That milestone 18 months

Rosabelle officially turned 1.5 years old last Saturday, 24 April. 一岁半. It's a developmental/growth milestone as we see our girl approaching two years of age.

An expanded vocabulary of late includes 零 (for zero, as she plays with number magnets on the door), pillow (when she props my pillow up for nursing her, or lets her baby doll sleep on its pillow), cat (instead of just 猫猫), frog, goose (or more like 'goo'), balloon (or more like 'boong'), 水 (courtesy of Nai nai), Dump-dump (to stand for Humpty Dumpty), 'cuit (as she can't say 'biscuit', and started clamouring for 'cuit when I told my mother-in-law to eat饼干 - not good for us she's getting effectively bilingual, as we can't talk in code in front of her!), and to my utter happiness, she can now call叔叔, instead of going Wawa - I will solve the mystery of why she calls men Wawa when she grows up... She also knows how to do a 'Oooh oooh oooh' bouncing action when she sees the monkey, as taught by Yours Truly -__-.

We didn't do anything special on that day, as I brought her out on the usual morning walk, and stopped by one of our favourite hang-outs when the weather's bad - a health juice bar with quite alot of kids' toys (though badly maintained, I must add).

See her with the clip (the shape of a man) on her head? That's my clip, one that she always likes me to put on her. So vain, huh?
Wayne used the same clip to do up a 'sparrow's tail' (not ponytail, since it's too skinny and sparse, haha!) for her some time back too...
She has another hairband accessory, courtesy of Aunty Vanessa, who very nicely gave it to her when they visited Beijing last month. Luckily we managed to catch them for lunch with our ex-colleague and HR manager on this whirlwind trip, and they also popped by our place for dinner. Rosabelle, as usual, was her overwhelming self and wanted to kiss and hug poor Rachel till the latter was scared of her. Till this day, Rosabelle remembers Rachel well (wanting to see Rachel's photos in our camera), and goes 'Chel chel' when sitting in her high chair, to indicate that Rachel sat in it for her own dinner, and then she will wave her hands in a way to tell little kids not to cry, as Rachel cried at our place. Next, she will go 'Wawa' as she remembers Uncle Timothy, and go 'giraffe' as she can recall showing him a picture of a giraffe, heh! On the subject of hair, this is a shot of her hair before we left for Singapore in early February - so unruly huh??? And ta-dah! A shot of her with a trimmed fringe in Singapore, courtesy of my Mum, who professed that 'I will just trim a little, slightly above the brows', and was overzealous when correcting the crooked edges, haha! At that point, Rosabelle's fringe was poking into her eyes, so much that she was rubbing them too often, so we needed to 'take a little off the edges'... We had a good laugh as it made her forehead look so broad!

At this stage, Rosabelle is also sprouting her two upper molars, and I can feel them when I wipe them every night with a wet wipe. She knows the routine - after my bath and when I finish putting on my creams, I will wash my hands and tell her, "Mummy's washing my hands now", as she puts whatever she's holding back in its proper place and dashes into the room to grab a wet wipe (and closes it back properly after), then runs to the living room window and sits down as she obediently waits for me to wipe her gnashers.

This is her pretending to do a good job of brushing her teeth - she knows to not put that into her mouth when she is walking/running, and instead places it behind her back - good girl!

After 18 months, she was also due for a few vaccinations - MMR (China's standards - it's 15m in Singapore), DPT/DT/Oral Sabin 1st booster (Singapore's standards - strange that China does not have oral sabine, and their booster is only taken at 4 years of age, so guess I will go back to Singapore for this), and Hepatitis A. As each has to be taken a month apart, we let her take the MMR first on the check-up at Amcare on 26 April. She had fun playing around before we saw the doctor.
There is a similar playhouse at the kindergarten in our compound, and she enjoys going up and down the slides, closing/opening the house door, and seeing the 兔兔painted on the wall. She knows to step on the stone slabs/pavement and avoid the grass when walking from one slide to another, as I hate for her to get her shoes/pants dirty, and tell her to 'not kill the grass, and love the grass as they take a long while to grow out', heh!
That's her looking on in wonder at a 3 year old boy who was wailing, and I really mean wailing, boy who was inconsolable after his vaccination (Rosabelle only cried for all of like 3 seconds).
At this check-up, she weighed 10.7 kg (64th percentile by China standards, 75th percentile by Singapore standards), and measured 84.5 cm (90th pecentile by both China and Singapore standards). Worryingly enough, this was her same weight/height taken in Singapore at the KKH check-up (for her chicken pox vaccination) at 15.5 months on 10 Feb...hmmm... maybe the scales at KKH are more sensitive?

