Chasing her Zhengzhou roots - Day 2

Maybe it was the new surroundings, or maybe it's because she slept early the night before, but Rosabelle was up and alert by 6:30am on Wednesday, Day 2 of our Zhengzhou trip. I did not have a good sleep as even though we placed her in the middle between the nanny and I, she kept surging to my side of the bed, leaving me with little space. When she woke up, she crawled towards me and I purposely kept my eyes shut, but she would have none of it and peeled my eyelids with her little fingers - how inconsiderate - tsk tsk!

Wayne's mum was due to help steam egg for her breakfast, but as Rosabelle had woken up way too early, she had gone out for a morning walk, not knowing that her grandaughter has defied the schedule. In the end, rather than waiting for her to come back, we ordered the steamed egg from the hotel. Here it is - impressive huh? It'd better be - it cost us RMB55, excluding taxes and service charge. The nanny and I gorged on the bread rolls, whilst Rosabelle enjoyed half a bowl of the steamed egg. The first round the hotel staff brought me a bowl of egg soup, and I had to clarify I wanted steamed egg...duh...

We requested for a high chair the day before, and here she is atop her throne.

After filling her up, I brought her on a walk around the hotel as the nanny enjoyed her breakfast. Wayne then came on to the hotel to pick us up, first posing outside our room 759.

That's the Shis in the hotel lobby.

And the nanny with her at the lobby of the adjoining Holiday Inn Express.

We then made our way to Wayne's grandparents' house - the whole idea of this trip is to spend time with them, as it'd probably be their first and last time seeing Rosabelle as they head to Xinjiang from August 29.

Rosabelle very nicely found a comfy spot on great-grandmother's lap as she chewed on some honeydew.

Wayne's father bought her a sound-activated parrot that could move and chirp songs upon detecting sounds/movements. Rosabelle was very fascinated by it and kept tugging at the parrot.

We managed to also capture some shots of Rosabelle and her great-grandparents.

We then all headed out for lunch together with his cousin, who has a 4-year-old daughter that Rosabelle enjoyed playing with. Rosabelle ate some chicken/vegetable cereal that we brought, and we all then left to get the (wierdest ever) family photo taken together.

It was then time for us to head back to the hotel for Rosabelle's bath and afternoon nap, and I managed to sneak downstairs for a facial and back massage - nice! When I got back, Rosabelle was still sleeping (!), and she woke up after a 2.5 hour nap, meaning we had some time to while before meeting Wayne's primary school friends for dinner.

Upon the recommendation of the hotel staff (also Wayne's neighbour working there), we went to Walmart, which was supposed to also have many other shops around it, but it turned out that the hypermart was the only shopping area we could get. Before we bored ourselves silly with a trip to the hypermart, we brought Rosabelle on her first merry-go-round ride.

She wasn't very keen on riding on the horse by herself, so I carried her to sit on the carriage, but it wasn't long before she got quite bored, probably from seeing the same scenery repeated ad nauseum, so we asked to get down before our 10 minutes was up.After the ride, on walking around to look for a taxi, we managed to chance upon the shopping lane the hotel staff told us about - very disappointing array of lesser-known shops, I must say...well, I can't expect too much, I guess!

Dinner was with a bunch of Wayne's friends - the three guys have known each other for 25 years, and each of them are respectively married, with one also expecting a child in December. This is Rosabelle with Wu Lihua, who had a knack in getting Rosie to be carried by her.

We got Rosabelle her dinner of instant porridge (cooked in the restaurant's microwave oven with our own bottled water), and she very quickly became sleepy after her dinner, so the nanny and I left with her first, taking a lift from one of his friends. When we got back to the hotel room, Rosabelle again fell asleep fairly quickly, probably exhausted by all the on-goings during the day.

Thankfully I managed to sleep better on this second night, zzzzz.....