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Tuesday, November 16, 2010

In between Guilin/Yangshuo preps

OK, I’ve been busy packing for our upcoming Guilin/Yangshuo trip (departing this Sunday) – I realize I need to buy a bigger piece of luggage as I’m only halfway through and things are already not fitting in… so most free time has been spent seeing to what to bring (or not to) on our trip, but I’m very excited to be able to see my family soon!

There are no major developments/updates of late, unless you count the fact that Rosabelle can now take off her shoes (she will run and place one shoe back at the couch, then go back to her chair and proceed to take off the other shoe before going to the couch again – she has not fathomed that she can take off BOTH shoes before putting them back at the same time…), and do/undo buttons.

The other day, I tore off some pages of a sticker/colouring activity book (I did not want to give her the whole book as she’d probably get more distracted by the many other pages rather than focus on one single page), and got her to colour an aeroplane, bringing the magnetic uppercase ‘A’ and lowercase ‘a’ to spell out ‘aeroplane’ on the page. I’d wanted her to use the stickers to paste the missing parts of the aeroplane first, but when she saw the pages, she immediately shouted ‘画画!' and grabbed her markers and placed her chair at the TV table excitedly.

I was pretty impressed by what turned out – I’d expected her to just grab a colour and draw/doodle randomly on the paper, but she instead took one corresponding colour to match to the orange wing, and coloured WITHIN the wing – tres impressive, no? Of course she still managed to get the marker outside of the wing, and went on to mismatch some colours on the body of the plane, but she got most of the matching colours right, and went a step further to use the stamps on the other end of the markers and place birds on every cloud, then a butterfly next to each bird (patterns evolving here…) - such a nice piece of picture!

We then moved on to the stickers, where she did not really get it, wanting to place the stickers onto the smaller, complete aeroplane (that shows you where the missing parts of the big picture are), and of course with some guidance, she got the stickers in the right place (well, almost – some were backwards/too high/low, but hey, she’s only 24 months old!). When we were ready to place them onto the Wall of Fame, she found out that there was a 喜洋洋 bus picture at the back, so we did some more sticking and I nicely introduced B (Bus) to her as well.
I think she loves crafts and art, so when we went to Ikea on Saturday, the only things I got were some paint brushes and more markers. Well, I also managed to get a big and small funnel that she has fun with during bath time, pouring water into bottles. Things that I’d wanted to get – small tongs, tea-time play set, measuring spoons… they were all out of stock. Sheesh.

At least we had a good lunch at Ikea, where I amazingly managed to get a table within one minute of looking (they were just clearing to go and even nicely wiped the table for us). Rosabelle was busy playing with an older girl (7 years old) at the next table whilst Wayne got the food. They had fun looking at the animals/flowers on each other’s clothes, chuckling when they both tumbled to the floor as they were squatting down together. The girl kept carrying Rosabelle up, so I of course had to keep my hands ready in case they fell over. When lunch started and we put Rosabelle in the high chair, she told the girl, ‘姐姐,不玩了,玥玥要吃饭了' – haha… An older girl next to her at the next table was eating, and she told her, ‘姐姐,好好吃饭,快点嚼!'... goodness…

As we were leaving, she spotted this stacking toy that I deliberated buying earlier (but it’s pretty pricey – RMB49.90 for something I wasn’t sure she would play with) – she had fun with it, and I even wanted to go back on upstairs to buy, but rational Wayne was like ‘Aiya, she will only play with it for 10 minutes…’ – oh well…
She then enjoyed a treat of Ikea ice cream cone (with a crazy queue of hoards of people waiting to buy hot dogs and ice cream – they must make loads with this one!), preferring to eat the cone instead – just as well, since she won’t be injesting so much sweets…

Yesterday, at 7-Eleven, she took a chocolate lollipop and came up to me:
R: 咱们买这个吧 (she loves to use the ‘咱们' these days…)
Me: 这是什么东西?
R: 棒棒糖吧。。。
Me: 你看过谁吃?
R: 惟惟姐姐。。。
Me: 你觉得好吃吗?
R: 好吃。。。

And I let her hold onto it as I explained that it was very sweet, and I can offer her fruits if she’d like. She chose some other flavors and suggested I buy them, where I gently rejected, of course, and thankfully, she was most cooperative when I asked to leave to go to another supermarket – no meltdown/tantrums etc, phew! I almost gave in and bought one just because she was so sweet and patient about it, but thankfully resisted as I don’t wish to set a precedent – if I buy one today, she will expect one every time we step into the place!

