First time in Walmart and also buying her first pair of new shoes

Week 81:

• April 12:  This week is full of bb saying “mm goi” (thank yous).  She’ll say “mm goi ba ba” for bringing her food or “mm goi ma ma” for doing the same.  She doesn’t need prompting.  We only taught her a few times and she’s been so consistent this week.  I was feeding her apple bits and she said “thank you” to me each time.  It was so sweet.  I have it captured on video ^_^
• This week, bb, started playing with the magnetic tiles in a new way by putting two of the triangle ones together and making a parallelogram and then displaying it on the floor proudly.  That’s a step up from just using the square magnetic tiles.
• She saw me put some of the animal cards into the magnetic tile houses that I made and then she started doing the same thing.
• This week, she started to walk up the stairs herself without needing to hold on to the railing.  She actually walks on the left side holding on to the wall which is quite impressive for her size and height.
• When going down the stairs, I do instruct her to have one hand on the railing and then one hand holding mine (or I’ll hold her waist sometimes).
•  When reading the ” ‘Cause I love you” book, she realized that there are two ducks in two different spots in the book.  When we get to the second duck, she will flip page by page back to the first page where the first duck appeared and then point “duck”.  She’s done this many times now.
• Similarly, we were reading the same book when on the last page the main character is going to bed and in the corner of the book, I spotted a fire engine.  I pointed it out to her and because in her “transportation” book, there is a picture of a fire engine, I pointed it out to her that it’s the same.  Since then, she has connected the dots and knows both are the same vehicle.  Even tonight after dinner when we were reading, bb searched out the transportation book and showed it to me.  I pointed it out to DH too and when bb saw that, she also told him to “gor lei” again and then show it to him.  She had an index finger pointing to each vehicle to show they were the same.
• Another “matching” in a book occurred when the back of the “Counting” book has a really small horse in a car in it.  She found the horse and then went to her farm puzzle where there is a horse puzzle.  She took out the puzzle and then showed that she knew they were the same.  Smart!!
• She has been very vocal about the things she wants and doesn’t want.  It’s hard to drag her away from something if she is set on it.  For example, she’s been extremely clingy to me again this week.  If I even try to walk away to do something else and her goal is to play with me, she will hold on to my legs and cry and whine until I sit down and play with her for a bit.  These moments are fleeting so I try to entertain her, but I also need to need food, for example, or do some things sometimes that I can’t play with her 100% all the time.
• She’s been piecing together phrases.  She’ll say “come here” +  “dad” or like I mentioned above “thank you” + “grandma”.
• She continues to be an amazing parrot where she will repeat anything we say, about to about four words or syllables.
• This week, she copied us and said our Chinese names (3-character names).  Now when I ask her what her dad’s name in Chinese is, she repeats it on demand!  She learns fast and picks up things we say really fast as well.
• DH was the one who taught her and we were amazed and looked at each other when she pronounced our names so clearly. Her speaking skills are so amazing.
• She is good with dogs.  We were at a family get-together this weekend and she had no problem with a medium-sized dog walking around her.  In fact, she goes “dog!” and points to it but is not comfortable yet to actually play or pet the dog.
• She takes about an hour on average to warm up to any new surrounding/unfamiliar surrounding.  When we were at her cousins’ house this week, she took an hour to settle in before she started vocalizing herself.  The first hour is her just staring and looking at people and moving minimally.
• Same thing when we visited a friends’ house for the first time in a long while this weekend.  She was hesitant to step forward and just clung to her dad.  She didn’t speak until she saw some familiar objects in the house like a portable phone — something that she recognized.
• In fact, when we were having some cake and I was feeding her, she didn’t even vocalize the fact that she wanted more.  Usually, at home, she would say “dor dee” (more).  Instead, she pointed timidly with her finger to show that she wanted more cake.  Lol… She is truly a pandemic baby.
• It is interesting to see people on my social media feed travel and go out as if there is no public health risk contagious virus out there while I teeter back and forth between wanting to go out more because I want to go out to eat and live a pre-pandemic life and staying cautious and safe due to the new variants that seem to be constantly emerging.  Just when I think it might be safe to go out more again, a new variant emerges.
