Beanie Baby

Yesterday, Rosabelle saw Wayne's beanie lying on the sofa, and grabbed at it. She immediately knew that it was meant for the head and put her cheek next to it, indicating she wanted me to place it on her. So, in the warmth of our heated home, our girl actually liked wearing the beanie and allowing me to take photographs of her... so vain!

After that, when Wayne wanted to capture her on his phone to send a MMS to his Dad, she was most uncooperative and kept tugging the beanie off - she was already perspiring under, haha!

Photo Book

Finally! After the Chocolate Box photo shoot at home, and a repeat one in the studio, as well as selecting the various photos for inclusion in the book from these, these, and these, the photo book is finally ready.

Ta dah! They have also touched up some of the photos for us, and I will selecting some for calendar-making, photo books for the grandparents, and for framing up for our walls.

Enjoy!

So grown-up!

My brother-in-law shared some recent photos of Simon and Marianne as the flower boy/girl for a church wedding. They both look so cute and radiant, and looking so scarily like exact replicas of their parents - think mini Matthias and mini Pearleen.

According to my sis, they performed well for the ceremony, and here's a photo of the adults looking not too bad in their own prints, heh!

It cannot get more extreme than this, can it?

Rosabelle has a bad, and slightly weird habit... she likes poring through magazines during meal times, and like any other bookworm, she has favourite reads, often requesting for certain publications.

Rosabelle used to like an advertisement from Centro pub so much (featuring a pair of luscious lips), that she kept wanting the 'Ahhhh' (coupled with strenous opening of mouth) page until we had to bid farewell to it since it was crumpled and dirty with too much food.

So when I saw this Fauchon (a chain of luxury confectionaries) publication the other day, I quickly picked it up for our girl. This, this, this is the type of heavily sexed-up pictures that our girl adores these days... *shakes head*.

On the other hand, the Autumn publication from Lijia (baby hypermart) is one of the best 'toys' we have for her. As the Winter publication is out, I let her flip through this old version and the various pictures of babies, toys, cute pictures etc are a real visual feast for her! She will call out 'Gege' (to indicate the boy on the cover of the book) for us to bring the book to her.

She gets exceptionally excited when she flips to certain pages, going 'Yaaaay!' when she sees the below photo of a Mamy Poko ad. If the boy's belly looks slightly creased, that's because Rosabelle will want to plant kisses on it every time, and risk getting her food onto it as she will open her mouth ever so slightly to give her kiss, hahaha!

This is another page with three boys that she loves to kiss. She will make noise till the nanny holds it up for her to kiss them, one by one.

Oh well, at least this is more child-friendly during meal times than the Fauchon publication...

Speaking of meal times, when Wayne and I brought her out for dim sum lunch yesterday, other than eating fish porridge and char siew pau, she wasn't very keen on the rest of the foods like noodles, so I ordered some dessert of almond tofu for her. She liked her first taste of it - must have a sweet tooth like her Mummy! Also, for the first time, she ate bean sprouts yesterday, which were in the noodles that she tried some of after. However, she decided to go on a vegetarian strike last night, refusing the chicken/capsicum/spinach/carrot noodles I made for her last night and only wanting to eat peas and drink tofu soup. Grrr....alot of folks say I have loads of patience with Rosabelle, but I really only lose my temper at her during meal times when she refuses to open her mouth to eat...so naughty!

Activities for the non-claustrophobic

When the weather is as cold as it gets in Beijing (and the air as polluted), I still try to bring Rosabelle on her walks though there aren't as many playmates around. I believe the outdoors is a nice change of scenery for her, not to mention it's good for her eyes as she does not keep looking at near-sighted objects, and provides her with more space to practise her walking.

However, on days when it's really too windy, and much too cold, we have no choice but to stay indoors. That's when I will bring out my list of 'Things we have not tried' for Rosabelle to play with (or a new toy, which I've gotten quite a few from Taobao these days, given that's it's cheaper - will be 'featuring' them on the blog as she starts playing with them). On the item the other day was to let Rosabelle play with a set of Crayola crayons to let her try scribbling (found out too late it's waaaay cheaper on Taobao than in the stores...). I stuck white paper to her high chair table and gave her the red and green colours (I've read that we just need to start them on one, or two colours at most as they get distracted easily).

