Every parent's nightmare...

Rosabelle amazingly woke up early enough at 8:30 am on the morning of 14 June, and the nanny brought her down for a morning walk. However, they came back shortly after when the nanny said that her mouth was moving when she saw other children drinking from the bottle, and she moved her mouth further when the nanny asked if she was hungry.

She quickly came home to make cereal with yolk, chicken and broccoli for her, but no sooner had she gone beyond half a bowl then did Rosabelle started feeling sleepy. (Nanny told me Rosabelle's signals are pretty clear - bending the head down in front means she is sleepy; bending the head to the side means she does not like the food or is angry - most of the time, it's because she wants to drink from the bowl or hold the bowl herself).

The nanny had no choice but to pat her to sleep, which she did for a solid 3 hours! In the mean time, Wayne fetched my family to Tesco supermarket for some grocery and local food shopping to bring back to Singapore. By the time Rosabelle woke up for and finished her lunch, it was close to 2:30 pm and we had lunch at Muse Restaurant near Chaoyang Park. Wayne and I used to frequent this place but the food is now sadly so-so, and the price comparatively high compared to the other nicer foods we've been having in the past few days.
Rosabelle enjoyed her crackers as well, but at one point almost choked by swallowing a much-too-big piece length-wise into her throat, so much so that she teared, and her poor nose turned red as she gagged. Almost scared me, but luckily the biscuit became soft with her saliva and could be eventually swallowed - phew! Sweet Marianne even said, 'Dear Jesus, please help make Rosabelle not choke'.

I dressed Rosabelle up in a feminine-looking number from 官批, and it was very comfy and most suitable for the hot summer sun when we went to the Chaoyang Park just after our meal.

It was quite a walk from the carpark to the epicentre of the park, so we just took a leisurely stroll, where Rosabelle kept wanting to grab at her panda portable fan, so I gave up trying to ventilate her after some time.

As usual, Simon and Marianne had a whale of a time running around whitout having to worry about cars, or bumping into people/things. (In case you think Marianne was collecting trash in the park with her garbage-looking plastic bag, she was holding onto her kite that she bought from Houhai the day before, so that she could fly it in the park, but alas, it was not a windy day, and we had so many other things to keep them occupied.)

It's obvious she has a particular favourite Disney Princess pose, with a doe-eyed expression to match...

Whereas Simon is his usual wild self!

It was a pity we went too late, as the Sony ExploraScience Centre would have been interesting for the kids.

Rosabelle did some scientific stuff of her own by lifting her arm to say 'Hello!' to a figurine that was similarly lifting its arm. My mum was highly amused by her copycat action.

With some time on our hands, Simon and Marianne went crazy on the many kiddie rides around the place, but each ride costs RMB15 (about SGD3), and children at their age needed accompanying adults, so my sis forked out RMB60 for each time the kids wanted to sit on a ride. My mum said this place is a haven to 'cheat little children', whilst I said it's just 'every kid's dream, but every parent's nightmare'!

The rides, as you can imagine, were poorly-maintained and dirty/rusty, but kids being kids, they enjoyed themselves so much they admitted this was the highlight of their Beijing trip when I asked them about it - told my sis she does not have to pay so much for their air tickets in future - just bring them to pasar malams (night markets) in Singapore and make their day!

It was a terribly exhausting day for kids and adults alike, so we decided to order in, and I ordered food from a restaurant opposite our apartments that Wayne and I often eat from - 湘溢满源. The portions are very huge and as in the case for the past few days, I brought left-overs back for the nanny so she could eat when we were out.

Rosabelle settled her dinner with a new food - chicken liver - that Wayne got from the supermarket that morning. The nanny cooked it in porridge with carrot and vegetables, and she liked it (ssshhh... don't tell my daughter that I hate liver - I've only ever eaten it once in my whole life when I was about 12 years old and quickly spat it out - if she knows I have food biases, she will similarly pick up on it and start being a fussy eater...). As I said, it was a tiring day so no wonder poor Rosabelle slept before 10 pm, but not before becoming all whiney when I was preparing to leave to go to my family's place for dinner. I could hear her crying all the way to the lift lobby and felt bad about 'abandoning' her, but I knew she was just cranky from being tired, and true enough, the nanny said she fell asleep 5 minutes after I left.

It would be Marianne's 4th birthday on 14 July, so I decided to celebrate it early for her and ordered a cake in to come in the morning from 21 Cake. I'd ordered other cakes before from this place and found them excellent, so on Marianne's request to have her favourite chocolate cake, and tempering with my sis' instructions to not order anything too heaty, I got her a Pine Stone Cowboy.

We sang her birthday song after our dinner. The cake, packaging, and utensils were all very exquisite, but unfortunately the kids did not enjoy the cake too much - they liked the white chocolate lettering of '生日快乐' though (maybe it wasn't chocolatey enough for Marianne, and Simon prefers strawberries). Well, I had a good time devouring the cake, and having the left-overs for breakfast the next day too - yummy!