Grandma, grandpa, with grandaunt and a cousin arrive early this morning at 7.30am and was rather disappointed to discover that the kid was still sleeping. Actually, we were all still in bed, most unwilling to get up.

Grandma was really very anxious to test Yauyau on what the kid has learnt recently and can’t wait to show off her grand-daughter to her sister (the grandaunt) and everyone else. So, grandma decided to start with animals. She took out the box of plastic animals and asked Yauyau to name them. Yauyau just kept very quiet. She kept asking and prompting, but the kid just refuse to budge. Then she decided to ask her to get her the plastic fruits, which she was very sure the kid are familiar with. The girl just stood still without much response. Oh well, grandma must be really disappointed, that’s why she kept reassuring grand aunt that Yauyau could name the animals and fruits correctly.

I was just very amused by the very enthusiastic grandma and really hope Yauyau would open her mouth a little, at least get grandma out of that awkward situation…haha. Well, perhaps grandma was really over enthusiastic and didn’t realise the kid just woke up and has not warmed up to anything yet. After many tries and having taken her breakfast, the kid finally loosened up a bit and started displaying what she had learnt to the praising grandma. Hmm..are all grandparents like that?

This got me a little worried though, if grandma is going to test Yauyau on her weekly visit, that means I can’t skive and have to be diligent in teaching the kid new tricks every now and then. Bad news.

The kid had her maiden nose bleed yesterday. It wasn’t exactly a very hard hit, but the event must has been very traumatic to her as she cried pitifully for 20minutes. She lost her balance while stepping on some shoes outside the house and hit her nose onto the door ledge. Ouch, must have broke some of her fragile skin as blood came flowing down.

And it was such a difficult task to calm her down, nothing really works, until I saw the keropok. Ah, those forbidden junkie food that she yarns to eat! Ok lah, just this once, to pacify the poor crying girl. Oh man, it worked like magic, the crying stopped instantaneously!

I believe it wasn’t anything serious, but the sight of the blood and seeing her crying in such distress just make my heart pain. In the end, her teary eyes were swelling much bigger then her nose, which seems perfectly ok and unhurt. At least, her nose wasn’t flattened, thats something worth celebrating.

Ha! Great doodle hands in action. She has finally progress into drawing circles (or oddly shaped circle to be exact) these few weeks after a few months of drawing lines or some other funny strokes.

She has always doodled on a roll of butcher paper or an A4 notepad which allow me to keep all her past creations. They clearly demonstrated that she was totally clueless about drawing in the beginning, with only dots here and there, which later became very light, feathery strokes of inches long lines. The lines slowly increase its length, strength and even colours. I guess switching between colours was a concept she acquires much later from the rather monotone stuff she created in the earlier months.

Now she is totally into frantic drawing of circles, I wonder when she would be able to take control of her hands and graduate into drawing simple shapes like triangle or rectangle.

Right! We got the kid another jigsaw puzzle. The lady in the shop who recommended me to go ahead with a 20 pieces puzzle was right after all, 2-year old kids are able to complete the puzzle by themselves. Well, maybe not immediately, it took Yauyau about 3 weeks and she is on her own to fix up the puzzle now.

That really remind me not to underestimate the ability and learning powers our children wield. This also makes me wonders why the non-stop reduction and simplifying of our Chinese language curriculum in school. Anyway, though that was a puzzling issue which boils my blood, it has nothing to do with my new jigsaw, so I am just gonna shut up here.

Thank God today is the last day and Indar will be back tonight! The kid will be able to resume her normal food from tomorrow onwards.

The kid and I have been having lunch at my father’s place for the past two weeks while Indar is enjoying her home leave back to Indonesia. This has always been the normal practice and my father insists that we should go there for lunch even though Indar is not around to prepare lunch; my stepmom will do the cooking instead. Well, it is difficult to say no when I know my father is the kind of person that enjoys the company of his children and grand children.

I am not a fussy person with regards to food, however, I start getting annoyed after being to correctly predict what I am going to see on table everyday, fried brinja, fried fishcake, fried chye sim or fried fish. There are 100 other kind of food that can be found in the market, but sad to says, she never seems to realize their existence.

Fine, I have no problem eating those, but not the kid. I am really surprise that she didn’t find out anything about the kid’s diet before Indar’s departure, and hence never realize that the kid has not been eating her lunch. Well, it is hard to believe that and elderly person would expect a little toddler to enjoy eating fibrous chye sim, slimy brinja, ultra dry fried fish and expect a health conscious mom to feed the kid with fried fish cake, fried fish ball orfried fish fillet (yeah, everything fishy and fried) everyday. I guess that part has to be something to do with maternal instinct and experience, and since she has none, I should have forseen that to happen.

I am just getting a bit annoyed that I couldn’t convey my concern directly to her. It would be a painless two weeks if she is my natural mother, I could have just trash things out with her or buy all the food I like to eat and dump them into her kitchen. A typical communication problem within a household when a new member joins, just like the kind of tension we seen so often between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law.

Phew! This only last two weeks. If there is ever a next time, I would just cook and save myself from the agonies.