Practising knife skills: cutting the toy eggplant on the cutting board

Week 77:

• Mar 11:  She didn’t have much of an appetite the other day and didn’t even want to sit in her high chair during dinner time.  Grandma and DH were more concerned about it, but I knew that the days will come when she doesn’t want to eat and that’s okay.  Kids will eat when they’re hungry.  After she had a bigger poop the next day, it kind of explained why.  She was probably really backed up or something and it hindered her appetite.  
• She displayed some serious “toddler” “two-year-old” behaviour today.  Right before her nap time, I wanted to change her diaper but she wouldn’t let me.  She wouldn’t let me put her on the bathroom counter as usual to change her.  She flipped over and ran away lol… I even tried to change her in her room but it’s usually impossible because we change her on the counter only where she can’t move or escape.  She was briefly a pantless and butt naked toddler running around before I was able to slap a diaper on her.  Lol.  This is like those stereotypical toddler moments people see on TV.  I had to get her dad to wrangle her to get her changed 🤦‍♀️
• Mar 16: Daylight savings/springing forward this week affected her naps and sleeps.. The day after the time change, she naturally didn’t want to head to her room for nap time even though she was tired. I even adjusted for the hour forward but it was still something she had trouble with. The old “get in the room, get in your sleep sack, and point at the doors/light” trick didn’t work. Ultimately grandma had to sleep down with her on the mattress for her to nap.
• The head nodding/shaking fascination decreased this week. I guess that phase is done lol.
• This week, she knows how to say “sit down” / “chau dey” and will take my hand and yank me to her play area and tell me to “sit down” to play with her.
• We put the bookshelf up in her play area so that her books are all in one place and most of the toys are off the floor now. Yay! But it looks slightly more cluttered than before since the items are all in one clustered spot in that room. Playroom is a work in progress 💁‍♀️
• Realized the other day that the end of my fertility years are just around the corner…. I’m nearing my mid 30s and so if most women begin menopause around 45 or 50, that means I only have about a decade left to bear children and have regular periods…!  Honestly this realization makes me really sad because it’s not so much the fact that the chapter of bringing life will be closed but that I will eventually miss having periods. I’ve always had irregular periods (40 days each cycle) since puberty and I have been one of the luckier women to not experience bad menstrual symptoms — I don’t double over in pain or have bad cramps, no headaches, super heavy periods, or back aches either. As a teenager, I always recorded down the days when my period arrived and compared them month to month in hopes they would become more regular over time — it was like a constant goal to watch for. I frankly enjoy it when my period comes. I also feel that whenever I see my period come regularly, it’s a sign that my body is operating normally and healthy. If you’re not eating right or over tiring yourself, your body won’t produce a period, so I really enjoy having periods as a benchmark of my health. 10 years or so to go… seems awfully fast 😦  (Sorry in advance if I am alarming anyone in this age range. 10 to 15 years is still plenty for anyone looking to get pregnant!! On the flip side, for those not looking to get pregnant and dread periods, a period-less life is soon to come!)
• After birthing bb, my periods are still not “regular” since I only stopped breastfeeding in January (only 2 months ago), so the few periods that I have been receiving postpartum have been a great joy (weird, right?). 
• Bb is like a parrot these days. She repeats almost everything we say to her lol. She has begun stringing together two two-syllable/two-character words. She can say “ma ma, gor lei” = “mommy, come here”. She can also say 3-syllable things now too — more than before.
• We took her out on a few walks this week in the warmer weather to further explore our new neighbourhood for the first time since we moved in. Bb is much taller now and her feet can reach the first foot pad in the stroller. She waved to the ducks in the creek and noticed when dogs were being walked. She kept turning around to look at us while in the stroller though. She isn’t used to sitting and facing the front — I guess she would rather look at our faces than the street view.
• With the refusal to have her diaper change becoming more frequent, I think the days of us changing her diaper will decrease soon too when she starts potty training. Yay! Something to look forward to.
• She gets so excited when it is time for her to drink some milk. We have been actively refraining from saying the words “milk” or “lai” in front of her because she hears us and goes crazy for it. It’s some kind of Taboo game for us to avoid saying the word lol. It takes some time to warm up the milk bottle first so we have to space the time for it. She is smart and when we say “yum” (“drink”), she automatically knows. We have to distract her with something else before the milk is actually ready for her to drink.
• Not sure if I mentioned this last week, but we switched from pens to giving her pencils to draw with because she had left marks on the countertop. We currently have pencil marks on the countertop already lol… 
• Grandma taught her how to “cut” her toy vegetables this week. I further improved the play experience with the toy cutting board. She was so happy to cut the toy eggplant, avocado, tomato, and broccoli in half. The eggplant and avocado were the easier toys to “cut”. After cutting them, she knew automatically to put it back together again (it sticks together via velcro) to cut again. Minutes of concentrated fun/hours to a toddler lol.
