Mummy
Mummy!
Mummy?
Mummy Mummy Mummy Mummy…

You know how that goes.

She can also say upstairs (more like upstahzz), and come, and is starting to recognise more animals – cow, mole, turtle (tartoo), bear (bah), kangaroo (roo), bees (bees!! – yes, with exclamation points!) and a bunch of other things.

We’re teaching her some of those “action” songs too. You know Twinkle Twinkle of course, but “Skinamarik-a-dinky dink” is a whole lot more fun. Speaking of which, did you guys watch The Elephant Show when you were little? I just realised that the CDs that we listen to in the car are by Sharon, Lois and Bram! So fun. I wonder if you can still get copies of these old shows…
Oh! And of course we’re trying out the Chinese New Year Song too – Gong Xi Gong Xi Gong Xi Nie Yeah!

Funnily enough, just as Daphne is starting to get a hang of her voice, I’ve lost mine. I was a bit croaky and then yesterday it just went away. I can still talk but very very quietly and only a few words at a time. It’s a strange thing, not being able to talk. This is the first time that I’m experiencing such a thing. There’s a lot of signalling going on around here and it’s really frustrating not being able to just call out someone’s name. Daphne doesn’t really understand it, and still asked me to read to her, which I tried, and managed because she does sit quietly on our laps for that; so by putting my mouth right next to her ear she could hear me. I’m smiling a lot to show her that everything’s okay and she seems alright although she keeps looking at me with this puzzled expression on her face. I hope my voice comes back soon!

I’ve attempted to write this letter 4 times already, but you keep interrupting me. You’ll show up and try to climb up the chair, which is impossible so eventually I lift you up and you start hammering away at the keyboard. Strange things have happened when you do that; and the only way to stop you is to put on the “A told B, and B told C” video. You’re starting to sing along to songs now and it’s pretty entertaining because no one understands you. Except when you’re doing the actions for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star – that’s universal you see. You can dance too… especially if your favourite theme songs show up on TV (Dibo and the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse!).

You’re babbling away like there’s no tomorrow now, but actual words are a little harder to come by.  You can say a  bunch of things like duck (this is your default word for anything remotely bird like), eyes, ears, nose, mouth, toes, teeth, close, shoe, hi, wow, more, cat…
Daddy taught you the sounds for monkey (uh uh) and dog (woof woof); you know how to roar for lion and flap your fingers in front of your nose for elephant.  New words keep popping up, but in the meantime we seem to understand each other perfectly well so I suppose there’s really no hurry.

Over the past few months you’ve become quite the little miss independent. Wanting to go up and down the stairs on your own, refusing to hold our hands; holding on to your milk by yourself, choosing which books you want for bedtime… things can get pretty heated when you don’t get your way! I’m pretty stubborn myself, so we’re just going to have to learn to give and take a little okay? You love to cuddle and every now and then you’ll take a break from playing to climb into my lap for a hug. You have a funny way of asking to be carried – you’ll clap your hands together and then make sort of “come here/gimme” signs with your fingers.

Christmas was a whirl of activity and you seemed to enjoy the chaos. I know Santa Claus can be a little scary, but we’ll work on that one so you’re better prepared next time. The last few months have flown by and suddenly, a brand new year is looming! I look back at the past year and it’s so amazing how much you’ve grown and how things have changed around here. 2012 is going to be awesome, I just know it.

Love,
Mummy

I’ve somehow managed to sort out all my gifts – this must be a new record! – and got everything wrapped over the weekend. Figured out I forgot to include a someone and did a mad dash to the nearest mall for it today, phew.

My annual break starts next week but DaddyCool only starts his hols later in the week so I’ll be flying solo with the tot for a few days. Clearly, there won’t be time for posting then either. She’s a huge bundle of energy these days – it’s go, go, go all the time around here now! The letter will have to wait till after Christmas then, but before New Years for sure. I’ll try to make it worth the wait – pinky promise!