• It’s been a couple of weeks now, but we no longer track the amount of milk she drinks.  I also stopped tracking her daily bowel movements.  She goes regularly each day so there’s no need to record it anymore.  Milk-wise, we will give her milk about three times a day (breakfast, before her afternoon nap, and then part 1 and part 2 milk before she sleeps at night).
• On the topic of poo, I started dumping her solid poos into the toilet when changing a dirty diaper.  Her poos are solid most of the time so instead of bulking up the diaper and leaving it to stink for a week before it’s garbage day (and also minimizing the weight of the garbage we produce each week), it’s so satisfying to dump it to flush down the toilet.  Less stink, less weight, and less to compost.
• Bb also changes diapers about 4 times a day now.  A diaper change after she wakes up, a diaper change before she naps, a diaper change around 5 p.m., and then a diaper change before she sleeps.  Of course, when there is a poop, that would either fall into one of the changes as noted or it’ll be an additional change.  It’s quite regular now, this diaper changing schedule.
• Bb has been fighting the diaper changes sporadically.  Sometimes, she’ll be good about letting us change her but sometimes she puts up a fight by not letting me to change her and only allowing her dad or grandma to do it.
• She continues to scoop yogurt to eat independently… it’s a slow progress.
• In her play area, she has 95% of all her play things in her reach.  She can go from one toy/activity to another with supervision, but it’s hard to have her play truly independent by herself.  She always wants someone to watch her or accompany her on the play mat.  The only time she actually plays by herself is when some of us are talking to each other.  She’ll notice that our attention is not on her and she’ll go about her own way playing quietly by herself.  It’s interesting.
• We bought new shoes for her for the first time!!! Up until now, she actually only has had one pair of boots since we weren’t going out much anyway. That pair was thrifted from Once Upon a Child. Now that the weather is warmer, she needs a nice pair of runners to walk and play in and I couldn’t find anything suitable from FBM, so a new one it was. We went to Walmart and got a pair of size 8 (!) runners for her from the boys’ section. All of the girls’ shoes were pink or overly girly. The one we chose for her was grey with neon green. It looked so modern and nice.
• If it weren’t for the fact that bb has grown up wearing mostly hand me downs, if I was actually buying clothes for her, I would be picking everything gender nonspecific — colours like yellow, green, orange, purple, etc. I don’t like how girl clothes are always pink and “girly” whereas boy clothes are always blue and shows cars, etc.
• After she tried on the new shoe in the store, she walked around confidently like she knew what was happening.  She was so unafraid and walked up and down the aisle.  DH was a bit paranoid of her walking too far, but it felt exciting to me that she was free to walk on her own.  I kept an eye on her, of course, but I didn’t mind her going far at all.  The store also wasn’t very empty at that time and there were no other shoppers around us at all.  The shoe aisles were all empty of people.
• Even my friend commented on her outfit saying “Why is everything in pink?” It’s because wearing hand me downs and thrifting is better for the environment, better for our wallet. And although I could have picked up “boy” hand me downs, I just didn’t…
• Apr 13: we went on a walk yesterday and while she was in her stroller, when a plane flew past overhead, she pointed to it and said “fey gay” (airplane). Our new neighbourhood has more planes flying overhead than in the previous one, so we frequently hear airplanes flying past which elicits bb to say “airplane” every time.
• She now knows the difference between “airplane” (fey gay) and “helicopter” (zet sing gay) from her book. She wasn’t able to say the latter one before but now can identify it clearly.
• When we ask her if she wants to do something like “____, ho mm ho ah?”, she replies “ho ah, ho ah.”
• I stumbled on a Instagram post where it outlined the general milestones for when and how much a toddler speaks. I think bb is above average on this. She will be turning 19 months soon but she can already speak in phrases now, identify/use way more than 50 items/words, and seems quite vocal and conversational. She speaks rather clearly (to me anyway) too.

Instagram post screenshot from @sharonmazel

• We gave her her second ever haircut this weekend. I wanted a snip of her bangs since they were getting into her eyes. She wouldn’t let me cut her bangs.. she said “mm gan mm gan” which is something that she’s been saying lately when she gets scared of something. (When she usually gets scared, we reassure her by saying “mm sai gan” (don’t be scared). And now, she says it herself lol.