At the check-up in Singapore, I enquired if it's ok to give her meat/eggs/tofu every day (no problem, especially since tofu is well-absorbed by the body), if I needed to supplement with formula milk since I'm still nursing (no need at all), if I needed to brush her teeth (it's ok to just wipe, the toothbrush can come when she can wield it correctly), if she needed salt in her diet (no need excess - just what she's taking now from outside/adult foods), if she could have eczema, since I saw a small rash on the nape of her neck from the hot weather in Singapore, which only cleared up after I applied hydrocortisone 1% (have to monitor, but it's likely since Yours Truly has eczema - arrrghhh! Thank goodness - fingers crossed - nothing else has appeared since).

The paed also prescribed some lactulose liquid (to make the stools more watery) and lignocaine topical jelly for her constipation issue (she was always unwilling to poop, and was going only every 4th day or so, so her stools were hard), but we did not use that in Singapore as by a cosmic turn of events, she had diarrhea for about 3 days after we brought her out for dinner at Everything with Fries (and the salmon looked suspiciously undercooked). Either that or it was because she was drinking bath water from the bottles... but that bout of diarrhea meant we had to can my reunion with the Nanyang Girls, and it went away without any medication - I just cut down her fruits over those days since she was still in otherwise fine condition.

He also advised that we continue monitoring her heart murmur and do a thyroid test if the constipation ensues.

Back in Beijing, the lactulose and lignocaine came in handy as she was unwilling to poo from the pain (with blood even since she was forcing the stools out), so from 9 till 22 March, she was on lignocaine (which we had to almost force-feed her) until her stools are thankfully normal now (goes every alternate day with no crying when passing). She will grab the wet wipes and run to the toilet, going 'Ka ka ka' to indicate she wants the duck potty on the seat, so it's a less messy affair since she does it directly in the bowl now. As for pee, she has a good sense of when she is going to pee, especially after seeing the older girls squat and pee outside, so whenever she needs to go (though she is still using diapers), she will squat and go 'Ssssssh....', asking me and Nai nai to also squat and do the same, haha!

She also had a bout of runny nose (probably from the cold weather after the heating stopped in Beijing), but I did not give her any medication. She does know to grab a wet wipe or tissue and blow her own nose hard, heh!

At this check-up in Beijing, her heart murmur was still there but the paed suggested we just continue monitoring since Rosabelle's growth is on track, and we only need to do a thorough investigation before she starts school. As expected, when asked, she suggested that I supplement her milk feeds with formula since the quality/quantity of my milk will not be as good as before, and it'd be more for psychological reasons to wean her than health problems. I find older folks and Chinese doctors to not be as supportive of extended breastfeeding as in Singapore, but am mindful that I have to start looking for proper milk powder for her, especially after a scary bout of bad food poisoning I had from 13 April.

In the wee hours of 13 April, I started having diarrhea and vomiting, and was knocked-out flat by late morning despite eating charcoal tablets (and of course throwing them up). I suspected it was the white fungus dessert I had at my facial place the day before, since that was the only thing that my family did not eat (they were all fine). In the end, Wayne had to bring me to the hospital and get a glucose drip, and another drip to get rid of the toxins. I spent about 3 hours lying there, and had to take medicine the next few days. Thing is, the anti-toxin drip and medicine rendered my breast milk toxic (i.e. will affect Rosabelle's bones if she took it), and this meant I could only start nursing Rosabelle a week after the last dose of medicine, so out came the milk bottles and my stash of EBM since Aug/Sep last year - thank goodness for those!

