Indoors for the Hols

Last Thursday, the eve of the long one-week National Day holidays, was our usual Kindermusik classes – luckily I managed to book a cab in advance and got there with ample time to spare. We learnt a lot of new songs during that session – Muffin Man, Grocery Store, To market to market, Go into the Kitchen… I’ve been singing a lot of them to Rosabelle these days as she seems to like them, as much as she likes the usual sweet breads and cream puffs treat after the class. I let her play around at Familier since we were having lunch there. I ordered way too much for us both – they have revamped the menu and portions seem much bigger than when we first had lunch there a few weeks back.

The spaghetti now comes with steamed vegetables, and my tuna sandwich was really quite huge. Even the potato/leek soup I ordered was rather filling, so when they served our waffles with ice cream, we (or rather, I) quickly polished that up in place of the sandwich – haha! The waffles with caramel ice cream was surprisingly good – delish enough for me to order it as a treat next time even when I’m not having a meal there, haha. Rosabelle also enjoyed taking sips from the mango/orange yogurt smoothie I’d ordered for myself.

We hung around till around almost 3pm before heading home – the centre has added a whole slew of new English books, and every time I go there, I am pleasantly surprised by small touches like a new alphabet/number carpet, new fluffy pillows, decals on walls, new toys etc. All to keep the children continually interested.

However, in contrast to the fun morning/afternoon, Rosabelle had a tumultuous time that night – first, she was walking along holding a fruit basket in one hand and an old mouse (as in laptop accessory, not the actual rodent), then fell over as she tripped over the mouse wire, cutting her tongue in the process (actually just a small dot of blood, but she did whine for awhile…). Then, as she was sitting on the toilet bowl and reaching out for a magazine to read, she hit her head against the wall, quite hard. As I say, she’s quite hardy but I know a hard knock when I see/hear one – luckily she did not complain too much.

The last knock was the worst of all – she stands on the anti-slip chair every night whilst brushing her teeth, and as she turned to face me, her back towards the sink, she was happily telling me that ‘玥玥拿这个', then reached out to point at something. It was at this juncture that her feet probably pushed against the side of the stool and the whole thing fell forwards, bringing her along with it as she fell backwards onto her back and head onto the hard floor with a thud. Oh. Dear. Me. I quickly picked her up and rubbed her head as she cried loudly – it seemed like quite a bad knock as I consoled her, at the same time reminding her that she should not have been moving around whilst on the chair. Thank goodness she did not have the toothbrush in her mouth and poked herself with it, or jabbed herself in the eye. She was crying for a few minutes, and of course I stopped brushing her teeth and sent her of to get changed for bed – she was fine after awhile but when Wayne and I felt around, we could somewhat feel a small bump. Poor thing.

Well, it didn’t affect her mood at all when we went out the next day. I didn’t have any concrete plans for the first day of the holidays, seeing that all scenic spots would be packed with an influx of folks from all parts of China. Since Wayne declared the air quality to be quite bad (it was a rather grey day, and I’m not talking about impending rains, but more of smog-like weather), we decided to go indoors to the malls. We headed out to Joy City together with Yeye and had a leisurely morning, since we did not have any particular things to buy/cover.

We saw some life-sized兔爷at the basement, and she wanted me to snap a shot of her in front of it.
We then saw some figurines in Adidas gear, pretending to run the upcoming Beijing Marathon, and our girl even mimicked the running action, heh!
After some random shopping around, we then proceeded to Bellagio for lunch. That’s me feeding her an after-lunch dessert of grapes I brought as she is focused on trying to do a ‘2’ with her hands…
And then some cosy-up time with Daddy dearest…
After lunch, we walked around a bit more to this shop with the big bear in front of it. There was an older girl who was abit strange – she kept laughing and giggling away as she thumped on the bear’s shoe, its hand, and on the leg. Rosabelle was amused by her antics, and also pretended to do her own thumping.
We then headed home for her to take a nap before going out together again for dinner that night. This time, it was somewhere near home – Shin Kong Place. They were having an exhibition of very cute and interesting art pieces and figurines from 798 Art Gallery – our girl started trying to mimick the different poses again, haha!
She also liked the girl in the picture, and chose to stand under禄 (of 福禄寿), declaring that I liked 福, and that Wayne liked 寿 and insisting that we also stand under the respective pictures.
We then headed to Din Tai Fung for dinner, where I even indulged her in the almond jelly ice dessert, heh! By the time we left the mall after, it was close to their closing time of 10pm. In the car on the way home, I was lightly tapping her shin along to the music as she sat in the car seat. Then she said something really hilarious…
Rosabelle: Mama!
Me: Yes?
Rosabelle: Mama不要这样, please. (proceeds to mimick my action of hitting her shin) 这样不好, painful.
Me: … Erm, sorry, maybe I was a little too hard in patting you.

She does have these grown-up-like moments, like when Wayne was playing Play Dough with her, and I overheard this…
Wayne: See this? 鸟! (as he proceeds to point to a cookie cutter tool)
Rosabelle: 不是鸟, 是公鸡。公鸡! 公鸡! (as she points at him accusingly – she was right, it was REALLY a rooster, and not a bird)
Wayne: 不跟你玩了! 伤自尊!

The day at the malls did not make an extremely eventful/happening first day of the holidays, but spent with family – that’s what makes it nice, isn’t it?