But Mum, I've only ever seen it cooked...

I decided to let Rosabelle have a taste of uncooked rice today - well, not literally, but to let her play with it!

I got inspiration from this post on another Mummy's website which suggested that "Toddlers and preschoolers love to pour, scoop and dig into sand, dirt… the list goes on. A fun and not as muddy way to do this is with rice. This isn’t just a messy activity, it’s also teaching them spacial (sic) skills, measurement and works on their fine motor abilities!". I find her site pretty informative and fun for ideas for various art and craft sessions we can do around the house, using household items, and even though her kid's much older, I can adapt ideas off her - these will come in handy for upcoming bad/cold weather days in Beijing!

So I got together a microwave basin of rice (as Wayne says, "My daughter, other kids play with a sand pit/dirt, and you play with rice - you have expensive tastes!"), a toy shovel, a measuring spoon, a plastic spoon, and a disposable cup, and let her at it. She wasn't very sure what to make of the tray of concoction in front of her at first, grabbing at the various items in it...
So I showed her how to pour and dig at the rice, and she slowly decided to feel her little fingers through the rice, and practise her pincer grip with the little rice bits.
Patting her fingers onto the rice, she decided she liked it and started picking at the rice that had stuck to her palms.

She kept grabbing the rice with her bare hands to throw it onto herself and/or out of the basin and onto the floor around her.

And it was fun to see her having fun with the feel of rice running through her bare hands.

Of course, being a typical 13.5 month old, everything has to go into the mouth! Though she was a good girl and stopped doing so after a few tries (and when she realised it didn't taste as good when uncooked!).

Most of the time, she pretty much ignored the tools I left in the basin, so there wasn't much scooping, as you can imagine. But she got a good sense of the feel of the rice, and the reaction of scattering them around the house.

The site says most children at this age will focus on an activity for maybe about 5 minutes before being distracted, but I think Rosabelle was at it for about 10 minutes. And importantly, it reminds that we should not try to 'teach' them how to play, as they learn best when exploring for themselves - very true. So I gave her free rein and could only shudder when I saw the mess we had to clear up after in sweeping up and flicking grains from the grooves of our floor tiles. As the nanny says, 'Play-time is for only 5 minutes, but clearing up time is for 20 minutes' - haha!

Well, I've kept the rice box set away for another day when we are in a feely, scooping mood - another idea from the site is to hide small toys within the rice and get her to find it - something I will try another time. It will be fun to explore more of such indoor activities with her, but I am also mindful of the fact that children at this age need more outdoor time as it's better for their eyes. It's all a matter of balance, I guess!

In my daughter's eyes...

I am apparently a hot and sexy, toned model appearing in the pages of an Oakley magazine...
Wayne was flipping through this magazine with Rosabelle when the latter started pointing at the model and calling 'Mama, mama...', and kept wanting to turn back to this page whenever Wayne turned to the other pages. She will look at the model, look at me, then give me her sweetest smile. Apparently, this is her mental image of me on some occasions when I don my sunglasses... haha!

Of confused bowels & fowls

On Saturday, there was glorious sun and as usual, Wayne took Rosabelle out on a short walk as I did some cleaning up after her breakfast and got ready for lunch outside since it was the nanny's day off.

(We have observed that our girl has a bad habit of not wanting to poo when the nanny's not around. When she gives her usual 'poo face' - of wanting to pass motion - we will carry her to the bed to 'nnnng nnnng' her, but when we do it, she will wave her hands/body/head to say that she does not want to poo. However, when the nanny's back on Sunday, she will happily poo...sigh! She does sure know how to get selective in the wierdest things!)
We ended up at The Orient Kitchen at The Village, letting her try beef kway teow (just the noodle, since she has not eaten beef yet), fish slices, chicken wings (after I tasted the chicken, I realized it was slightly spicy - no wonder she shrieked and kept flicking her tongue and wanting to drink water when I fed her parts of the chicken with the crisp outer layer, haha!), xiao bai cai, mushrooms, and radish. She ate pretty quickly, and quite alot, I must say, so coupled with the good service and ambience, it was quite a good meal for her and adults alike.
After that, we took photos with a Christmas barn and tree... not her first time seeing a Chirstmas tree though.

