Action indoors

Rosabelle woke up fairly early today - 8am - and so we decided to bring her to The Place where we would go visit the indoor play area for the first time. We'd been there previously to just check the playground out, but not too long ago, she could not walk, and we figured it'd be super exhausting for us to support/carry her, but now that she can toddle, ah...it's different.

Also, calculative me figured that since were were paying RMB50 for the all-day pass, we might as well go at a time when she can play for a longer session, rather than just scooting off home for lunch after 30 minutes, heh!

So, our girl had her first indoor playground session today!

She was most attracted to the stacking blocks (all made of foam material) - the whole place is actually all padded/kid-friendly, so it was good for her to just walk/crawl along herself; we just had to look out for older kids who ran around high on sugar overdose...
She even grabbbed blocks to walk along with...

There was a carousel of sorts with short, furry animals on it, and she did not really like riding on them, but would rather walk around in circles around the carousel to eyeball the animals until even I got giddy following her. Note stacking blocks in hand still.

There were many furry animals for her to reach out to and pat as well.

Here she is, on a water bed (was cold to the touch), and she liked the dancing lights below the sheet. An older boy came along later and jumped into the 'water' a few times, and accidentally kicked her on the head as she was proned on it - luckily it wasn't too hard a kick and Rosabelle was very hardy and did not cry, phew!

Yet another water feature - the cascading waters under the slide. Two of us had to look after her for this as the slide surface is hard and one had to carry/release her from the top whilst the other held onto her all the way - if not, she would likely fall back and hit her head. Some of the amenities are obviously for older children, with alot of climbing/jumping etc, so I guess Rosabelle will have more fun next time when she develops further skills, one of which is to know how to avoid dangerous children!

This hamster's wheel is a moving, crawling feature, but she did not like it much.

I was not supposed to accompany her into the kids-only area of plastic balls, but seeing that there were many older kids throwing themselves into the sea of balls, and running around the area, we spent enough time in there for her to wade in the balls. (Call me 无聊 if you must, but I thought to myself at that point: 'Hmmm, my daughter is dressed up to match the colours of the balls - in pink, yellow, and white...' - ok, end of digression).

It was shortly after this that Rosabelle got 'bullied'. She was heading back to the stacking block pool and saw an older boy (about two years old?), and being the friendly kid she is, reached out to touch the boy who was sitting on the floor. In her haste, she accidentally poked the boy in the eye, and the naughty crap of a kid pretended to cry before quickly slapping Rosabelle *hard* on the chest - so much that I could hear a loud 'thump' on her small chest!

My goodness - the cheek of it! And he was not even cute at all! Not that I would pardon him if he's cute, just that since he's so uncute, it makes his act of violence even more deplorable! I immediately told him that it was wrong, and he should not hit a younger 妹妹. Wayne witnessed the whole incident too and quickly came running over to also tell the boy off - seeing there were two adults scolding him, the uncute boy rubbed his eyes and pretended to cry even more. Sheesh!

And our dear Rosabelle? Our brave girl did not even cry, and when we quickly carried her away after, she even looked at the uncute boy and waved her hands, making her usual empathetic-sounding 'Nnnng, nnnng' sounds to indicate that he should stop crying. So sweet of her....well, since she did not cry, we figured it should not hurt as much, but still! The thump on her poor, little chest was enough for us to feel the heart pain - so uncalled for especially when she was just trying to be friendly. Even Wayne, ever so stoic, told me later in the afternoon that '刚才那个小男孩打玥玥，确实挺心痛的...'.

Uncute, violent kids should be barred from such public play places - they should just be locked up at home and left to play with their own other uncute, violent friends so that they do not hurt cute, friendly kids!

After Daddy carried her away in his protective arms, they went on to explore the ringing of a bell. You can see Rosabelle with her eyes half-closed as the ding-dong of the bell was pretty loud! Seeing that she must be tired from about an hour of play (me too!), we sat on the sofa for a rest as I fed her some fragrant pear and she recharged on water. We're not sure if it's the intensive playing, or the early waking up, but she started to get all cosy on Wayne's lap and lying there comfortably. After that, she even laid down lazily on the floor whilst playing with the stacking blocks, haha!

As it was time to head home for lunch, we let her try out one last feature - the flying balloons enclosure (with fans at four corners switched on at full blast). She enjoyed this the most as the balloons flew around her and she could beat at them, and Wayne and I also got down on all fours to chase after her, or hide away from her. Oh, and in case you are wondering, we did not bring her back in the afternoon to make the ticket worth it - there's such a thing as tiring out a child too much, over-stimulation and nightmares and such. But come to think of it, I should have approached another Mummy in the yard to ask if they'd like our ticket - they can then bring their kid in for free....hmmm...

Are you sure you want a Winter Wonderland?

