Welcoming sunshine

My posts over the next few days/weeks will be rather random/haphazard as I go in my time machine and backtrack posts (remember Singapore? remember Zhengzhou?... still owe myself those updates...), and at the same time try to keep up-to-date with what's happening - i.e. the present, the current, the moment, carpe diem!

To give Wayne's mum a break (hell, even the nanny got a day off a week!), Wayne and I have decided to take Rosabelle out for lunch at least one of the days - Wayne's mum decided not to follow us, maybe she needed her own me-time too, heh! So we were luckily greeted with a bright sunshine-y day of about 23 degrees celsius as we made our way to Chaoyang Park yesterday morning.

Look who found the sun too bright and gave an enthusiastic nod when I asked whether she wanted to don my shades... (her eyes were closed as she was not used to the darkness, and maybe she was afraid of the spectacle rests poking into her eyes, haha...)
As she gives me her classic 'beautiful smile'...

The flowers were all abloom, and luckily it was a Friday and there was relatively lesser people, though we saw loads of small kids on school excursions, heh!

Another 'beautiful smile' as she takes in the view.

A free balloon give-away from a childcare centre setting up booth in the park. Rosabelle was dragging the balloon on the ground, like walking a dog, until I told her she has to make the balloon go up high, so she accorded my wishes by stretching her arms up. (The balloon was abandoned finally as it kept coming off the stick and Wayne and I had to keep running after a floating, dirty balloon...).

We then chanced upon these mega bicycles (for families of 4 to 6) parked alongside the roads that were for hire, and Rosabelle decided she wanted a ride in the driver's seat, pretending to steer. Wayne eventually put her where she should be - in the baby seat with safety straps in front - and as you can see, she wasn't very pleased as she tried to get up/out, saying 'Stuck. Yue Yue stuck' all the time... (We didn't rent one of those - the whole idea of going to the park was to walk around and take in the sights - not meant for exercise time for Wayne and I, right? Ho hum...)

And then our girl spotted something interesting (pardon the squinty eyes, as the sun was getting glaring, even with my shades on, and I forgot to bring a sun hat for her, in addition to forgetting to bring our bubble gun).

She saw children driving around in inflatables on the water, and she started saying '要! 要!', threatening to climb up by lifting one leg up, aiyo! I had to explain to her that she was too small to drive that on her own, and no way Mummy can fit into it with her, haha!

Note that throughout this time, her additional thick vest was still on her, as she simply refused to let Wayne nor I take it off. It's been awhile since she wore this, and when I took it out for her in the morning, she was happy as a lark (even pointed to it on the clothes rack this morning to indicate she wanted to wear it, and with nice weather today as well, she does not need to wear another layer of pants underneath, so she made a 'Huh?' and pointed to her legs as Nai nai put her pants on directly without putting on the inner layer, as if reminding Nai nai that something was missing...heh!). So even when she started perspiring, she cried and pushed our hands away when we wanted to remove the vest. Goodness... she's better not pick up the 'would rather suffer in pain than not look good' trait from Mummy!

Eventually, after being distracted from all the running around, and looking around for her favourite sticks and stones (her surname is 石, maybe that explains her passion for stones as she always likes to hold them in her hands...), I managed to sneak the vest off her before she suffered heatstroke.

After that, we went for a well-deserved lunch at Annie's Pizza place down the road. Wayne and I enjoyed our lunch as Rosabelle is learning to feed herself well (officially fed herself corn very well with a spoon on 28 Feb in Singapore, and now can manage soups with a large spoon - though we have to help her support the bowl still) - I only have to cut the food into bite-sized pieces and put into her bowl and/or plate - she does the rest with her spoon or hands. We indulged her with some cheese cake and vanilla ice cream at the end, and even gave her finger fries (horrors!) and introduced her to the tomato ketchup dip (she kept wanting it as she saw Wayne and I dipping our fries into the sauce).

It turned out she's a ketchup fan (maybe it's something new and interesting) and she was dipping her fries into the sauce and sucking onto the fries till the same measly french fry was all soggy, tsk tsk...

Guess it's the novelty of a new food, like how she took to new stuff tried over these past few months like peanuts (boiled in soup), duck meat, lady's finger, starfruit, chiku (hated it - too sweet, I think...), durian ice cream (Wayne and I were sharing a cone at Parkway Parade in Singapore and she loved it!), mulberries, seaweed (started seriously on this snack in Singapore, and it's now something I offer her once in awhile as it's really quite salty...), Gerber's fish snack (a lifesaver on the road trip to Zhengzhou).

That's all for now as I continue diligently with my updates and backtracks!

P/S: Happy Labour Day, one and all. It's a public holiday (3 days, in fact) here in China but for non-working folks like us, it does not make much of a difference, except that we make it a note to not go anywhere touristy as it'll be abuzz with loads of people...