Yo, yo, yo!

After donning Wayne's beanie the other day, Rosabelle again chanced on yet another of Wayne's beanie, and indicated to her Daddy that she wanted to don the hat.
Wayne helped her to put it on and she even went walking around the house in it before pulling it off, deciding it was much too hot for indoor wear.

Doesn't she look like she's rapping away here? (Never mind the moo-moo cow suit... it's the pose that matters...)

So much for looking the part.

These days, she likes to always exclaim an airy 'Ahhhh...', complete with an expression of excitement, when we draw the curtains in the morning, as she is probably used to us telling her to welcome the sunshine and nice day with a 'Waaaah!'. Likewise, she will touch the window panes and draw her hands back quickly and clasp them when we ask her to 'feel how cold the windows are'. However, she is quite a good girl when it comes to not touching electrical/hot items - she has even managed to mimick our '不动, 不动' with something that sounds like 'bung, bung, bung' (sounds Korean, if you ask me!) to indicate that she knows certain things are out of bounds.

Heh, so long as she abides by her own rules, as with her increasing mobility, we can't possibly childproof every part of the house.

And we came home to Speedy Gonzales...

On Friday night, Wayne and I came home from our usual date night past 10 pm, thinking that Rosabelle would already be fast asleep. When we stepped into the house, she was still playing on her playmat, clad in her pyjamas.

The nanny had already fed her the EBM more than an hour ago, and had tried to get her to sleep after, but apparently, Rosabelle refused to go to sleep, wanting to go into the living room to play.

So play she did, scooting around on her walker, where Wayne captured hazy pictures of her running around.

These days, she likes having us chase her around, and she will giggle/chuckle happily as she toddles along, at times even breaking into a run, haha! (That's me with my exaggerated "Mummy's going to get you!" run...)

She will walk, then cheekily look back to see if we are chasing her, and then quickly run away as fast as she can, shifting her walker very steadily and quickly. I will at times hide behind the walls/sofa/in the room, and then pop out suddenly, giving her a fright as she will jump, then run away, at times dangerously looking upwards instead of the road ahead as she laughs.

When I am not chasing after her, she will 'Eh, eh, eh!' me, willing me to play with me and run after her. She can at times see where I am hiding and purposely come look for me, then run away again when I pounce out on her. Heh! You can be sure the nanny had a hard time putting her to sleep past midnight that night - Wayne said she seemed to be on steroids and very hyper when he helped to change her diaper after!

How unconventional...

Once a week, the nanny will make chicken dumplings for Rosabelle (which she will happily chomp on). On Friday, I asked her to prepare extra dough for the girl so that she can play with it.

Plasticine, Play Dough, homemade dough...all nice and squishy - should be fun for little fingers, right?

Nope, wrong.

When Rosabelle saw the mass of dough in front of her, she screwed her nose up and did not dare to touch it. Even when Wayne and I tried to attract her by looking/behaving/sounding hyper-excited about the dough by plying it into different shapes, squishing it between our fingers, and using cookie cutter shapes on it, she still did not dare put a finger on it.

Alas...she wanted to only play with the cookie cutters, and in the end pinched a slight bit to attempt to put the dough into her mouth. Oh well, we've cling-wrapped the dough in the fridge, and will take it out on another day for further play. See how bored she looks with the dough in front of her? Just when I thought all kids will like playing with dough, I also assumed Rosabelle will like eating raisins. I wanted to let her try some for breakfast yesterday morning, together with the oatmeal I had made (detracting a little - the nanny's on a two-day break this weekend, thus the lack of postings as we've been busy coping with Rosabelle on our own, and Wayne has a case of the sniffles, so we could only order lunch in instead of going out today). Raisins are sweet, and the size serves as nice finger food, so all kids should like it, right? (Further, it's high in iron, as all dried fruits are - but because it's too sweet, I wasn't going to let her eat too much of such stuff anyway...).

Nope, our girl liked taking the raisins out of the small box, then putting them back in again. She even fed me the raisins, but quickly spat them out after trying one. Can't blame her - it looks black and wrinkled, and the texture does taste dubious if you are eating it for the first time.

Looks like this is another food that I'd need to bring to the yard and share with other kids before she will know that it's something good and yummy. This is the tactic I employ, like for example, she has strangely been rejecting her favourite dragon fruit, so I will take out the fruit box and start offering/feeding them to other kids, and she will then clamour for me to feed her. The food probably tastes nicer when shared, I guess!

On diet?

Last week, we spotted the all-too-familiar whitish edges on Rosabelle's upper and lower gums, which can only mean that she is sprouting four new teeth at the same time. Thank goodness she isn't cranky or crying through the night (touch wood!).

So since a few days ago, we've been trying to remember (at times we forget, as it's a new routine...) to clean her teeth and gums with the Combi wet wipe (meant for hands and mouth, and explicitly states that it can be used for teeth/gums). She seems to like it, though I have to make sure my finger is thickly wrapped, as she likes to bite on it. Probably, when all her 12 teeth are out, we'll need to get a toothbrush (and some non-fluoride toothpaste?) for her.