Okay so a confession, I’ve also been completely immersed in a bunch of books. “Young Adult” books to be precise. It’s like Twilight all over again, but just THAT MUCH BETTER (I seem to be on a roll with caps today…). I’d read/heard about The Hunger Games and have been hunting them down for a while. Then we spotted the boxed set at Times BSC, and I basically demanded that DaddyCool buy them for me. I was supposed to hold out till the holidays to start reading them but got bored one day and broke them out. Big mistake. I basically was up to my eyeballs in the truly riveting story line and only came up for air once I’d finished the whole lot. Give them a whirl, you’ll totally get it if you do.

Now that’s out of the way (you’d better be paying attention DaddyCool. We = Flying!). Ahem. Okay, now that’s really out of the way, the trip itself was pretty great. We stayed with my sister in law and Daphne had a total blast hanging out at her Kuma’s (Guma?) new place. Her getting the run of the whole place without restriction probably had something to do with it. Also getting her way like 99% of the time with her MaMa. Aunts and Grandmothers – fun, but totally hopeless at discipline! There was a pool outside that we took full advantage of and our water baby is going to miss that the most I think.

Not that much shopping although we did visit a few malls because, basically, the exchange rate wasn’t too kind to us. We did pick up a Megabloks Safari Park set thingy for a total steal at Robinsons though. It was 20% off and another good thing about Aunts? They shop, and then get vouchers that we can use to buy toys! In the end the box cost us only RM20+. Way cheaper than Duplo, which we’ve decided we won’t get into. It’s cute and well, who doesn’t love Lego, but it just costs too much!

Daphne’s really loving her Megabloks animals – there’s only 20 odd pieces but that doesn’t bother her at all. She’s knows all the animals; and her favourite is the monkey of course.

We also got a few deliveries sent in from Brandsfever so while we were there, Daphne was happily playing away with a bunch of Woody Click farm sheep. We picked up the pigs set as well but kept that for the journey home. You all know I’ve got a thing for wooden toys and I’m really glad I’ve discovered these. We have to keep some bits away from her, like the really cute tiny carrots but besides that, these things are really great for pretend play! I’m going to be looking out for more sets to add to our collection.

I know that photos would make this post a whole lot more interesting, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how to get stuff transferred out of my phone!

*ping me if you want a Brandsfever invite!

My parents have been on my case for ages now and Daphne’s hair really has been growing a bit wild. We were out killing time waiting for her passport to be done and I decided it was time to get it done. So we checked out the hair salon, and it looked decent, and they said they do kid’s hair, and that was that.

She was a bit upset at first when the stylist put that big black sheet around her but settled down quickly. She entertained herself with looking down at the cars on the road outside and then with Talking Gina (yay for my new phone!). It was all over pretty quickly with minimal fuss. And then suddenly I had a kid that looked like a whole other person!

And there it is – Daphne’s first haircut.

Yup, she drinks her milk out of a straw. The most geram (I somehow can’t think of the right English word!) part is that she drinks out of the bottle while she’s at her sitters! Clearly, she’s bullying her parents. I shouldn’t complain, at least she’s drinking milk again. On a related note, did you know that its freakishly difficult to find a cup with a straw that is suitable for toddlers and doesn’t cost a bomb? An Avent cup was going for 50 bucks! That’s pretty outrageous right? I’m on the hunt right now because the one we’re using leaks. It was the most reasonably priced one that DaddyCool could find, because we weren’t sure if she’d even take to drinking this way.

Then we have eating. A few rough days like I mentioned in the last post, where she was surviving on bread alone, but then slowly she went back to “normal”. She doesn’t really want too babyish but if I mix it up, she pretty much eats anything that we offer her. I really hope this lasts. I’ve been introducing new stuff pretty regularly since we hit 12 months (peanut butter, eggs…) and I’ve also started offering her table food. Still trying to avoid anything too salty and deep fried though. I’ll do a post on the multitude of snacks we have stocked for her soon.

Next up is sleeping. We’re done with pacifiers! I guess her stuffy nose just made it too uncomfortable and after a week she got used to sleeping without it. This is not really a fabulous development for us though. We used to be able to just pop the pacifier in if she woke up in the middle of the night. Now if we’re quick enough she goes back down pretty easily, else she demands to be brought into bed with us. And then I get kicked. A lot. Sigh.