Friends and family in sunny, tropical Singapore are all asking if we are snowed under. Yes - we're basically trapped at home most of the time (thank goodness for cars, as it's almost impossible to hail a cab these days as everybody wants to take a cab). With the snowing stopped, we are now basically living in a huge freezer with blocks of ice all around - I told Wayne this temperature is even colder than our freezer and we can basically leave all food outside, haha...
Day temperatures average around minus 10 degrees celsius (going down to minus 14 at night/early morning), and it's impossible to bring our girl out for walks anymore.

Yesterday, seeing that the winds had stopped, and it was sunny, Wayne and I decided to bring her out for just awhile ('10 minutes', I told the nanny) to experience the cold and the snow.

Here she is protesting when Wayne put her down, as she did not want to stand on the snow.

After some cajoling/coaxing, she got down and stood briefly on her own.

And how long were we outside for?

A grand total of 3 minutes. Yes, that's how long, and how quickly we took photos and ran back into the lobby - I almost suffered frostbite from the exposed fingers when taking these photos!

And to think we took about 10 minutes to get dressed up... I sure am looking forward to just singlets/shorts/slippers days in Singapore soon...

The best form of flattery

The nanny remarked today that Rosabelle has strong impersonation skills, something she must have picked up from me (friends and family know that I like to mimick things/other people - to hilarious effects, mostly).

This is my protege's version of a good form of imitation...

This. This is what she was copying - a picture of a male model yawning away in the magazine. And get this, she does it complete with a huge 'gasp' before every open-mouth-till-jaw-is-locked yawn... It's quite hilarious...

Etch-a-sketch

I used to own a Etch-a-Sketch in the shape of a tortoise, and remember exchanging it with my neighbour's version of the usual rectangular Etch-a-Sketch when I was about 5 or 6 years old. My mother did not think much of my entrepreneurial streak to help her save money with this toy exchange, and instead gave me a telling-off and commanded me to run back to my neighbour to get the tortoise back. In retrospect, I must have seemed highly insensitive and unappreciative of my mother's efforts in buying me my own special Etch-a-Sketch, and must have been offended that I wanted to 'give it away' for something else...

To encourage Rosabelle to start doodling (and after two failed attempts at crayon doodling), we got her her own Etch-a-Sketch, complete with different shapes for imprinting pictures as well. These days, she likes to remove and place back the shapes, and eversince she found out how to erase the pictures, she will purposely cover the whole surface with a shape before getting some satisfaction from erasing it by pushing the button below sideways.

Wayne cut off the string attaching the magnetic pen to the board, as we could see it was hampering her from holding it. True enough, after we gave her free rein, she started to weld the pen better and this is what she 'drew'... if you ask me, it looks like a haphazard Chinese signature, don't you think? Now, if only she could sign off on handwritten memos to the below gifts we got for our family - picture books, framed photos, and 2010 photo calendars galore for Wayne's and my family. Most of the photos are from those taken by Chocolate Box (might as well milk it for what's it worth, given the amount of money we'd spent!), and I know it will certainly brighten their days!

Photoshop

Rosabelle likes looking at the photos we have of her and our family members on the fridge - this is where the nanny/Wayne will rock her to sleep at times at night. Of late, she has also been playing with a few favourite photos, grabbing them and kissing them (especially the one with my mum and another with Simon Geg Ge and Marianne Jie Jie), putting them into her walker.

So I recently developed a few new photos and redid the layout, only to have to shift the last few photos upwards as I forgot she can now reach out and grab at them (if we are not careful, the heavy magnets will fall onto her so I can only place the lighter ones below).

She woke up to the new photo collage with exclamations of 'Ah! Ah! Ah!' over breakfast until Wayne had to carry her out of her high chair to look at the pictures.
Seeing that she likes looking at photographs so much, and we'd taken some nice family photos, Wayne and I decided to finally fill up the blank space on the wall between our rooms with a montage of photos in picture frames. We bought a set of 13 assorted frames off Taobao.com, and Wayne got down to some DIY-ing this afternoon (with a cameo from our little helper).

The set came with a paper layout that you could easily position onto the wall with pins.

Next, he placed the nails onto the centre portions and hammered all 13 of them in.

Then he tore off the whole piece of paper and left the nails on the wall. Our little girl also wanted a bit of action with her toy hammer, haha!

Later on, when Rosabelle took her afternoon nap, Wayne and I sorted the photos into the frames and got them set up. Ta dah! The set even comes with a balancer(?) that you place on the middle of each of the frames to ensure that they are correctly positioned.

After all the 'hard work', the best reward came to Wayne and I when we carried Rosabelle out from her afternoon nap, and she could not stop beaming when she saw the beautiful photos on the wall. She even wanted to clap, but stopped herself short as she was not sure if it was appropriate, and quickly put her hands to her mouth (to maybe gasp/hide her smile?). Her sweet and bright smile was so genuine and lovely...awwww.....