• Anyway, she wouldn’t let me near her with the scissors to cut her hair. She was afraid of the scissors. DH was actually able to cut her bangs for her. He had a different angle than I did which didn’t scare her as much.
• When there’s a sudden sound or something that scares her, she says “mm gan mm gan” and runs to one of us for cuddles. Lol
• This week, she’s not as dismissive about me helping out during the bedtime routine. She doesn’t say “mm bay” when I help with buttoning her onesie for bedtime anymore. She previously would say “mm bay” (don’t allow) and only let DH help. And sometimes she added salt onto injury by saying “ba ba” after, meaning only dad could help her lol.
• A few times this week, she said “ji gay” (myself) after reading a book and she’ll flip through the pages of the book herself.
• Grandma tried to take her out to play in the backyard but she didn’t like it/wasn’t familiar yet.
• When on our walk yesterday, we were caught up with talking to someone with the gift of gab. Instead of crying because we had stopped walking, bb just sat there, peeked over the stroller edge to see who was speaking, and played with her mittens lol.
• She’s been such a fan of going out to the park this week! She’ll say “chay chay” (車車)(car/stroller) and then “han lo lo” (walk) and then “gen gun” (scarf). She’ll practically run to the closet and foyer area to get dressed too.
• There has been a squirrel living around our house and so grandma always likes to take her to look at the squirrel.  One day this week, the squirrel with a white tipped tail (easy to recognize and remember) was sitting on our fence cleaning itself.  Bb giggled and was fascinated with the squirrel sitting on the fence.
• The other day, bb pooped close to her bedtime so we took her to get changed.  However, she mistakened this as bath time before bedtime and so to run bath time longer, I put some duplo in the bathtub for her to play with.  We haven’t gotten her any bath toys otherwise.  She enjoyed the water play.  (She didn’t end up sleeping early after all though…)
• In FBM news, I finally posted something and someone came to buy it promptly today which excited and spurred me to post another free item I’ve been meaning to give away.  Yay, it’s good to declutter again.  We have a lot of things to get rid of after the move.
• One of the contacts we saw over the weekend contracted COVID-19 unfortunately and because we were in the same dwelling, we all did a rapid antigen test (RAT) today to check ourselves too.  Bb had her first RAT ever and she was naturally unwilling to get it done with the swab up her nose, but we did it.  For a few seconds, she was calm too.  We thankfully all tested negative, but this is another reminder for us not to loosen our guard.  The virus is still out there and it’s more rampant than ever before…
• Bb still prefers eating meat.  That’s the thing she will eat the most of when it is given to her.  Over the weekend, we also had some black sesame mousse dessert.  Upon giving her a spoonful of it to try, she spat it right out.  Whenever she doesn’t like a taste or texture of something, she spits it out.
•  Also this weekend (we had a very, very eventful one), we took her to a Hong Kong style cafe where she had such a big appetite and kept eating everything we gave her.  She was really well-behaved sitting in the high chair at the restaurant.  There were TV screens that she kept watching too.  Whenever she sees a dog on the screen, she’ll say “dog”!  Same for “airplane”, “ball”, “man” for when someone is speaking.
• This week, I taught her about another body part: the eyebrow (眼眉毛)(“ain may mo”). It’s so cute because she says it as “ain ME mo” 😄. I taught her this because her giraffe rattle toy has eyebrows (she likes all her stuffed animals and plays with them so even though it is an infant toy now and should be put away, I still let her play with it).
• I heard her little baby snores in the car when we were driving back from our Saturday activity. She was asleep and so tried. I tried to record it but as soon as I pulled out the camera, she didn’t snore so loud anymore. It sounded like a soft but rhythmic nasal snore.
• She loves picking me to play with and always comes to take my hand and says “gor lei” (come here). But sometimes I really need to eat or wash the dishes, etc, and I try to tell her, but then she gets upset and cries. I give in sometimes and delay my own needs but I hold steadfast other times too.
• She started identifying colours but usually incorrectly. She’s trying so I’ll correct her but not encourage the correct colours too often because I can tell it’s difficult for her. Colour naming will come when it comes.