• Snuck out with mom to enjoy a nice brunch while DH took her to play at her cousins’ place. Ahhh 🙂
• DH said that bb would go look at the baby cousin when she was crying. Bb let her aunt hold her for the first time since becoming a toddler! How lucky bb is to grow up with 2 cousins so close in age.
• She can do the farm puzzle easily, too easily.
• I don’t know how she does it but she recognizes the difference between the 3 Chinese books that look that same from the outside. One is about going to the potty, one is about good manners, and one is about sharing. Even by looking at the spine of the book, she knows which is which. Does she recognize the Chinese characters?!
• DH is such a heavy hands-on father. I hope he continues to be able to work from home at least 3 days a week when things are “back to normal”…. so that he can spend more time with bb and see her grow.
• She sleeps around 10pm until 6am for a little milk and then sleeps again until 8 or 9am. This is her recent sleeping schedule 😀 
• Bb enjoys looking at the photo books we have of our travels and pre-wedding shoots. She identifies us and says we are wearing “coats”, “scarves”, when we are “sleeping”/eyes closed.
• When a cartoon character in a book has their eyes closed, she says they’re “gau ju na” (sleeping). 
• When DH puts on hand cream, bb points to him and says “cha go go” (putting on cream).
• This week when DH gave me a shoulder massage, bb saw and then the next day she also wanted to give me a shoulder massage lol. She said “ann mor” which I had trouble understanding the first time since I couldn’t make out what she was saying but then I got it. She can’t replicate the exact hand movements for the massage, of course, but it’s cute to see her try.
• As a baby I used to like holding her legs when she’s on her back and put them left and right like window wipers and sing a rhyme, but now she doesn’t like it anymore and says “ji gay” (myself). She likes to do most things herself. Even when I put the soles of her feet together to “pat pat” them together, she now refuses and wants to do it herself. And she can lol. She scurries aside and then “pats pats” her feet together herself lol.
• Taking walks were my only exercise this week as I was inundated with 2 full transcripts and 2 scoping jobs. Cardio workouts to resume next week 🙂
• Bb has been scurrying in her sleep such that she leaves the field of view of the Nanit camera. It’s funny when I look at the camera and see no one in the room 😂😂
• She says “bok lay lay” or “lay my” when she can’t find a certain item and thinks it is playing “hide and seek”.
• Bb goes crazy hyper when playing hide and seek. She gets so excited and laughs and runs too hard and often bumps into the wall or furniture which makes her cry lol.
• She purposely goes to grandma when she gets her head bumped bc grandma is the one who over-comforts whenever she gets hurt lol.
• I brought out the old cymbals toy that she had and she spent a good 30 minutes playing with it and refused to go down for a nap lol. The onomatopoeia for it is “ching ching chang chang” which she repeats and tries to say.
• Speaking of onomatopoeia, whenever she sees the bees picture in the Counting book, she goes “you yon yon” and does a little dance. That’s because she learned that bees go “yon yon yon” (buzzing around). 😀🐝
• She has so many toys out but she actually plays with each of them for a bit of time every day. It’s hard to put them away for rotation when she plays with everything.
• She was able to play with the stacking blocks in the Melissa and Doug toy train. She can expertly stack the blocks on the dowels (new word learned thanks to Wordle/Dordle/Quordle/Octordle/Sedecordle😂) of the train. I tried to alternate the two-holed blocks with the single-holed blocks but bb likes to put the same ones in the same dowels consistently. It’s funny to see.
• Also because I had been slaving away on transcripts this week, DH and I paused our nightly TV viewings. They can resume next week! 😀
• She still likes to smash/slam her stuffed animals to the floor. Where does this aggression come from? 😂
• This past week (or was it last week), she moved a few of the small plastic chairs from the basement to her playroom. She likes to sit on the small kid-sized chairs. I read in an IG post that it’s of benefit for toddlers to move kid-sized furniture around/they like to take heavy objects and hold and carry them around. They learn balance and other things while doing it and it’s called “maximum effort”. Well, this box is ticked for sure then!
• Whenever I have a small piece of cardboard or paper that needs to go into the recycling bin, I give it to bb and tell her to throw it away. She knows to go to the laundry room where the recycling bin is and throws it away. Yay, one chore down 😀 (Also for yogurt containers or other plastic/recyclable items)
• Bb can pick up a piece of garbage from the floor and give it to us to throw away.
• Bb will keep repeating an utterance until we understand what it is she’s trying to say. If we don’t understand her, she gets a bit frustrated.