16 months - bye bye playpen

am still getting use to the "wide open space" in our living room now that we have packed away the huge veebee playpen/jail. it was becoming quite a safety hazard since baby is now perfectly capable of getting herself up and over the playpen ledge ... which means she finds herself perched plank-style on the top of the playpen and any way she falls (back into the playpen or out of it) will land her in much pain. it feels great to reclaim so much prime living room space! with the physical living space returning to how it more or less was pre-baby, there's a sense that life is going back to the "normal" before baby arrived although i know that it is far from true. it's just my eyes playing tricks on me :D

baby is enjoying her bedtime story routine more and more now ... she keeps still long enough for me to "rush read" through her favourite books and she actually spends quite a bit of time poring over her picture books, pointing out things that she recognises.

her repertoire of nursery rhymes has grown to include humpty dumpty, wee willie winky, jack and jill, hey diddle diddle  and the grand old duke of york. her christmas song this year is "o christmas tree" which she refers to as "o kis". she does actions for all of them and also knows how to complete some of the lines. it's all great fun seeing how much she is absorbing and how proud she is when she shows us what she knows.

she can count from 1 to 10 in both english and chinese, and in general just loves talking and asking for things. it cracked me up when i overheard her saying "pis ah-pen, no, put back" all in one breath ... the no put back part tends to be a common reply from me to her please open requests. haha. 

need to start psyching her up to go to school from next month onwards ... what a big change!

16 months - monkey

everyday we find baby climbing to ever greater heights, literally ... she's discovered that the higher she climbs the more stuff she can reach, so now she's climbing chairs (she conquers the dining table chairs, sofa and piano stool easily) and then some (tv ledge, my bedroom dresser ledge (see below) and of course the dining table. sigh.

we brought her to the botanic gardens today and she got herself onto the ledge of a little water feature (with fish!) and started playing with the water. my oh my.

i think she has a sense of danger so she doesn't do crazy things like jump off the dining chair etc, but i still worry that she loses her footing one day and lands up like humpty dumpty!

oh and she can climb up and down stairs without holding onto anything ... i don't think babies are supposed to do that until much later!!!

16 months - saturday fun

felt like having a good brunch (with pancakes!!) this weekend and so we made our way to the real food cafe at central. it serves vegetarian dishes only and so was quite apprehensive about bringing the husband there as he is a "meat" person. but i shouldn't have worried since the food was really good and tasty. 

my genovese pesto pasta was delicious, especially with the feta cheese mixed in. the mushrooms that came with the big brekkie platter were very tasty, and the strawberry and banana pancake while not like the usual buttermilk pancakes that i've had at other breakfast places before, was of an interesting chewy texture, eggy, and very very yum!

we got to have our brunch in peace while baby slept and when she woke up she polished off the remaining pancake and pasta because they were THAT good.

we later made our way to liang court for the necessary supermarket aisle browsing at meidi-ya ... but before that we had to pry baby away from a huge teddy bear that was part of the photo-taking set that appears at every shopping mall during christmas time. she makes a beeline for every soft toy she sees ... i wonder where she got this soft spot for them from, as i don't remember being so attached to my soft toys when i was young.

bear-baby separation over, she was all cooperative and chilled in her stroller (miracle!) with her hat on (double miracle!!) while we made our way to liang court. halfway there, we took a detour that led us to the water feature at clark quay which got her all excited and (subsequently) wet ... she was running around from water jet to water jet, while there was another girl who was older that was standing with her parents and refusing to even touch the water jets. it's in such situations that i realise how fearless and daring baby is. she's really game to try anything.

it was a great day out.

bookdepository.com

spent quite a bit at bookdepository.com recently as it stocks many of the books that baby has been enjoying from the library. have been trying to hunt down these books, but to no avail so far. so when a colleague mentioned this site (with free shipping!), i immediately checked it out and parted willingly with my money. 

looking forward to having the hugless douglas series of board books for baby, especially since she loves the "don't worry hugless douglas" hat story and keeps saying "hat hat" when going through her hoard of books even though i have had to return that book quite awhile back. also got a few copies of babywise for sharing with friends who are expecting, and decided to buy some of the julia donaldson books that is ever so popular now. a friend gave baby "monkey puzzle" earlier which she enjoyed, so i got another two books by the same author. not "the gruffalo" though, as i still can't figure what's the big deal about that book.

16 months - medley of songs

baby strings the first line of different songs together as if she needs to show you her repertoire of songs as fast as possible ... so the medley usually goes like this:

"jingle jingle little stars, baa baa black sheep, teapot, bus round and round"

uniquely her.

16 months - durian baby

baby eats durian pengat and wants more! she's more singaporean than i ever was at her age.

16 months - bye bye cot

we dismantled baby's cot about a fortnight ago to make more space for her in her room. we probably should have done this much earlier since we moved her from the cot to the mattress before she turned one and have never looked back since. but i guess i was slow to do it because it felt like as long as the cot was there, baby was still a baby.

well, the room is slowly being rid of the baby-baby stuff while my baby hurtles through the height and weight charts ... they really are small for such a short time! you never realise until you experience it yourself. :(