Wayne initially wanted to get a 23-piece set, but I advised him against it as we do not have such a large wall, and we have many other photos/frames around the living room/TV console area. Glad that it turned out quite nice, don't you think?

It pays to eavesdrop, eh?

Last week, we got a collapsible/foldable stool for Rosabelle - the kinds that you pay RMB5 more for when purchasing something from Lijia. When she first saw it, she indicated to the nanny that she wanted to sit on it, and even shook her body/legs when enjoying her new 'toy'.

Two days ago, when Wayne placed the stool against the sofa, she actually climbed onto it and went up on the sofa, using the stool as a tool - Daddy was very impressed, heh!
She went further to impress/amuse us when I was feeding her dinner on Thursday. She will normally point to her table on the high chair and say '这、这!' to indicate that she wants finger foods to be placed there for her to feed herself. However, instead of using the Chinese phrase that day, she erupted into a quick 'Put here, put here!'. When I burst out laughing at the clear enunciation of the two words, she said '这、这!' again, showing that she understands it means the same thing. So she will occasionally repeatedly say her 'Put here, put here!' at times, in other scenarios like when she wants toys to be placed somewhere to her desire, haha!

She has also been picking up alot of Wayne's words - when I asked Wayne if I needed to put on a scarf for her, he replied '不用', and Rosabelle immediately shook her head and went '不用、不用'. She will repeat this whenever she hears us saying it, just like when Daddy ordered dinner the other day and said '不要味精', Rosabelle said '不要' and can now use this phrase correctly - so funny!

It's fun to see her mimicking/parroting us, just like how she makes a 'Whoooo!' sound upon hearing the juice blender in the shop, repeating this sound when I ask her 'What sound does the blender make?', and she has recently picked up the 'Kuka, kuka' sound of the frog as well - good girl!

It will really be fun times when we head back to Singapore for Chinese New Year - yaaay! We've booked tickets home from 6 Feb till 6 Mar - a full month! My family's planning a short trip to Genting, so see how that goes, but Wayne's vacation is still iffy, so hopefully fingers crossed he can join us, but I am gearing myself up for yet another solo trip with our girl!

Loads of errands to run, loads of things to buy, loads of places to go and loads of people to catch up with - with loads of to-dos...why am I so excited about it all? Heh... can't wait!

Snowy 2010

The last time I blogged was last year! Whee, that sounds like eons ago, haha! But time did whizz by for us the past few days as the nanny was on leave for the New Year (effectively leaving us stranded and nanny-less since Thursday night - she cooked dinner then left, coming back only this morning, thus the long delay from postings on this blog...).

We did not do anything special on New Year's Eve/New Year's Day, but brought Rosabelle out for lunch at Prima Kitchen after a short walk downstairs in the cold, cold weather. It was a special New Year for us, though, as Rosabelle decided to pick this special day to start toddling around steadily on her own! She can now walk around pretty much without holding onto us, so cute.

Also, look what we woke up to on the morning of January 2:
It had snowed slightly the night before, and luckily did not hamper our lunch plans at Grandma's Kitchen, where Rosabelle is as usual very excited to see her own reflection in the mirror.

She always wants to plant kisses on herself...

We took a slight detour before lunch to bring Rosabelle around to see the snow-laden pathways around our house. Strangely enough, she did not want to get down to walk on her own (always wants to be let down to walk at any other time) - maybe it's the strange feeling of the white snow on the ground.

Snuggled safely in Daddy's protectice arms, she goes around 'vandalising' cars and leaving her Superhero 'Rosabelle' name...

We also let her touch snow for the first time, dipping her fingers into the snow and feeling the soft, powdery, and very cold snow on her palms. After about 10 seconds, she decided she does not like the cold and did not want to touch it further, heh!
It was very cold that day, and of course, there were no other kids around.

Here's a self-taken shot at the basketball/tennis courts, which was of course deserted...

Thank goodness we brought her out yesterday for a taste of snow as it started snowing even more heavily last night, and has been continuing to snow for the whole of today.
The snow is very thick, and the snowflakes are huge (you can see in below pic). Even primary and secondary schools are closed tomorrow because of the bad weather. Tsk tsk!

We asked another girl in the yard to come upstairs to our home to play this morning, but Wen Wen, who is 3 months younger than Rosabelle, did not take well to Rosabelle's warm welcome of kissing/hugging her. Rosabelle even very sweetly took her favourite toys to show/share with Wen Wen - so nice of her. Looks like we need to look for more playmates for indoor fun over the next few days!

Hope everybody has a wonderful 2010, whether snowed under or not!