Anyway, it’s been pretty hectic adjusting to all this. We just had a long weekend so it was nice to be able to relax a bit and just be. Can you believe it’s already November? Christmas is just around the corner!

I do believe this is the end of the “baby food” era, and the doctor warned us that this might happen. Her taste buds have gone haywire and I don’t think she’ll go back to her usual meals now that she knows there’s more interesting stuff out there. Oh well, it’s good that she lasted this long I think.

Her sleeping has been off as well. The stuffy nose makes it hard for her to breathe and at one point she was waking up every 20 minutes – DaddyCool and I were practically zombies and resorted to taking turns to sleep in the guest room. Luckily that’s sorted now… It’s the worse thing to have a sick child!

Clearly, you should never follow the recipes that come with your machine. It wasn’t horrendous but definitely disappointing. The loaf only rose halfway up the pan and the top cracked. To add insult to injury that crust was so hard we couldn’t get the kneading bit out of it! It tasted alright though, the insides were soft enough, but the texture was way to dense. We chucked most of it down the bin.

Then yesterday my mother in law called and gave me the recipe she uses and suggested I try it. Why not right? So I did and with fingers crossed and a stern warning to the machine:

It’s bread! Proper looking this time too. The crust is still a bit hard but that’s probably because I chose the “medium” option and not “light” on the machine. Now I’ve got to hunt up a shop that sells bread making related thingies and then we can experiment with different types of bread. My dad’s put in an order for wholemeal. Stay tuned!

Here’s the recipe in case you’re curious:

2 1/2 cups flour
210 ml milk (or 210 ml water + 2 scoops of powdered milk)
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp honey
1 1/4 tsp yeast

Chuck everything in following the machine’s instructions – yeast usually comes last. Go for the “Basic” function and that’s it.

(Note: I know it’s a bit strange to mix up cups, mls and spoons but you should be able to manage it easily enough since most measuring cups come with the metric equivalent as well)

(2nd Note: Yes, I used our Zwilling knife instead of a serrated blade to slice my bread. Harder to do but not impossible after my mum did a little demo. A serrated knife is on our shopping list)

Well the wolf has gained a lot more fans so this year they’ve moved to a much bigger location and are reportedly putting 1.5million books up for sale! I was planning to go on the first day bright and early, but ended up only being able to visit this week, on the 5th day.

The haul:

I know it doesn’t look like much but there are 68 books in those piles! I went with my sister and DaddyCool and we spent a good 4 hours looking through everything till my trolley looked like it couldn’t take any more and their arms hurt from carrying boxes. It was a lot more comfortable this year as there was more room to move about and things were better organised; but somehow I didn’t really feel like I landed as many steals as last year. The books WERE cheap and totally worth buying, but this time round I didn’t really score like I did with those Maisy books and Eric Carle flashcards last year. The only Eric Carle book I found this time round was in Spanish!

But I’m just nitpicking, the sale was still pretty awesome and we were all very happy with our loot. You see that book “Emperor of Absurdia” in the corner? The illustrations are amazing! Looking through everything, I realised that we really bought a whole lot of books with lovely drawings. I basically went table to table and dropped anything that caught my eye into my trolley for sorting. But when sorting time came I found that I didn’t want to give any of them up! Yes, I was totally greedy. Heh. Now there weren’t many board books around but that “Mess Monsters” one is really cute, and I did find 2 Winnie the Pooh ones that we might add to our bedtime rotation. There are some cookbooks and a few hardcover general fiction books in those piles too, but mostly, we shopped for the munchkin.

Anyway, it’s been 2 days and the books are still taking up half our dining table. I really have to get down to sorting and storing them. We might actually need a new bookshelf…

I do hope there’s another sale next year because really, it can’t be beat!

All the clues combined to form a map and I have the worst sense of direction. Eventually though, with a lot of extra clues thrown in (I think he was completely exasperated with me) I found my present. It was a big black box in the cupboard above our fridge.

Behold my new shiny thingamajig:

My mum in law got me 2 bags of flour and some yeast. So now I’ve got to actually MAKE bread. Maybe next week, and I’ll let you guys know how that goes. Wish me luck!