Last year around this time, my Mum's house lobby had a Christmas tree, complete with sparkling star at the tip.
And we also took a family photo with the massive Chistmas tree at a hotel buffet lunch (when Rosabelle was only less than two months old).

Time sure flies! These days, she's continuing to amuse (and amaze) us with the quirkiest things, like picking up on how Wayne washes his hands - she observed once and after that waved her hands and rubbed it to mimick 'Daddy washing hands'. She also strangely likes to use a straw for drinking nowadays (maybe she likes her Pigeon pop-up straw bottle too much), so when we are at our wit's end if she does not eat her fruits (like the other day when she rejected papaya), we mash up the fruit for her to slurp it from a straw from, heh!

She also has a developing strong sense of possession - as one of her favourite fridge magnets is that in a shape of a duck (that she always mistakes for a chicken and goes 'cuckoo koo'), she will always look for it when we are playing near/at the fridge. However, the duck magnet strangely went missing yesterday, and to her sounds of her going 'cuckoo koo' in the saddest tone, the nanny, Wayne and I started looking around all over the house for the missing chicken-duck. For the whole 15 minutes before Wayne eventually found it in her toy box, Rosabelle kept looking towards the fridge and casting us a sad look as she went 'cuckoo koo', as if saying "Please help me to find the 'chicken', it's lost...". Well, after Wayne found it, she even managed a vague '谢谢' (we are teaching her some Ps & Qs these days - it's never too early/late to start!), haha! But as you can imagine, she only held onto 'cuckoo koo' for about 2 minutes before being distracted with other toys, heh!

Our table centrepiece

Rosabelle's playing territory knows no bounds (as long as it's safe and we are keeping an eye on her, of course). Yesterday, before her dinner time, she decided that after sitting on the dining table chair for all of 2 seconds, she wanted to climb onto the dinner table as well.
So here she is, exploring the stack of coasters, and playing with our wallet, purse, keys, handphone etc left on the table.

I was by her side all the time to make sure she was safe at this height. However, as she was at the TV console just now, she lost her balance momentarily and hit the edge of her nose against the sharp edge of the table. I do not normally console/carry her up after a fall/hitting, but I could see it was quite a hard smack, and she of course started to bawl. I carried her up and Wayne had to distract her with games on his mobile phone screen before she stopped crying. Luckily, she was only crying for about 2 minutes, phew! But we could see a slight red swelling around the nose area, poor thing.

Wayne got back home this morning (and Rosabelle was kicking excitedly and kissing Daddy as he carried her - so sweet), just as well, as our girl must be missing her Daddy. For the past few nights, when she was sleeping, I could at times hear her murmuring 'Papa', and once even 'Yeye' (as we kept telling her 'Papa is at Yeye and Nai Nai's house'). She was also making smacking noises like a fish on one night, heh! She can now recognize and point out the different family members in Wayne's and my family portraits, even calling 'Gong gong' (my dad) pretty clearly.

Here is a random shot of her before we went out yesterday, in yet another new sweater top. The Barbie hat had a close shave this morning! After walking for about 15 minutes around the neighbourhood, I carried her out to see some wooden elephants outside a restaurant, and noticed that one side of the plait on the hat was missing. Oh dear! It must have been yanked off when she turned her head too quickly whilst her body was pressing on it.

So sad, as the plaits make her look nice and feminine...so when the nanny came down to feed her fruits, I retraced our steps and thank goodness, saw the stray plait lying on the floor outside the supermarket, in not too dirty a condition, haha! So we happily brought it home to clean and got the nanny to sew it tightly back on...phew!

In keeping with the sweet Barbie image of our dear girl, she continues to warm our hearts with very sweet gestures. As the dry winter excerbates my skin rash condition, I will at times apply ointment on parts of my arms with the rashes after bath. When Rosabelle sees that, she will pretend to cry, giving her 'oooh, oooh, oooh' sound, and come towards me to kiss the parts of my arms that have the rashes. Aiyo, so not clean, but oh so sweet lah!