See the scribbles on the paper in the picture below? I hope to say I have a genius daughter at hand who managed to weld the crayon properly and start her Picasso piece, but nope, those were my scribblings as I attempted to show her how to use her new toys properly. We only spent like 10 minutes on this, and she spent 9.5 minutes scrapping at the crayons with her nails, and showing me the goo that had stuck to her nails...haha! Oh well, free rein of play, so however she likes it, I guess. I'll try it again later, and hopefully she will start realising that the crayons work like her favourite pen and can be used for drawing...
Other activities I've tried lately come courtesy of Vanessa, who suggested I can tear magazine paper into confetti and let Rosabelle transfer them amongst boxes. The Ayi tore quite a bit of paper for me, and I left them in a tissue box - Rosabelle did not really transfer them, more like wading her whole hand through them and pulling them out and onto the playmat. She also took a few out and started dancing and flapping her arms like how a bird flies (she does alot of that action these days, so long as she is holding something 'flappable', like socks, or a bag, in her hands). I'm trying to teach her how to pack up after herself ('Neat freak!', I hear you say...), so that it won't come as a chore to her when she's older, and she does at times (depending on her mood...) help me put bottles/jigsaw pieces/books etc back to where they belong, though you can imagine it's in a random, throwing manner, and not done properly, heh!

Another activity from Vanessa was using a torchlight in a dark room to shine on walls and objects, and Rosabelle loves it! I teach her 'up, down', 'left, right', 'fast, slow' and name objects in the room - she was quite frustrated at not being able to hold or catch the light, but will quickly indicate 'no more' with her hands (coupled with a very cute 'huh?' sound) if I switch the torchlight off. It's good to keep her entertained for a few more nights, at least!

Of course, we have also set up playdates for bad weather days. It works best as the kids live in the same building as we do, so we don't even need to step outside our building. On Friday, when the winds were howling 'TYPHOON!' (well, almost...), and the nanny needed to use Walch when mopping the floor (the house will reek strongly of disinfectant), I set up an impromptu date with the Mummy of another kid on the third floor. Lala is two weeks younger than Rosabelle, but is taller and heavier -they were leaving for her Mum's hometown that afternoon as the latter is totally at her wit's end since Lala refuses to eat proper food, preferring to only nurse all the time. The girl just pretty much spits out all solid foods, refusing to chew, and so Lala's mum will probably get more help back home with her own parents.

Probably sensing her friend is leaving, Rosabelle is seen here planting kisses on Lala (the latter fell over shortly after I caught this picture as she lost her balance, haha!). Rosabelle likes to kiss people alot these days, indicating with a smacking/puckering of lips that she wants you to bend down so she can plant kisses on you. She has caused a few kids (both younger and older) to cry with her overwhelming smooches, haha!
They both played on Lala's playmat for awhile, looking at each other play and playing alongside, not with (not at this age, I read) each other.

It wasn't long before they each went to do their own thing, and Rosabelle also walked around and explored their home.

I even caught photos of our Little Santarina, haha!

That's our young hostess below, who can actually walk on her own quite well now. Their home has a water dispenser placed on the floor, and Lala's mum narrated the incident where she purposely put Lala's hand under the hot water tap and dripped a single drop of hot water onto it to teach her daughter never to touch the hot water faucet. My goodness! Even though she ran her daughter's hand under cold, running water for a few minutes after, I don't think I will try something so extreme to teach Rosabelle her OB markers...

What I'm teaching Rosabelle these days, something I tried for the first time last night, is since I noticed she responds pretty well to our 'ssssh, ssssh' sounds to get her to pee into the diaper before we change her, I placed her on the toilet bowl after removing all her clothes before her bath. I then 'ssssh, ssssh'-ed for her and she peed for the first time into the toilet bowl, haha! So cute...looks like I must start sourcing for a proper potty for our girl soon eh!

Happy Birthday to Daddy Wayne!