For a week, Rosabelle was thankfully quite entertained with the novelty of drinking milk from the bottle, but I had my mother-in-law sleep in the room with Wayne (whilst I slept in her room) so that Rosabelle would not clamour for me when she woke up for her night feeds. I kept behind the scenes all this while so that she would not be puzzled as to why I was not nursing her instead. It wasn't as emotional/bad as I thought it would be, though she would get impatient and scream for milk. In fact, I think I missed the bonding/closeness more than her, and I was thus reluctant to eat the anti-toxin medicine for another day, causing me to still have a slight case of the runs (vomited 8 times and lao-sai for 11 times in all man!), but I was adamant to not delay another day of nursing.

Wayne had to go get a local-brand breast pump for me to express (and throw) the EBM since I had already passed my Medela pump to my sis - not alot of milk as it varies from 30ml to 60ml each time of my thrice-daily expressing. That's why I am afraid that Rosabelle is not getting as much milk as she should, though I've read that it's different when your child nurses as she will be able to suckle better, and your body then reacts better. However, comparing past photos, she's really so much less chubby, and I do not wish to deny her of body fats, haha! So let's see how with the milk powder, especially now that I do not have a back-up of EBM already...

Maybe it was due to the fact that we did not sterilise the bottles well (we only used the steamer once a day, since I'd also passed my sis the Avent steriliser), or that I did not warm up the milk thoroughly enough, but Rosabelle woke up on 15 Apr morning and did not want her breakfast at all, and kept chanting for me to carry her. When I finally did, and patted her on her back, she vomited slightly. Oh dear... after that, she was better and Wayne brought her down for a walk, but in the afternoon, after her nap, I could feel that she was feverish and put on a cold patch for her when it reached 37.9 degrees.

When it reached 39.0 degrees, I started her on 5ml of paracetemol and gave 3 doses in all before it cleared the next afternoon. I was so afraid I had passed my vomiting/diarrhea to her but thank goodness she was all ok after the morning throw-up. According to the Chinese doctor, it could be a case of bad food as the body is then reacting to it by fighting the toxins. Oh well... now we know better.

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...

Look what the stork brought!

Name: Gideon Martin Toh Chia Ian

Popped out on: April 13, 2010 @ 2103 hours

Weight: 2.26 kg

I'm Aunty Wendy a third time over! My sis popped early at 35 weeks as she was having pre-eclempsia problems and high blood pressure, so the gynae had to induce her into a natural birth early on.

Little Gideon is a fighter, and having a considerably ok birth weight, went home on the third day, but had mild jaundice a few days later (his 200+ index is low, compared to the high 300+ Rosabelle had - she was baked under UV for two days, compared to Gideon's one day). Looks like my whole Toh and Loh family will be kept busy for a long while, and I am looking forward to meeting him when Rosabelle and I head back to Singapore in June to coincide with the school holidays.

Only thing is, my poor sis has latching problems, and blocked milk ducts, but I really hope she can be third time lucky to enjoy the lovely bonding and convenience/benefits of breastmilk for little Gideon. She has to express her milk to bottlefeed him, which is obviously time-consuming and not as effective, but I'm glad she has not given up and is presenting him with the best-ever gift she can provide! 加油!

On the subject of babies galore, my friend Meibao (first daughter, Sophie's, birthday same day as Rosie's) also gave birth a week early on April 09 to another baby girl. Gosh - I am so looking forward to seeing them, as I missed out on a precious reunion with the Nanyang Girls over this CNY since Rosabelle was having diarrhea then (my Singapore postings will be backtracked...and up soon, hopefully, haha...).

Can't wait to have Rosabelle Jie Jie see the little ones soon, and hopefully I can see more photos of them before!

P/S: Blame my slow posting and catch-ups on the fact that I'm having PC problems and had to re-install alot of programs, including a new photo-editing tool I am spending time getting used to...haiz...

Let the river run!

True to the name of this blog, I shall dedicate my first update to what our girl has been getting up to, language-wise. Here are some photos of her taken on 10 April, sitting on another kid’s bike (rest of pix galore to follow after they get sorted out, I promise…).

She seems to spout more English words than Chinese, and I at times have to help translate for Nai nai, but hey, Nai nai teaches her Mandarin, so it’s a two-way learning as Rosabelle teaches Nai nai English words. In addition to the usual/past words she was already speaking, in random order, she has since learnt how to say/use the action of further words like:

• Nodding her head when she says 要 (height/angle of the nod will commensurate with how much she wants the thing)

• Objects like home/家 (when we are in the car on the way back) car, book, cup, bowl, bag, watch, juice, road (when she reaches the end of the pavement, she will tell me it’s the road and stop for me to carry her/hold her hand), door (she will indicate windows as doors still though…), and um – as in ‘umbrella’.