Hugs & kisses to Raelynn!

It wasn’t too long ago over CNY 2008 that I visited Pauline after she had given birth to her first child, a sweetie Raeanne who is about 9 months older than Rosabelle. I even used my big angpow to cover the length of the poor girl's torso, haha!

Jie Jie Raeanne (still tiny as a pod then in above photo) is now a proud big sister of Pauline and Aik Cher’s second child, another sweetie Raelynn! Congrats my dear friend, and here’s to the power of SAHMs - can't wait to visit you all over CNY 2010!

Check out Raelynn's cheeky little wink below (photo taken from their blog), and only the Teos can fathom how on earth they managed to give a blow-by-blow account (down to the minute) of what happened (a tape recorder, maybe?) even as they were both occupied with a 101 things going on during the delivery. Aiyo!

Name: Raelynn Teo

Popped out on: December 02, 2009

Mom & Pop: Pauline & Aik Cher

Jazzing up with a splash of colour!

A few updates on the speech/development front before I touch on the topic of this post -- as you may now know, Rosabelle likes to say '八' alot, and she can now recognize the number '8', as there are numbers on her playmat, and the nanny has taught her to spot '8' on it. Just yesterday, she looked at the stacking cups with numbers on it, and called out '八' on the corresponding cup!

Another favourite of hers these days (other than fishes and making fish sounds) is saying 'flower', and pointing out flowers in pictures, on our bedsheet...and kissing the beautiful blooms. She is also learning to say 'bye bye' (and use it in the right context) pretty well, proactively shouting 'bye bye' to people when they are/she is leaving. She has also picked up the 'mehhhh' sound of the lamb, adding to another animal I can sing when we do the 'Old MacDonald' song, haha!

However, I notice she still mixes up rabbits with cats, often seeing a rabbit and going 'mao mao' - must be the long whiskers lah! Also, at this age, she probably can't really tell the distinct difference between a duck/chicken/goose, going 'cuckoo koo' when she saw the outlined shape of a duck magnet on the fridge. She loves playing at the fridge these days, as we have placed the magnets down, and brought some photos down for her to stick them on. She goes with a loud and enthusiastic 'Yaaay!' every time she places a magnet/photo successfully on the fridge or the window panel ledge next to her, so funny!

She has picked up actions like using her saliva towel to want to wipe our mouths, making cheeky 'ti ti ti' sounds (as in 'tickle') as she attempts to tickle me or the nanny on our legs, putting her hand to her ear if we ask her 'How does a baby sleep?', and going to the DVD player and start dancing to indicate she wants us to switch on the stereo.

One rather anal-retentive trait she has picked up (from who? me???) is she will always place her stacking block the right way up (i.e. with graphic facing up) before stacking something on it. Aiyo!!!

Well...on to today's topic...

Today, Rosabelle is showing off her down jacket in a multitude of rainbow colors (the one that we paid slightly more from the shop than if we had bought it online). She had already worn it before on previous occasions, but as we are almost always rushing to go out (or she'd start making noise bundled up as a heat ball), and I don't usually carry a camera when I'm out with her alone, I never got a shot of this outfit. So, braving the strong winds this morning (we headed back after about 30 minutes - there were no other children around as the strong winds were coming up), I also made her wear her brand new, white Barbie hat (also from the same shop). Already, two mothers have enquired about where I got this down jacket from the first time she wore it out - I nicely told them, but hope they won't be copycats!

And I got my fair dose of colour as well today at Tony Studio (东田造型) at Xin Dong An, where I finally decided to colour my hair after 22 months since my last dye job - yaay! My last haircut (that turned out into disastrous bangs, against the good advice of my stylist Zhao Ming) was in April (the salon has since been renovated too), so this was loooong overdue.

