Tuesday, June 30

[I am the Queen]

Sorry for the much neglected blog here... been distracted by inane Facebook games (Bejeweled, Typing Maniac & Restaurant City, if anyone wants to waste any time themselves :p) and for this past week we've had Bao & Phi come to visit which has been a ball of fun... Beth has loooved having her uncle and auntie come to visit... I have loved having a babysitters to play with Beth so I can just relax or catch up on some things...

Just had to share a couple of pics from yesterday... I had brought out a couple of things I had picked up at bargain basement prices a few weeks ago at Peter Alexander to show Bao and Beth decided that she wanted to try the tshirt I had bought. Odd, because Beth normally detests the thought of dress-ups. So I put the top on her and then she picked up her wand and declared proudly that she was "a Queen"... I went rummaging for a tiara headband that Beth has (but has never worn) to finish of her royal look, but couldn't find it, but I did end up finding this cute beanie number I bought on sale at the end of last winter... so I put that on her head (again, surprising that she left it on... she normally takes things off straight away!) and she traipsed off to find a mirror so she take a look at herself... she approved. So here is our hilariously funny Queen -

Posing As The Queen I am The Queen

Wednesday, June 17

Toddlers Are Smart...

Much smarter than you think...

I am constantly amazed by the random things that Beth does and says... Just some snippets of things that have been going on in our household -

- Toilet training is coming along... we had like a 90% strike rate this afternoon. We're doing the bribing thing ... so if she does a wee or a poo on the potty she gets 1/2 a chocolate frog or 1/2 a lolly snake as a reward. Only trouble is, this afternoon, she discovered that she gets a reward, regardless of the amount of wee she does in the potty. So in the span of about 20 minutes, I got 4 tiny wees (and I'm talking like the equivalent of 1-2 tsps each time) and she got the equivalent of 2 whole snakes as a reward ... She was purposely holding her wee so she could go again in a few minutes and get another bit of snake! Too cheeky... so that's when I introduced the rule that if she does a big wee in the potty she gets a whole snake. That worked well... so now we're getting decent sized wees from her and she's happy 'cos she gets a whole snake. She's so proud of herself too... she goes around announcing "I did a wee on the potty!" Followed quickly by "Snake!"... yes... bribery is wonderful.

- Today Beth had her swimming lesson... 2nd time she's been in the pool without me and it went off without a hitch... I honestly thought she would be the kid that cried from being separated from me, but she's completely (and pleasantly) surprised me and it's evident she loves the water and swimming so much, she's happy to go in without me. She also has absolute implicit trust in our swimming teacher Julie, which is so good. Julie was holding Beth and having her float on her back and then gradually and subtly moved her hands away and Beth was floating on her back by herself! So amazing to see and I'm so proud of her. Today was also Safety Week, so she had to wear a lifejacket for a part of the lesson (and hold hands with the other kids and float on their backs) and seriously, Beth always freaks out when you put something weird on her (she doesn't even really like playing dress-ups!), but not a single complaint from her about wearing the lifejacket! And then they had to get in a rubber dingy and the last time she went in one she wasn't all that keen, but she was fine sitting in it this time. She's honestly come in leaps and bounds with her confidence.

- We spend a lot of time playing with figurines at the moment... Beth's obsessed with her little fireman figurine and likes to carry him around with her. We even had to take him to the shops with us yesterday (and I had to be on the constant lookout that she didn't leave him behind anywhere!) She will walk around the house calling out "Fireman, Fireman... where are you?" when she can't find him... Then we've making beds, chairs and bathtubs out of lego and having the fireman use all of them... she even likes to "tuck in" the fireman in the bed with a felt blanket.

- We had pho for dinner tonight (with leftovers I had frozen from the other week)... and without seeing me prepare a single thing for dinner, she could smell the soup reheating and when I asked her what we were having for dinner she said without skipping a beat "Pho?"

Lots of other cute things she's done lately, but I can't remember them at the moment... I'll try to jot them down more as I recall them... but honestly, I love the age of 2... Well, mostly ... I could probably do without some of the melodramatics we get... and some of the meltdowns... but on the whole, it's a very fun age!

Thursday, June 11

Jellyfish...





If you're not familiar with words to this little ditty it goes -

One jellyfish... one jellyfish... one jellyfish
Sitting on a rock.
One fell out...

No jellyfish... no jellyfish... no jellyfish
Sitting on a rock.

We made the "jellyfish" at playgroup today from a piece of chux with streamers stapled to it and she has taken quite a liking to it... It's actually quite cool because it doubles as a kind of kite when you take it outside and run around with it...

I'll have to post the other cool craft we made at the Playtime playgroup on Tuesday... that is really awesome, but I have to take a photo of it to show it.
Be back later with that post...

ps - Notice that Beth's not wearing a nappy... She's in her favourite Dorothy the Dinosaur knickers... :) We're in the early process of toilet training... day 2... :) Day 1 went pretty well... 50% success rate of wees in the potty... although we can't get the knickers off in time so she just wees through her knickers... so we've been through a few pairs now... but I'm really not fussed. Still early days, but I'm happy with the progess we've made so far...