• Colours like blue, red, green, and yellow (favourite is yellow – where every other colour asked of her is ‘yellow’… -_-)

• Body parts like knee, toe, neck, chin, elbow, nose, mole, back (she loves books about opposites and very quickly picked up the ‘front vs back’ concept) 口(to ask her fake baby to drink water, mimicking us when we ask her to rinse her mouth with just 一口of water…)and armpit (complete with accurate pointing/indication)

• Description with words like cut (mimicking my scissor-cutting action whenever I bring food to her), bit (when bargaining with me to take some of other kids’ biscuits before lunch), walk, wait, stop (with palms facing out), stand (like when she’s placing her water bottle on the dirty floor just to watch it stand – much to my chagrin), cheese (posing with fake cameras, at times facing the wrong way…), march (complete with hands behind her, as taught by my Dad, so much that she will go ‘Gong Gong’ every time we march), stuck (when she can’t move, or can’t get things out), knock, pain, dirty (like when she gets too near the dustbin or knowingly touches her dirty shoes or the floor), gentle (when we teach her not to be over-zealous in patting), wait (when she gets impatient with foods she wants to eat), come (when asking people to come, complete with waving of hand), turn (when she wants us to turn over and face her on the bed), big & small (even took out her two blue stacking cylinders to tell me she’s holding a big and a small cylinder), draw (when she wants her Crayola crayons and markers courtesy of Aunty Vanessa, where she like Wayne to draw cows for her), and good (though she does not know how to stick out her thumbs, but will use her index fingers instead, haha!), low (crouching down to demonstrate), dark (when we enter road tunnels), warm (in the past, she will describe things as hot even when they were mildly warm, so at least she has another in-between word besides cold and hot), 臭臭 (as she waves her hand around her nose, after she farts…), loud (purposely going LOUD when I tell her she has to be soft and whisper when people are sleeping), and with Nai nai around, speaking more Mandarin like点点, 饭, 慢 (Nai nai always tells her to run slower), 睡觉/觉觉, 绑 (as she happily cooperates when Wayne buckles her up in the high chair to stop her standing up), and 再见 (even said ‘Bye见’ once!). She can answer with words like 乖，听，带劲，好，美 when we ask her questions (e.g. ’Yue yue乖不乖?’). Nai nai even taught her to read玉米片 on the Kellogg’s corn flakes box, haha!

• Animals like giraffe (she has a cute way of saying it – it’s quite a difficult word, if you ask me, so I think it’s quite amazing!), whale, 马 (was describing to me that Wayne took her on a carousel ride, and clueless me kept wondering what ‘ma’ she was talking about…) and 兔兔 (knowing that it’s slow like a ‘turtle’, and fast like a ‘兔兔’).

• Counting one, two – her favourite number is officially now two (previously was eight), where she will want two of everything (or use two to refer to many…), or indicate two (with two index fingers placed together, since she can’t do a V sign with one hand now) – she can end the ‘One, two, buckle my shoe’ rhyme with an accurate ‘hen!’ too (and finish off the last words of ‘Twinkle twinkle’). She likes to go ‘Du du fei’ with her index fingers pointing together and coming apart – something the folks here teach their kids from young to practise their finger skills – though she says it more like ‘Du du wei!’

• Foods like grape, 瓜, 'nana (banana), egg (says 蛋蛋 too), 肉, 豆豆 (her favourite as she screams for it at every meal, as she knows my tactic now of hiding her favourite foods like peas and corns away from her until she finishes the rest of the items) – she can say ‘milk’ very well now, but after Nai nai could not fathom what she wanted at the breakfast table, Rosabelle blurted out a ‘奶’ instead, as if knowing that with Nai nai, Mandarin works better!