Luckily I managed to catch Zhao Ming today as he's out of town tomorrow - he says he's travelling for business half the time, as he follows celebrities for their shows/appearances, ooohhh.... He's good, not pushy/over-chatty, but yet still very detailed when doing my cut and advising on the color (the colourists do the actual dye job). Well, he'd better be... he is now Creative Director and costs more to do a simple cut than before (RMB280 vs RMB180 in the past - GULP!). Erm...that's him on left, not his model in large photo on the right...

Let's just say I went away happy (even if I had to be at the studio for 3 full hours, and the poor nanny had to look after Rosabelle whilst preparing the latter's dinner), as I now have purplish-brown base hair with bright red highlights. Will definitely be sharing more pictures! I also enjoyed a manicure (also paid for) as I was in the chair, and topped up more moolah for my Diamond Card (to get 25% off each time). The card allows a once a year free haircut for birthdays (either me or my family members can use), so I will ask Wayne to make use of it this month, seeing that I had missed this special promotion in September!

Coming back home, I decided to trawl through some of my photos in the past few years that showed the different colours of my hair...(only showcases the more interesting ones from when I started visiting Tony Studio):

Purplish-red in July 05 at Amy and John's wedding in Malaysia...

Brownish in Singapore with Sin's dearie, Alyson, in January 06...

This below constitutes as my perennial favourite in March 06 where I got alot of positive comments and remarks from friends and even strangers on the street. Slabs of red at the base and side of my hair, so that when I let it down, only the tips are red, and when I tied it up, you can see the whole panel of red.

With this style, when we were in Singapore, I was approached by someone asking me to be the hair model for a Shunji Matsuo show that week - alas, I was due to fly back to Beijing that night - I sure hope they weren't thinking of asking me to be the 'Before' model, haha!

This is what the hair looks like bunned up (my trial make-up/hairdo session for the wedding in Singapore).

That's me with Tricia when she was visiting in Beijing...
It looks straggly in the picture below (blame it on bad photography, not me!), but you can get an idea of the effect. In fact, this was what I wanted today, but I ended up with less 'loud' and narrower highlights, with only thin slabs at the base, heh! I was actually thinking of going for a never-before loud look, seeing that I was not working and thus not constrained by 'corporate looks', but oh well, it looks decent enough if I do go for job interviews, heh!
This was reddish in June 06 in Hong Kong with Vanessa.

And then came the wedding, with my three hairstyles on D-Day (October 06) in Singapore.

I kept my hair to its longest for the wedding, and made sure to colour it a safe dark brown colour so that the colour won't detract from the fanciful hairstyles for the wedding day.

And I kept my long hair for the remainder of 2006, in Malacca with my family.

Then in April 07, I had my last dye job on long hair (red highlights on a blue-black base)...

Because in July 07, I decided to cut my hair short, a change from long hair I've had since 1999. This is my first bob haircut and colour - I was quite happy with it...for all of about two weeks, before it became really hard to maintain, and then I decided that for lazy me, long hair's so much more convenient!

I had to hire a stylist to do my hair when I was the emcee for an MDA media conference in September 07, as I simply did not know what to do with it, sigh...

And usually I am happy with my holiday photos, but I think this batch of photos in October 07 in Western Australia with my family would have turned out nicer if I had more manageable hair that did not look so wispy and dry...sob...

I had to go for even more regular trims and colours even as I wanted to grow it out - so I had red highlights again (my favourite, don't you know by now?!) for CNY 08, taken in Singapore with my brother...

And in Bali on our family trip...

And that marked the end of the last hair colour I had before I found out I was pregnant (only went for trims after), and then I gave birth, started nursing, and decided to play it safe by not introducing chemicals like hair dyes (and nail polish!) into my system. But, seeing that Rosabelle's not so dependent on me for her nutrition now, and research has shown that there are no adverse effects, so it looks like if time was not an issue, I will be keeping up with my dye jobs more often (but I still decided against getting chili red nail polish just now - just gloss - as I sometimes use my fingers to feed Rosabelle, and don't want her to come into direct contact with it)!

