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!