However, the nanny and I have been having a headache with Rosabelle's meals these days, as always the case when she's teething. She does not like to chew, and does not like the spoon, so we can only give her finger foods (but remember, she does not like to chew, so the food bits can't be big/hard) and even allow her to use a straw to drink her soups and pureed foods. Yikes! When the nanny wanted to give her tofu, or any other foods for that matter, Rosabelle will indicate with a mouth-sucking action that she wants the straw, aiyo!

For two days straight, she refused a single mouth of porridge or pork, and seemed to be like she was on a liquid and/or vegetarian diet - sigh! Oh well, at least her spirits and energy levels are up, and she does not go on a hunger strike at every single meal time, so we're really hoping this phase will pass soon.

I read that from the age of one, kids' appetites will actually diminish, and you have to attract them with fun-looking foods. We tried letting her eat dried bean curd (tau kwa) the day before, but she only took one cube and refused to eat another. I figured it's slightly too salty (as it's preserved), so we'll just stick to tofu for her now. She also tried a bit of snake gourd (丝瓜) on the same day, but again, did not like it...or maybe it's the nanny's way of cooking it.

Wayne and I have an issue with the nanny's cooking. It is bad. Seriously. The nanny cooks dinner using Rosabelle's left-over food every Tuesday (when it's grocery day and we buy fresh foods for her for the week), and Wayne and I do not look forward to dinner time. Nowadays, we end up drinking abit of porridge and picking at the foods (vegetables overcooked, cut too big/combination of meats and vegetables don't go together...). Last night was the ultimate - we took only a bit of what she cooked and thereafter sneaked out for a McDonald's supper, bluffing the poor lady that we were meeting a friend!

Oh well, at least Rosabelle is at that stage where she does not need any fancy cooking...yet. But I've advised the nanny to vary the way she cooks things, and even use the cookie cutters I bought to attract Rosabelle with cute shapes of her foods. Hopefully she will take this into consideration, as I get pretty exasperated at times reminding her to do certain things. Like today, I again caught her adding water into a bag of raw chicken meat to defrost it. I'd already told her apart from adding hot water, this is the most wrong and unhygienic way to defrost uncooked meats, as there will be alot of bacteria build-up and it'd lead to food poisoning. I told her to either take it out earlier and put it in the fridge, or if she's in a hurry, to use the microwave defrost function. Grrrrr....

Mister Rosabelle???

When she was younger (and even now), Rosabelle is often mistaken for a boy, due to her *erm* larger-than-average size. With her short hairstyle, and being dressed up sometimes in Simon's hand-me-downs, it's no surprise she gets errorneously addressed as '哥哥' or '弟弟' at times (though I have to grind my teeth and roll my eyes when I get a 'Is that a boy or girl?' question even when she's dressed in pink, in flowers, and has a hair clip - grrrr....).

Today, whilst at Shin Kong, I grabbed a Fisher-Price pamphlet for Rosabelle to look at, as she likes to see pictures of kids. Only upon coming home did I take a close look - the child model on the front page, a boy, actually resembles Rosabelle!

Look at the hair parting, the expression, and of course, the unmistakable single eyelids. Hoho! So now I know what our daughter will look like (i) when at two years old and (ii) if she were a boy. Quite an uncanny resemblance, I must say - even the nanny and Wayne find it hilarious!

Quacking business

I got Rosabelle a training toilet seat the other day, an OK Baby duck one from Italy. As expected, she liked the seat very much, and even cried when we carried her up after attempting to 'ssssh, sssssh' her and she did not pee. She kept grabbing at the duck's beak and going 'kwa, kwa, kwa' (duck sound). Later, when we placed her in the bath tub, she kept indicating to the nanny that she wanted the 'kwa, kwa, kwa' to be put into the bath tub for her to play with, aiyo!

These days, to inculcate in her a sense of responsibility, and let her feel like she is lending a helping hand around the house, we let her hold her soiled diaper to throw into the trash bag, after which she will clap to praise herself (regardless of whether the diaper is aimed correctly...). Nowadays, she will want to grab at her diaper right after she is changed, so that she can help bring it to the toilet to throw. Of course, if it's poo, she won't get to even touch the diaper, heh...

Baby steps

We had strong winds in Beijing today (outside temperatures at mid-day was an average of -4 degrees celsius... so not fun), so I couldn't bring Rosabelle on her morning walk today. Instead, we went to Shin Kong Place for some indoor walking. We are actually not really keen to bringing her to enclosed places like supermarkets these days, as the flu (H1N1???) is hanging around, but we figured large malls with vast expanses of space is much better (I think...).

So Rosabelle practised her walking around the shops at Shin Kong Place, looking at the mannequins (and wondering aloud as she looked downwards why there is no '猫猫' at the feet of the mannequins, just like there is one on display at the shop within our estate, haha!). She even went into the Marc Jacobs shop and wanted to climb onto the sofa, tsk tsk!
These days, especially at home, she is learning to pace herself well - I counted more than 30 small steps at one go the other day, atta girl! I took a few videos of her attempts at walking - with one of her falling and whining in one, and another where she gingerly tries to balance herself. She can even make a U-turn when walking, haha...