• Harder words like姥姥 (she says it with a roll of her tongue and it looks/sounds so cute – other older kids have a problem and pronounce ‘naonao’ instead…), and she can now say the names of her favourite friends like Qi qi, Jing jing, Wei wei, Wen wen, Dou dou, Jia jia, Guo guo, Bao bao, Fei fei, A-man, Hanzhu (mouth opens big at ‘A’ and ‘Han’) etc. Best of all, she can now say Yue yue, to refer to herself. She especially likes to refer to herself in the third person when requesting to do things on her own, like she will look at Nai nai and say ‘Yue Yue’ when she’s being fed, to get to hold her own spoon to feed herself.

• Stringing words together like ‘wet wipe’ (taking wipes for me to clean her teeth every night, and remembering to push the opening back firmly after), ‘book stuck’ (when trying to take a magazine from the rack in a store), ‘no more’, and the ultimate ‘Mama抱抱down’ when she was in a hurry to get out of her high chair!

• Also, she picked this up in Singapore when I shouted for Wayne to come into the room – she will go ‘Wayne!’ as well, and call out when we ask her what Daddy’s name is… not very polite, huh…

• And of course, it’s never too early to start and now, she has learnt to say ‘please’ pretty well on her own accord, especially if she wants her favourite foods, heh!

First things first – An explanation

Wow. Close to three months without a blog entry. It is catching up with my last prolonged hiatus when I was MIA after popping – hah! So what has been going on? Close friends and family would have already heard by now – NO, I am not expecting another one lah, heheh! But my sis has popped early at 35w because of her high BP, to lovely Gideon Toh on 13 April (that needs another dedicated post…).

It’s just that firstly, when I was in Singapore, I wasn’t online at all, and thus a one-month absence from this blog (and all things online…so I am doing a lot of catch-ups now on the blogs/sites I follow). And then, when we got back to Beijing on 6 March, thinking that it’d be life back to normal – oh no, Murphy’s law came CRASHING into action. Our beloved nanny, bless her, was actually not keen to come back to our home a few days prior (as previously agreed) to clean up the place, as her agent had warned her against being in the house alone and later get accused of theft. But this story is not about thieving nannies, no.

After agreement, and me sending an SMS to the nanny and her agent to reassure that any loss of valuables over the period would not be held against them, our nanny got back to work a few days before we came back to Beijing. She cleaned, she wiped, she mopped, and she even bought some groceries to ensure we did not have an empty fridge and she could prepare Rosabelle’s dinner when we arrived. But maybe she was slightly over-zealous, or underestimated her 48 years of age, but she tried to shift our heavy leather sofa alone to mop under it (she usually has Wayne around to help), and it turns out that she injured her knee cap and was limping when we reached home. Aiyo… with her hopping around the house, and not being able to bend (i.e. cannot even bathe Rosabelle), we decided that she stay for the night and take a few days off the next day.

When the diagnosis was out, she had to put her leg in a cast and told us she would not be able to return for 3 weeks. Horrors! What was Rosabelle going to eat with two non-cooking parents around??? McDonald’s? Eat at restaurants every day?? We did not want to get a temporary replacement from the agent as it would be quite painful for me to have to supervise a newbie – I would rather do it myself. And so, the husband and wife team managed to survive for a week without the nanny. How so?

We ate out for lunch every day, whilst I prepared Rosabelle’s breakfast and dinners. Thank goodness for the slow cooker, where I just dumped everything in, and we even had dumplings at another neighbour’s house one of the days. I got a小时工 in from the agent on one of the days, and she did a great job, really, by my standards, she was rather meticulous. Pity is, the next time I wanted to get her to clean the house, she had already left to go back to her hometown to look after her own kid (hopefully she wasn’t terrified by me…). Our plan was to bring a 小时工in twice a week so I would not have to do my own housekeeping, actually.

And during the one week, Rosabelle strangely suffered from a crying fit on one of the nights, wanting 'milk, milk’ right after I had nursed her, and not stopping her sobbing even after I was carrying her. In the end, I left her on her own cot where she continued her ‘Mama! Mama!’, and screaming ‘Down! Down!’, wanting to get down from the bed. So much so that our neighbour downstairs came up to see if everything was alright (it was past 12 midnight, and maybe she thought we were abusing our poor girl). I was tempted to go in to pick her up right away, but decided that I should let her cry it out, and went in only after she stopped. Her thigh was jutted out through the cot, seemingly stuck as she probably wanted to come down on her own. So I hugged her and gave her a preaching session of how ‘Mummy and Daddy do not like crying children’ and that ‘We will continue to ignore you if you cry’ as she huddled close in my arms. Oh well… I’ve read that it’s a no-no to abandon your crying child, as she will become even more insecure, and you should be close by to reassure her as she throws her fit. There’s yet another school of thought to give the child her quiet time out, and not jump at every crying spate. Ah, whatever works best, I guess.

