A basket full of plastic fruits and vegetables for my little monkey. I bought them thinking that maybe I could teach her to recognise some fruits. I have a set of fruity flash cards and I realised that she enjoys a session of me flashing forty over cards. The colours and maybe the familiarity with them probably engage her. She showed no interest in dot cards or dinosaurs pictures.

So I thought it was time to introduce her real fruits instead of those 2D pictures all the time. But getting real fruits was definitely impractical; I don’t want to end up eating all the squashed and mushy fruits. And those playing and wasting food will be condemned. Plastic fruits is the solution.

It is tough work trying to teach her recognise those fruits. I think she isn’t really interested in knowing their name; she prefers to look at them, play with them or throw them all over the house. True to her monkey self, her favourite is the banana. She managed to understand “香蕉”(banana) means the yellow thing when I asked for it, but that’s the furthest she is willing to go. I couldn’t knock the word “橙” (orange) into her head. Maybe it is easier to teach them two syllabus words?

The problem with these plastic fruits is that they are very light, most fruits are round in shape, and they roll. I am teaching her, but it is difficult to make her pick up the fruits and deposit them into the basket. So, you can find apples under the sofa, oranges under the table, onions among the shoes and everything else in some discreet corner.

With a real basket full of mandarin oranges, she is into the mood of practicing some base ball throw. Luckily they are not apples; I hope the fruit of wealth and prosperity are not badly bruised. The basket sits in some safe high area now.

.

Last year, with a big tummy as I was into my last month of pregnancy, I sat through the baking process most of the time just like the empress dowager. This year, had a tough time trying to keep the kid away from the tray of pineapple tarts and burning oven.

She insisted on touching the tarts.

Our only concern is the oven. With the oven lights on, sunflower like tarts inside, and the adults carrying her away whenever she was near it, it must have made her more curious and insistence on touching it.

We had to recruit the help of chairs and pails to build our line of defence.

Couldn’t stop her from touching the undone cookies. To prevent her from messing the whole tray, we though we would let her play with one or two of them on the floor. That should satisfy her hunger for the cookies.

Arghh! She started eating the pineapple and the dough!

Found a plastic bag that fascinated her a great deal. Managed to keep her occupied for a while.

Found another item to further keep her busy. Was busy kicking the ball until the bear came into the picture. Oh dear, she begun kicking the beat too. Poor bear, must have suffered a hundred deaths.

The barricade managed to prevent the kid from touching the oven. Kpo kid, the more we kept her away from it, the more she wanted to go near it.

.

I did something horrible and nearly scared my heart out of my chest. It was really unintentionally, just too careless of me.

I am too used to pushing the baby in the stroller or carrying her on my waist.
After doing my grocery shopping, both of us were going home. The kid was heavy, so were the plastic bags of goodies from the supermarket. Since she could walk, I let her down at the lift lobby, and managed to entice her into the lift with me. The naughty girl probably thought the lift was very clean and decided to sit there. No amount of cajoling was able to make her stood up. I gave up and let her continued sitting there.

Soon we reached our floor; I told her to follow me (as if she understood my instruction) and then promptly walked out, took my keys and opened the door. It was then I heard her loud cries that I realised I forgot about her in the lift. She was trying to crawl out while the lift door was closing. Oh dear, the lift sensor was too high up to detect her. She was probably too tiny to withstand the closing door sensor too (the kind that retracts the doors upon hitting obstructions). I am not sure if she was hit by the closing doors at all, but thank God she wasn’t squashed by it. What a fright.