On Sunday, Wayne wanted to bring Rosabelle along for a visit to the chiropractor’s since Dr. D was returning to the States soon, so that’s us in the car making funny faces (pardon the bad framing as I was trying to pose in the picture AND snap us both at the same time)…
In the course of taking the shots, our heads would collide gently at times, and she has picked up a very colloquial ‘没事', complete with 儿化音, as she pats me gently on the head, telling me it’s ok and it’s not painful even though it might hurt, haha… (she will at times blurt out phrases that she picked up, like suddenly saying ‘真讨厌' when the Lego blocks she was stacking toppled over… I gave her a large spoon to cook a fake brinjal in the pan and she told me in a very adult-like fashion, ‘妈妈,咱们用小勺吧,用大勺炒不动呢...').

We then headed to Pizza Hut around the corner of the clinic to get lunch first, and had to wait about half an hour for a table. Maybe she was hungry, but she finished lunch pretty quickly and could even pose for a shot with the Pizza Hut cowboy – yee hah!
After that, we went to the chiro’s and when Wayne enquired, Dr. D had already returned to the States on Friday! Tsk tsk… that’s how it is with Wayne – he assumes that his verbal appointment with Dr. D last Sunday (to return this Sunday) was cast in stone, when me being me, always believe you should at least call prior to confirm. But no… he always likes to save the call but make a wasted trip, haiz…

Anyway, after we reached home and put her to sleep, we both headed out to New World City near our house as Wayne wanted to get some mens’ wear (but we couldn’t find anything good…). When we reached home close to 7pm, Rosabelle had just woken up and was playing with a new doll, Duona. This doll was given to us by our neighbor for her birthday, but I’d saved taking it out until Sunday morning – the smell was really strong and I hung it in the balcony for two days, then wrapped it in a plastic bag with two big pomelo skins to get rid of the bad synthetic smell.

When we took Duona out for Rosabelle in the morning, she was so delighted, and kept hugging it. However, you are supposed to talk to it and it will talk/sing back – after Nainai and I asked it to sing a song, it replied, ‘我听不懂你说什么 / 你再不理我,我就不跟你玩了', making me worried that even with adults’ pronounciations, it still cannot understand us – how demoralizing can it be for Rosabelle if she speaks to it and gets such negative feedback? Worst of all was the quality is really bad – its knitted top kept shedding fur balls, and its hair kept dropping out! Wayne was suggesting that he will throw it away when we go to Guilin, but our girl loves it to bits, asking for Duona all the time, and it was Nainai’s saving grace to stop her from crying when she woke up from her afternoon nap and I wasn’t home on Sunday evening.

Nainai has spent a lot of time trying to remove bits of fur balls and tousling the hair…sigh..let’s see – I can’t imagine how ‘poisonous’ its materials must be if the smell was so strong… I must look for a better-quality substitute before we get rid of this lousy Duona (she finally sang – quite lousy-quality recording and Chinglish English songs as well… yikes!).

But I know it’s going to be tough – Duona is finding her way into the stories that Rosabelle invents, like her story about her going into a house, seeing a cat/rat with a candlestick, then realizing it’s Duona’s birthday and her friends like Mai Dou and Niu niu were also there and pretending to be riding the sofa like a horse. The other day, there was yet another hilarious story about her leading a blue cow to 金港国际 to play at the slides and do some cooking as she cooked some 娃娃菜for it to eat…sure is fun to see where her imagination takes her!

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