So, after one week of hectic non-nanny time, we decided to bring Wayne’s mother in, and made a road trip to Zhengzhou on 16 March to drive Wayne’s mother back to Beijing with us. It was Rosabelle’s first road trip of about 8 hours (700km) each way, and she slept for about 2 hours on each, and was otherwise very well-behaved by sitting in her car seat, as I kept her occupied with toys, magazines, books, and snacks/fruits/food. Phew! More on Zhengzhou in another post…

And now here we are, more than a month into having my mother-in-law here – it’s a godsend! She can cook for Rosabelle (though I still throw foods into the slow cooker as our girl loves soups), and also for us – we can eat homecooked food – nice, and cheap, and convenient! Only thing is now, I have to plan meals and groceries for the adults as well but it’s nothing compared to having her around – she helps clean the house as well, and is lovely with Rosabelle. Our little girl now used to want to sleep on Nai nai’s bed every night before going to sleep, and wants Nai nai to feed her, patting the dinner table chair to get Nai nai to sit down. Aiyo!

Only thing is, Nai nai likes to throw in some baby talk, like saying double of everything, like ‘吃肉肉’, '擦你的手手', '喝水水' etc, but she is trying to curb that. She is so very accommodating and good-tempered, sigh…so nice! So the long-term plan is to wait for my father-in-law to get a clean bill of health for his intestinal problems, and then he will also join us in Beijing where we’ll rent a place nearby for them both (as our place is too small). And after all the dust settles and Rosabelle is nicely comfortable with them in a set routine, maybe, just maybe, I can then consider stepping back into the corporate world, haha!

And what of the nanny, you ask? When we were in Zhengzhou, about a week after she had first received the diagnosis, the agent called me to say that the nanny will be able to get back to work the Monday after – which means that she actually took less than two weeks to recover. Wayne and I deliberated and decided that we have no need for her anymore. She is costly (RMB3,200/month – we’d rather spend money on Wayne’s mum…), does not have much experience with older kids, and I still need to supervise/advise her on the foods for Rosabelle. Our house isn’t that big either and whilst Mum-in-law cleans every day, I will at times clean some parts more thoroughly on some days. And luckily the agent agreed to refund our remaining fees, and the nanny then came on one of the weekends to pick up her remaining clothing and say bye-bye. No tearful farewells, heh (though the nanny cried when dressing Rosabelle up before we caught the plane to Singapore), and she said that she was also fully recovered already. But no lah, Mum-in-law is great for now, heh!

And there you have it… the reason(s) why I wasn’t updating my blog as often as I should (and also because the proxy I usually use to access blogspot from a China IP address was failing me because of computer virus problems, thus I could not even access my blog…). Stay tuned for upcoming updates and photos on our Singapore trip, the Zhengzhou trip, and of course Rosabelle’s developments (speaking/imitating very well now!) – excuse me whilst I go sort out more than 700 photos post-Singapore trip in between meals-planning/housework/much-needed facials and manicures…

Before we hippity-hop away...

Rosabelle spouted a new word today - '要' (want), and of late, has been doing mean imitations of the actions of little children/babies on a stack of activity cards I bought for myself to refer to (to give myself ideas of which phase to engage her in activities on). She can pretend to whisper, pretend to dress herself by putting her arm up and through her long-sleeved top, go 'Ahhhh' like the Mummy talking to the baby, lift her arms up in the air with a jubilant 'Yaaay!' like the kids who are celebrating, and even give a cute giggle when covering her mouth, like that of a cheeky bear in a new story book.

Her exuberance is rather intimidating for some kids, like how she made an 18-month-old girl cry at least 5 times within a space of 15 minutes today. We were all playing in the shop that I normally go in to feed her morning fruit (it has a play area, and is a good respite from the cold weather), and Rosabelle went up to the girl to give her a forceful hug and wanted to kiss her. As the girl was slightly taller, she could not reach the girl's face, and started to tug at the poor girl, going 'Arrrrrghhhh' forcefully as she tried to plant kisses on the girl. It was all too much and the girl burst into tears. Rosabelle even waved her hands and went 'Huh...huh...', asking her not to cry, then walked away.

