14 months - and loving storytime

baby can't really sit still for long, so it's a miracle when i am able to get past "once upon a time" without her moving off elsewhere. but this book has managed to keep her well-entertained ever since we borrowed it from the library. 

she is a drama mama when we tell her this story, which is about a little bear who gets his new hat all unraveled and meets various animal friends along the way who try to help him make things better. 

she seems to grasp the idea that something has gone wrong with the hat (and keeps saying UH OH!! very dramatically coupled with hand actions and wide eyes), and says "hat". she also says "mow" (moo) when she sees the cow, and does her very realistic "ah choo" when she sees the bear sneezing in one of the pictures. she also says "pour" at the page showing papa bear pouring out some tea into a cup.

it's been very entertaining to tell the story to her, and a perfect way to end every night. 

14 months - morning at the fire station

we brought baby to the nearby fire station on saturday morning for its weekly open house. she was probably too young to appreciate the tour, and she kept taking off the very cute fireman helmet that was distributed to all the kids. plus she wasn't in the best of moods to start with (yay wonder week), and didn't like that she couldn't touch all the knobs and buttons that she saw. 

BUT she enjoyed the water jet demonstration because of all the water everywhere. and she liked "driving" the foam tender with its big steering wheel.

we will be back when she is older!

14 months - busy at night

barged into baby's room this morning expecting to see baby awake and about as usual but instead saw this sight - 

somewhere somehow in the dark last night she carried all her soft toys including tamago from the mattress to the floor and then fell asleep on tamago. oh, and she must have been feeling warm as the standing fan was blasting away when i went into the room. :D

14 months - so many new words

way too cooool!

baby is picking up new words very quickly nowadays. not only repeating after us, but also saying words on her own accord when she sees the item. the continuously growing laundry list of her spoken vocabulary (where she is not blindly imitating) include: apple, 爷爷, joy ("doy"), 耳朵, 尾巴, 猪猪, amen, dog, dark (the room without lights on), yuck (poop in diapers tend to draw this reaction), 菜 ("tai"), 铁头, where, is, bear bear (her soft toy), meh-meh / sheep (her sheep soft toy), moon, please ("piss"), 姐姐, raisin, egg, baby ("babeh"), mop (when we mop up spilt water), poopoo, goodnight ("night" or "goo-night"), ten, share, open ("pen"), train, pour ...

she is also starting to recognise alphabets, and will say "A", "G", "F" among others, although i can only say for sure that she definitely recognises A for now.

she also will start singing the birthday song ("hap! hap!") with enthusiastic clapping when she sees pictures of cakes with candles. it's hilarious.

and....

she is finally finally saying mama and meaning it. FINALLY! just last night i had slept with baby at my parents' home and she woke me up this morning by kissing me and saying mama mama. best way to wake up at 8am on a public holiday. 

time out!

got to spend sunday by ourselves after my parents "hijacked" baby on saturday evening, and it felt good to have some time to do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted.

i slept in and later grabbed the chance to head to town and do some decent shopping. but i unfortunately could not find anything to spend my plentiful takashimaya vouchers (which we got from colleagues and friends when baby was born. yes, that long ago) on. landed up using only a $10 voucher for yummy carbs (bread) at peck. thankfully the vouchers do not have an expiry date, so i can still take my time to spend them. 

the visit to paragon was more fruitful and i came away with new clothes (including a dress) for myself. also got to try out the very satisfying red velvet cake and banana moscovado loaf with peanut icing from the chalk farm. i will be back for more!

then spent the afternoon watching vettel win yet another GP race and reading and finishing ender's game in one sitting. i gave up a nap to do this! that was how intriguing and interesting the story was. now i need new reading material, as i think it will be awhile before i finish the picture of dorian grey and i need something else to read on the sidelines.

this was followed by dinner and then our usual gogglebox fare - 夜市人生, last weekend's US masterchef rerun, and ANTM season 20.

to think this was how most weekends were spent before baby arrived! 

14 months - cold and sweet

we spent some time today at a full month party for a pair of twins at the daily scoop (at chip bee gardens). 

this is how it is eating ice cream with a toddler:

- after the first few tentative licks and getting used to the cold sensation in her mouth, baby will want to take charge of the cone. and will REFUSE TO LET GO.

- if the cone is sturdy (like the one from daily scoop) then there's less risk of her crushing the cone in her vice-like grip.

- if the scoop of ice cream is cold enough and firmly on the cone, then you have a few minutes' grace before the ice cream starts getting drippy and melty.

- try to gobble down as much of the ice cream despite her protests and screams. otherwise, the mess will be too much to handle. because of this, i only got to enjoy my strawberry shortcake ice cream for all of 2 minutes (or 5 mouthfuls). sigh.

- leave her with the empty cone to enjoy for the rest of 15 minutes or longer. i wonder how long more i will be able to pull this off.

14 months - *hearts* tamago

this is evidence that she LOVES her tamago, especially when her daddy starts on his tamago antics.

14 months - water baby

i think we will be spending a lot of time at the splash park at the zoo from now onwards. baby LOVES it there and she gets to burn off her energy running everywhere in knee deep water.

got to try the huggies little swimmers disposable swimpants that i got from cold storage after the earlier bursting diaper episode and it works very well! it doesn't swell even with baby being in the water for close to an hour. at the rate we are visiting the zoo, i guess she'll be through with the 11 (now 10) swimpants before she weighs 15kg. right, right?!

14 months - changing naptimes

baby is transitioning from two to one nap in the day. i have been delaying her naptime on weekends such that she only sleeps around 1pm for about 1.5-2 hours and is up for the rest of the day. it's been good so far, as i don't have to deal with her fighting her morning nap. and we don't have to wonder whether she will take another nap in the late afternoon. on those days when she is reluctant to nap in the afternoon, i also get a grumpy baby on my hands around 5-6pm because her last nap was too early in the day.

so yes, i am liking this transition and also enjoying the longer break i get in the afternoon.

however it also means shifting around some of the milk and meal times. baby's eating schedule is now as follows:

8am - 6oz milk

9am - some kind of breakfast. either eating what we are having for breakfast (e.g. yam cake, toast, noodles, scrambled eggs from mcdonald's) or cereal/fruit. she also gets soya bean milk or some fresh milk to go along with the food.

12pm - lunch

1pm - 8oz milk (it used to be milk at around 10.30am followed by her nap and then lunch around 12pm)

3pm (when she gets up) - some snack or fruit. am trying to cut out her late afternoon milk feed since she doesn't seem to need it and i would rather her have a hearty appetite for dinner.

6pm - dinner

8-8.30pm - 8oz milk

i like this eating schedule as we can have lunch together rather than consecutively. plus, she eats more at lunch and dinner because we don't fill her up with milk beforehand.