Rosabelle practised her happy birthday clapping during meal time today, wanting to give Wayne a kiss when I said that it's 'Daddy's birthday'...
The orange mousse cake from 21cake arrived (realized I could have ordered it cheaper via Taobao.com, getting a larger discount if I went through some other folks who managed to get further discounts...), which wasn't a surprise for Wayne at all since they messed up when taking my order - bleah... After lunch, it was cake-cutting time and Rosabelle was very attracted to the orange swirls on top of the cake.

This is a lovely kiss for her Daddy dearest here (cue 'Awwwww....').

We tried getting a proper family shot but Rosabelle kept moving and wanting to push our heads away so she could reach at the cake. It also doesn't help that the nanny has shaky fingers, haha!

In the end, we decided to satiate our girl's curiosity and Daddy cut the cake with her.

We offered her a slice of the cake but she refused it, wanting to eat the orange instead - it certainly looks more appetising than the pale, beige-coloured mousse cake, haha! However, upon seeing Wayne and I enjoy the cake, she also started chomping on the cake that the nanny was feeding her. It filled her up so much that she did not even want me to nurse her before her afternoon nap, so off I went for my facial session before dinner time with my husband.

I had made reservations at CRU Steakhouse at J.W. Marriott Hotel for Wayne's birthday dinner, heh, and it was a good choice as we both stuffed ourselves silly, enjoying the great ambience and service as well (well, not too cheap either - we ordered a bottle of red wine as well and the bill came up to about RMB1,500).

The complimentary bread and bagels...

My starter of lovely, crisp calamari...

Wayne's yummy carrot soup...

Wayne's slab of beef and fries, as well as my mac 'n' cheese and mashed potato sides.

Detracting a little, you can see the new red highlights in my hair here, *cough*.

And me and my main of grilled beef - a little too tough though...

Of course, how could we forego dessert? The chocolate cake was so rich that for once, I did not wallop up the whole dessert and even had left-overs!

That's us at the restaurant entrance, and I am still very bloated from a good dinner, haha!

As for Wayne's birthday present, I got him a pair of Oakley shades - the Oakley Polarized Square Whisker Sunglasses (Brown/Tungsten Iridium). If it sounds cool, that's because it is, haha! This site even allows you to see how wearing the shades helps you see better - nice...

So ladies and gentlemen, meet a pleased Mr. Shi showing off his birthday pressie here. Love loads to my husband!

80's Flashback

Today was a cold day with no sun - when we went out there wasn't a single kid around and I had to bring Rosabelle around on her usual route of seeing the stone elephants outside the clubhouse, the mannequins and fortune cat in a clothes shop, the dogs/fish tank in the liquor store, and to see her favourite beauty salon signage with the Dermologica model... (yah, so wierd, I know). We ended up at the usual Herbalife shop that has a kid's corner and two other playmates appeared, where she mercilessly planted at least 20 kisses on the boy Mai Dou, haha!

I decked her up in a pair of terry cloth pants - oh so cute and comfy - and paired it with a sweater from Marianne cheh cheh. It immediately made me think of 80's-looking tracksuits and Flashdance routines...

Speaking of flash, I got myself into a minor panic last night whilst trawling the web. As Rosabelle is playing near the fridge alot these days, sticking magnets/photos onto the fridge door, I checked online research to see if there is any harmful radiation from fridges. What I read here and here are quite unsettling, as it makes me wonder if we are bombarding her poor head with so much EMF from day-to-day appliances. There was not much worry about the fridge per se, but articles stated that infants/babies should not sleep on the wall adjoining the TV, and Rosabelle's cot is placed directly by the side of the wall sharing our hanging LCD TV, aiyo!

So Wayne did his further research today, and called his friend at TCL, to ascertain that since ours is an LCD TV, it's not like the usual CRT-based screens (think olden days, HUGE TVs with a broad base at the back) that emit alot of EMF. Well... this means we don't need to do musical chairs of furniture in the room, but I'm certainly more mindful that I don't put my mobile phone and home cordless phone to her head too much, and to keep her away from operating electrical appliances where possible!