh!
When Gina/Yi An wanted to head home, we also left with them since I always wanted to check out BabyGro at Central Park. More importantly, I read that CC Sweets had opened a shop there as well. It’s no secret that I have a sweet tooth and I’ve been always wanting to try their cupcakes (Colibri’s at Sanlitun North as well), so I wanted to buy some to pack and go.

We took a nice walk back with them and normally, Yi An will fall asleep in his stroller but maybe he had 漂亮 Rosie with him, and he was too distracted, asking to come out of his stroller and running around in the compound with her. Gina pointed me in the direction of BabyGro and CC Sweets, and Yi An actually overheard us saying I was going to buy cupcakes. After we’d bade farewell to them, he asked his mum to also go get cupcakes, so together, we first went for a browse around BabyGro (so small, and so expensive for basics, though for some imported brands, they are actually cheaper than Taobao!). Then we headed to CC Sweets where Rosabelle decided she wanted to poo and pee! Okay… now this wasn’t in my yard area where I could just let her pee wherever in the bushes. This was at Central Park – and it is quite an elite estate, so rather than run to the nearest toilet (quite far and dirty, according to Gina), Gina nicely offered to let us use her toilet, so we quickly made our purchases (RMB22 for ONE small cupcake, which is VERY expensive, but I just tried the chocolate one, and it really is very good!) and headed to their home.

As you can imagine, our day stretched as after Rosabelle peed (no poop – false alarm!), Gina invited us to stay on for awhile and she opened up the cupcakes she’d bought (which had become a mess as Yi An was holding onto, and swinging, the box around wildly…), and asked the Ayi to cut some apples and prepare some tangerines.

Basically the kids had a tea party, and Rosabelle kept feeding Yi An the cream on top of her cupcake, then went on to feed him the cupcake. She was also feeding him, and eating herself, quite a lot of apples, and even wanted to feed him his water, aiyo! In the end, I told her to feed herself the cupcake and THAT was what she was waiting for. See, she knows I don’t normally let her eat sweets and cakes, and her tactic is to hold the object of desire and feed other kids. She will wait for the exact moment where the other kid rejects, and then look at me, giving me the cue to say ‘XXX不要了,你吃吧' – and you can imagine how quickly she polished off the small cupcake, haha!

By the time we were ready to go, it was already close to 3:30pm, and Gina/Yi An even sent us down to take a taxi. Gina said Rosabelle made Yi An very happy, but I’m not sure who made whose day in this case as Rosabelle was also having a good time! It’s no wonder than less than 10 minutes into nursing her just now, she already fell fast asleep!

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