However, whenever I was not watching, she would go up to the girl again to tug at/kiss her, making her cry again, and again, and again. There was once when Rosabelle even grinned cheekily when the girl started crying - aiyo! Hope I have not brought up a bully on my hands! But how can I discipline my girl for being affectionate and wanting to kiss/hug other kids? Sigh...

Anyway, tomorrow's our last trip downstairs before we head home to sunny Singapore on Saturday! Rosabelle, as you can see, was trying to 'help' with the packing, and dragging my bag all over the floor, so I had no choice but to hook a spare bag over her head and make her happily parade around with her new accessory...
Our vain pot even loved the new swimming costume we got for her off Taobao.com. It's a Nissen rabbit suit, complete with cute bunny ears atop the hat - haha! After I got the nanny to wash it properly yesterday, we let her (not the nanny, duh...) try it on after her bath just now. She loved it so much that she started dancing on her bed and refused to let us take it off - you can see her strike a pose in the picture on the right.

Only thing is, something has unexpectedly cropped up for poor Wayne and he unfortunately cannot fly as scheduled on Sunday to join us - hopefully he can change his flight to a later date, or else Rosabelle will have a can't-swim-for-my-life Mummy introducing her to the pool at Po Po's house! (I love toddlers with tummies, just like the photo at the bottom left-hand corner...)

And so... off our little bunny hops! Singapura, oh Singapura...sunny island, set in the sea...

P/S: Singapore - land of glorious food, shopping, and with so much family/friend catch-ups and activities... can you blame me for putting a hiatus to my blog posts? Heh... promise to update as and when I can!

Multi-faced

I've been busy getting ready for our one-month homecoming, with packing of our stuff, and also preparing a list of to-dos for the nanny to carry out after we leave, and before we head back home.

Amidst all these, of course I also continue to bring Rosabelle out for her walks, in spite of Wayne's strong advice that we should keep her at home as she has been having a runny nose for slightly over a week. Rosabelle is still very active and in high spirits, so whenever there are no strong winds and nice sunny weather, I still try to expose her to the outdoors where possible.

Here she is donning the last in the series of hand-me-down sweaters... so sweet.
She is very caring actually - when she sees me without a hat/cap outdoors, she will point at my head and get me to put my hood on. Also, when she sees the wind blowing my hair into my face, she will try to use her hands to push my hair away, though with her hands stuck inside her down jacket, it's more a case of her patting/smacking my face...

Wayne today caught a few photos of her in bed, in her 'underwear' as the nanny was preparing her fruit for me to bring downstairs. This is what she wears beneath all the thick sweaters/pants - heavily mismatched clothing, haha! She now has the habit of running everywhere she goes, even on her bed, giving us all mini heart attacks as she is still not exactly stable in her toddling.
I like this series of candid shots as she hams it up for the camera, heh...
It might seem like I totally adore my girl,, which is true, and many have asked me, knowing the impatient character I have, whether I have ever lost my temper/shouted at/scolded Rosabelle. Well, on Saturdays when the nanny isn't around, and I have to cook dinner for her, and she ends up throwing the food onto the floor... I do at times lose my cool and shout at her.

When I shouted at her last Saturday, she probably did not realize I was being angry and in fact went 'Ah! Ah! Ah!' in a loud voice, trying to mimic me. It was the last straw when after being warned for the umpteenth time, she threw a strawberry onto the floor, so I immediately carried her out of her high chair and changed her clothes. I was even more angry when she refused to take a sip of water to rinse her mouth, instead throwing the bottle aside every time I placed it in front of her. I was rather angry and carried her, crying, to face me, as I told her off. In the end, I told Wayne to try giving her the water and walked away as I knew it was not fair to be so angry and scold her.

One thing I should pick up from Rosabelle, or any other kid for that matter, is that they seem to forgive and forget easily. After the 'fake crying', she was happy as a lark playing on her mat, forgetting that her Mummy was/is angry with her, heh! Om.......