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Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Expecting the Unexpected; Dealing with the Unexpected

I like unexpected photos – I’m always the mamarazzi, but sometimes when I upload the photos from the camera, I see that Papa and girl have played around a bit, as in this case... She was trying to take a photo of Papa with her toy camera, just as Papa was snapping a shot of her. She even took real photos of Papa, albeit with his head chopped off, haha…
These days, with the advent of cold weather (thank goodness central heating started today, but it means it’s going to be dry at home – out come the humidifiers to the rescue!), we’ve had to stay home quite a few mornings, and of course in the evenings. The other day, she only slept for an hour in the afternoon as the winds were howling quite loudly and woke her up – it also did not help that our bedroom curtain was disengaged. Yes, the whole rod came down when I stepped on it whilst cleaning the bedroom – it’s not the first time this is happening as the curtain rod in Nainai’s room had dropped before. So we had no curtains that afternoon and night, and when the repairman could not come the next morning, I knew I needed to quickly put a makeshift curtain together, tying rubber bands at both corners of an old bedsheet, and stringing them onto the curtain hooks left on the walls, haha! The curtainman finally came this morning, and apparently, our curtains are double-layered (to keep out the sun) and thus rather heavy, and it does not help that the curtain rods are supported only by a knob of metal on both ends, making it very easy to give way. He suggested we get the ends elongated so that they can hold better – even the curtain rod in Nainai’s room is giving way again… think I’d better get Wayne to see to this when we are in Guilin…

Back to Rosabelle’s activities these days - even though our girl is happily occupied enough with her many toys/books, I’ve had to whip out my list of ‘To Try’ and go through my toy box to expend my ration of new books/toys. One thing she has been most happy with of late is a slate of 'Disney Cars’ foam stickers – I should really get her a sticker book one day, but she has fun pasting them all over us and herself, onto empty sticker sheets, and simply holding onto them for fun.
I also got some ideas from reading an activity at 3e during last week’s Mommy & Me – to let her play with her Play Dough set together with some beads/beans, so I took a few colours of red beans, yellow beans, green beans, black beans etc, and proceeded to construct a teddy bear face on a ball of Play Dough. She then proceeded to try and pull out the beans and later stuck them back into whatever shape she wanted. Nice, and just what the whole activity is about – practising their pincer grip when taking the small beans out, and letting them experiment with what/how beans look like when placed randomly (or not so randomly) in dough.
Another beany activity we got up to of late was inspired by a photo of her favourite Mai Dou at play in his kindergarten – he had a bowl of yellow beans and was scooping them up with a spoon to pour into an Ikea glass bottle. So, latching onto her interest in my vitamin bottles that I’d emptied out earlier that morning, I placed the two empty bottles side by side and gave her a spoon and a small bowl of red and yellow beans, asking her to scoop and sort the beans into the respective bottles. Surprisingly, she understood my instructions and did a pretty good job of getting the beans in – she even wanted to take a short cut and pour them all in, haha! I have been wanting to get a funnel and she can then experiment with it, using water, flour etc as well. After that, we just poured the beans into the bottles and used them as shakers, and she also had fun pouring them out again on the tray and swirling them around in the tray.
She also loves the new books I took out for her – Little Pirate Goes to Bed and There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly. She asks for the latter book when she wakes up, and since I’ve been pointing at the words when I read to her these days, she has picked this up and also points at random words when she reads any book to herself, heh!
The book is quite fun with nice drawings, though I find it morbid to introduce the concept of death (the old lady dies in the end after swallowing a horse…), and of swallowing such strange animals/insects, haha… So long as she likes it, I guess!
On the subject of books, she likes to ask Nainai to read to her as well, and I have an issue with Nainai’s pronounciation at times, pronouncing ‘luo bo’ (carrot) as ‘luo bu’, something my girl has worryingly picked up. Her hanyu pinyin intonation is also at times wrong, saying ‘ben3 ling4’ instead of 'ben2 ling3’ in a rhyme about a cat, so all I can do is repeat the correct word to Rosabelle when the wrong one has been pronounced. I feel bad about telling Rosabelle, ‘No, it’s not XXX, it should be XXX’ because correction of mispronounciation should be subtle, and it’s not her fault as she followed the pronounciation of Nainai, but I also hope that Nainai can hear as I correct her. Sigh… it has not been working much, and I really don’t wish to dampen our poor girl’s language leaning capabilities, so I had to resort to telling Rosabelle before her nap time just now that “If Nainai says ‘luo bu’, tell her 'no, it should be luo bo’”… Hopefully with enough repetition, Nainai will get it…

Yesterday, Rosabelle strangely peed in her pants three times at home on different occasions, even after Nainai urged her to pee (she resisted as she was playing), making Nainai quite mad – understandably so as she was asking her to pee, and she also had to wash her clothes after. When Nainai is telling Rosabelle off at times, she has a habit of poking our girl’s forehead casually, something I don’t really like. I told her lightly to not do it in case Rosabelle imitates her and pokes other young children, but when she repeated that just awhile later, I had to tell her bluntly to not do it. I think it equates to beating – it’s demeaning, something I wouldn’t do to myself, and definitely not to our daughter, no matter how gently Nainai does it.

Since we’re on rants, sigh… I found out to my horror that Nainai has only been bathing once a week. Yes, you read that right. Unthinkable in sweltering temperatures in Singapore, but with the cold weather, coupled with the fact that she has sensitive/dry skin, she has resorted to bathing/washing her hair only once a week. Thank goodness she does not smell, but I do feel squeamish when I think about it, and it does not help that her once-a-week-shampooed hair keeps dropping all over the house, on Rosabelle’s toys etc…

Oh well, all I can say that I’m glad she’s Rosabelle’s Nainai, as that’s what keeps me sane in spite of all these little quirks and happenings!

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