Sunday, June 7

San Diego Photos - Legoland

Okay... I've skipped a few days of our trip and gone straight on to Legoland since it was our favourite place... I'll go back and do the other days now, but I really wanted to share these photos before I ran out of steam on the photo-processing front... Just a tip, you don't need to watch the slideshow on autoplay... you can press the play button, then hit the pause button and then manually step through the photos at your own pace using the arrow buttons. The reason I mention this is that the slideshow moves pretty quick and you might need a bit longer to actually see the detail of the lego things, especially since the photos are a bit small (sorry, had to resize them for web speed purposes)... And another warning... there are a lot of photos in this set... more than 200! Sorry, I've included so many, I just wanted to go through the whole lot properly while I was at it as I plan to scrapbook these photos...



Friday, June 5

Supergirl - The Video

And just in case photos weren't enough, I captured a snippet of her doing a bit of supergirl this morning... keep in mind she'd been doing this for about 5 minutes already, so this was rather subdued...




Thursday, June 4

Supergirl!

So this evening, I was dressing Beth after her bath when I realised I had run out of regular singlets (she only has 3 at the moment and with all this rain and dreary weather, I haven't had a chance to do a load of laundry)... so we were down to our last "emergency" singlet... our "supergirl" singlet... I'd actually forgotten all about this singlet until earlier this week when I did an audit of Beth's clothes and packed away all her summer clothes and all the clothes she's outgrown in the last 6 months... As I discovered Beth only had 3 singlets in a size 2, I also rediscovered the 'supergirl' singlet, which we had bought last year at Movieworld... so it was sitting all nicely in the bottom of the drawer, waiting to be worn. I put Beth in it and before I'd had a chance to put her Tweety tshirt on (also a purchase from Movieworld), she had run out to show Daddy. She took quite a liking to it and was proudly declaring "Supergirl" and then doing this funny little flying motion with it. I managed to finally catch her and put her Tweety tshirt on, but she kept on lifting it up to show us "supergirl"... Very funny. Then Phan thought he would go put his Superman tshirt on (yes, he got that Movieworld too)... And he comes out and stands in front of Beth and she says -

"Oooooh... Daddy Supergirl!!"...

I laughed my pants off... Oh, I love the lines she comes up with.

For the rest of this evening, she has been randomly lifting up her tshirt and saying "Supergirl" and doing her funny flying motion... Such a crackup!

So here we have it in pictures... My Supergirl... And my Superman... (and he really is... he's doing the dishes for me.. :))

My Superman...
My Supergirl

PS: I haven't forgotten the San Diego photos... still getting through them... I'm doing Legoland at the moment, which will take me a few days... plus, I'm still addicted to Bejewelled which is slowing me down...

Wednesday, June 3

Soup Making to Soothe The Soul

Today I made pho (beef noodle soup) with the intention of having it tomorrow for dinner (as we had lots of leftover chicken wings from dinner last night).

There is something I find incredibly soothing and satisfying about making pho... It brings me a quiet, inner peace as I go about developing the complex combination spices to create just the perfect nourishing broth... I don't make pho often as I find it difficult to source the right ingredients and even so, I think because I put so much soul into it, it's something that I don't like to make too often so that it keeps that bit of "specialness" about it. Today was my 6th time ever at making pho... I even have detailed notes about my last 5 attempts... I base it on my mum's original secret recipe, but I've modified it each time I've made it and I think today's recipe is pretty close to being what I think is perfect... Today's soup making experience was also a success because I've finally figured out the best configuration of pots to use to maximise the yield of stock ... (yes an odd logistic to consider I know... if I had like a 20L stockpot, I wouldn't have this problem, but until I find a massive stockpot, I'm stuck juggling the pots I have).

Funnily enough, during my pho making experience today, Beth noticed me tending to my soup on the stove outside... She's seen me make chicken stock on the stove outside before, so she comes up to me and says "Mummy make soup". Yes, she's very observant... Then she asks me if I'm making "green soup", which would be her reference to the zucchini, pea and bacon soup I made yesterday for dinner that she really enjoyed. "No, I'm not making green soup today." I tell her. Then she asks me to pick her up so she can look in the pot. I pick her up and she peers intently into the large pot of boiling soup from afar... a large concoction of water, beef bones, onion and spices ... really, it looks a mess and not at all the interesting. It'd had only been cooking for about 2 hours (and still had about 4 hours to go)... But from looking at the pot and smelling the fragrance of the broth, she figured out what I was making. "Pho?" she asked, looking at me. I had to smile - "Yes, I'm making pho." A pause as she ponders what this means... "Pho now?" "Sorry, darling, you have to waiting... it's cooking... you can have some for dinner." Which wasn't part of the original plan, but she looked so excited at the prospect of pho for dinner, I couldn't refuse.

So over the course of the afternoon, whenever I would go and tend to the soup, Beth would ask me expectantly ... "Pho?"... I would have to keep telling her it wasn't ready yet... And come dinner time... oh, she was so happy to have her favourite meal!

Tuesday, June 2

San Diego Photos - Day 4 & 5

Okay... here's the next lot of photos -



Monday, June 1

San Diego Photos - Day 1, 2 & 3

Okay here we are... the first lot of photos... not many photos from the first 2 days(too exhausted), so these are mostly from our Seaworld trip on day 3!