A quick 'get-away'

Today, to give myself a treat for the ad nauseum bout of supermarket shopping yesterday, I went to Shin Kong Place for lunch and a walk-around. Actually, the main reason for going was to look for Wayne’s birthday present. Since he’s not in town, it was a good chance for me to look for something suitable.

We did not have much of a celebration, much less a birthday present, on his birthday last year in Singapore, as Rosabelle was only about 1.5 months old (no excuse still, right?...), and I gave him a lunch treat at Fish & Co in United Square, where he enjoyed the fish and chips, and the dessert after. My sis also got Wayne a birthday cake, but Rosabelle was hungry-whining during the birthday song-singing, so uncooperative! (By the way, that was me with the 56-7kg post-pregnancy weight/flabby arms that I took forever to shed!)

This year, thought I’d go for the works and get him a birthday cake to celebrate at home, settling on an orange mousse one from 21cake. I wanted the whisky or brandy one, then decided that Rosabelle might also want a bite of the cake. Not deciding to serve alcohol to minors, no matter in how minute a quantity, I then ordered a child-friendly one.
However, the folks at 21cake scr^wed up. I’d used Wayne’s 21cake card (so as to accumulate points for redemption off purchases), since he had ordered a cake from them for my birthday. I reminded them to correspond with me, and left my mobile number (how stupid would it be if they called Wayne to confirm the order, right?), and no sooner had I hung up the phone then did Wayne forward me the confirmation SMS he got from the ‘automated system’ to confirm my order of his birthday cake. Sheesh! You can imagine the tongue-lashing I gave the customer service folks when I called them after!

Luckily, I happily managed to get a suitable gift for my husband at Shin Kong – he doesn’t really read my blog (‘So wordy! I only look at the photos at times…’), but just in case, you will see what I got him on 9 December itself. I have also made reservations at a hotel restaurant (again, to be revealed on the day itself, just in case he reads the blog!) for dinner on that day, of course Rosabelle will be at home with the nanny. I’m looking forward to it, albeit the silly cake surprise is spoilt - #$@%^!!!

At Shin Kong, I also went to Panasonic Centre to copy the videos we took the week before. It’s a blue-screen technology, where Wayne and I carried Rosabelle to take two different videos of us doing ‘green earth’ things, similar to when my family was in town. If Rosabelle looks puzzled here, that’s because she was staring up at a blank blue screen with moving yellow circles, and wondering why her Mum and Dad seem so excited!

I also had a nice lunch at Ajisen Ramen, a restaurant that I ate at almost every other day when my office was at SOHO New Town. It’s been more than a year since I had my favourite dish of kimchi beef hot pot, and it still tastes super yummy! (It helped that I purposely ran my errands and did my shopping first to avoid the crazy lunch-time crowd.

I then ended with a bit of high-end supermarket (yes, again!!!) shopping to get that elusive kai lan and cai xin, and managed to finally land my hands on watercress (yaaay!) too, so Rosabelle can try some tonight. It’s high in iron as well, so at least she will have an alternative to spinach. I even got a Beard Papa cream puff home for tea, yummy! I had originally bought another cream puff for the nanny, but after Rosabelle awoke from her afternoon nap and refused to go beyond one slice of mangosteen (just as well – it costs RMB6 per fruit here now!), I decided to give her a treat and not surprisingly, she liked the sweet taste of the vanilla cream, haha!

What a nice, leisurely afternoon out, where it was almost narrowly marred by a very dishonest cab driver. Since last week, Beijing cab fares have risen (oil prices…), and we need to pay an extra dollar on top of the metered fare only if it goes beyond 3km (i.e. only if it goes beyond RMB10, from RMB11 up). My cab fare to Shin Kong was only RMB10, so I gave the driver RMB20, and he asked ‘Do you have one dollar?’, wanting to ask me to pay him RMB21 so he can give me RMB10 in change. So I replied, ‘Isn’t it a dollar more only if my fare is RMB11 and above?’, and he kept quiet. Sheesh, the cheek of it! If only I had the time, and only if he had not picked me up from home, I’d make sure the cab company hears of his dishonest attempt at siphoning RMB1 from me – some people really take me for a 傻老外 ah?!