'Scuse me, Boonanas, the Moon and Elevators, at 1.5 Years Old

Every day little snippets or funny scenarios take place that I keep mentally nudging myself to include on here, and then when it's finally time to sit down and type it all out I struggle to remember everything!

Lola continues to talk up a storm lately.  She managed to string ten Chinese words into a sentence earlier this week, "Mama ke shou baba ke shou, zhen me ban ne?"  essentially, "Mama coughs Daddy coughs, what to do?" And she has also taken to asking "Wei shen me" or "Why?" as well as asking, "shi bu shi," or "is it so?" and responding "bu shi," or "it is not."  Quite the existential little scholar! 

She also says "scuse me" in the sweetest voice, and she now strings together thank yous, hellos, goodbyes and I love yous with the proper person (mama, papa, nona, yeye, tita, etc). 

Her love of raisins and bananas remains unabated.  She wakes up in the morning and goes to bed at night and spends all of her waking time asking for "raisins" or "pu tao gan" and "boonanas" or "xiang jiao".  I still think Lola's stronger language is Mandarin, but she understands the world in two languages, if that makes sense.  Early on we realized that she must think everything just comes with two different names.  It's certainly the case now with her beloved bananas, because she will say "xiangjiaoboonana!" whenever she sees one or a picture of one.

We bought her the Eric Carle book, "Papa, Please Get the Moon For Me," a long time ago and in recent months she has loved flipping the book to the page with the big, foldout moon.  She will then, along with her various stuffed animals, take turns literally standing on the moon.  Michael and I ask permission to stand on the moon and usually she is very generous and grants us permission to do so - but only for a brief while, before she says "no no" very insistently and pushes us off the page. 

Lola's favorite books recently are probably Brown Bear, Brown Bear; Sleep Tight Caterpillar; The Tiger Who Came to Tea and a few pop up Usborne books that I got for her.  She also likes a picture book of a kitty cat touring New York City that Michael bought for her, in particular the picture of Grand Central where she points to a brown haired woman in a striped shirt as "mama," and another picture of an elevator in the Empire State Building. 

Oh, yeah, Lola is obsessed with elevators.  She pronounces "el-e-va-tor" in English very deliberately, saying each syllable like it is its own word.  Luckily, Hong Kong is the land of elevators.  She rides in an elevator at least twice a day, but probably more like three times that amount on average.  The other day, Lola shocked Michael and me upon returning home from an excursion to the coffee shop.  It has become one of our routines to go for a walk right before her bedtime, as she says, with "mommy and daddy."  We were in the elevator in our building with one other woman.  The elevator dinged when we arrived at the seventh floor and the doors opened as the announcement was made, "qi lou, seventh floor."  Lola did not even hesitate and waved at the woman and said, "bye bye!" 

My jaw dropped.  It was hard to believe that Lola knew that she didn't live on the seventh floor, although Lola has been learning "ba" and "eight" for a while now and, as I said, she takes the elevator in our building multiple times a day, so I was not that surprised.  But what shocked me was that Lola had the ability to, by process of elimination, deduce this had to be the floor for the woman to exit the elevator, because the remaining people in the elevator (mommy, daddy, and Lola) need the eighth floor.  That seemed pretty impressive to me for a barely 1.5 year old.

And I'll just leave you with this - the other day, I asked Lola how old she was, expecting her to promptly chirp "yi shui!" meaning "one year old!"  To my surprise and delight, she responded, "yi shui ban!" meaning "one and a half years old!"  Our nanny had taught Lola that just the day before I asked. How great, am I right?!

Swimming, Morning Rituals, Evening Rituals and Another Week Flown By

I started writing this post on Sunday night last weekend and didn't make it very far.  Now that it's Friday, I guess it's time to provide a fuller recap!

We took it easy last weekend.  It was so, so hot with highs of 89 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit with 90% humidity which makes doing anything (except sitting in a cold air conditioned room or in a pool) pretty difficult.  And that is what we did, pretty much.   I neglected to get any pictures of Lola in her adorable swimsuits, but we did go down to the pool on both Saturday and Sunday.  She spent a full hour there on Saturday with me and Michael, wading around the baby pool, playing on the steps, even daring to put her chin in and get her mouth wet.  Michael also carried her into the big pool a couple of times.  She had a great time.  On Sunday when we went down we saw three other "big" girls (3-4 year olds) playing.  Lola now knows how to say "swimming" in Chinese and she likes it enough to ask for it in the mornings when we go out.

We now have a few morning rituals set up which are quite nice - I have been trying to get to bed before 11 pm, ideally even before 10:30 pm but that's not very realistic - so that I can wake up early and get a good hour to two hours of time with Lola in the morning before I leave for work.   This week we went to the park on one day, a playroom on another, and we went shopping for fruits and groceries on yet another.  I also spend some time sitting with her reading books and just chatting.  Lola has so many thoughts and opinions!  She is very busy.

Lola has taken to picking out her outfits every morning.  We have a bunch of her dresses and outfits hanging in her wardrobe which she can see - and every morning she points to the dresses and decides which one she wants.  She is very clear and decisive and usually cannot be swayed from the one that she wants.  She is hilarious because she truly gets so excited by her beautiful clothes, she declares them "Lola's dresses" and "pretty!"  When she particularly likes an outfit or accessory, she will walk to the mirror we have on the floor next to our balcony and admire it (it is like a floor length mirror for her but just a normal sized mirror otherwise).  When our nanny tried to get Lola to change out of her beautiful dress to wear pants today (for better mobility in a playroom they were going to), Lola refused and insisted on wearing her original outfit.

Another morning ritual that has evolved is Lola talking to her nona and papa, and her ye ye and po po, every morning.  It works well because it's usually right after our parents have eaten dinner.  It has been wonderful for her to associate with them and speak to them nearly every day, and it's something she looks forward to doing every morning, sometimes before her breakfast, sometimes after.  She gets super excited to show them everything - her bunny, monkey, pig, cars, books, ball, shoes, training potty, etc. etc. The only problem currently is that the conversations get a bit hurried at the end because Lola loses patience and wants to go outside to play.  This morning, she frantically blew kisses at my mom and dad because she wanted to get off of facetime so she could, in her words, "chu qu wan!" which means "go out to play!"


In terms of evening rituals, we have not been so successful at getting Lola to sleep and sleep well.  Everyone says you're supposed to set a clear routine for bedtime - but what do you do if your clear routine makes your child cry?  Lola knows all of the signals for bedtime and dreads each one - brushing the teeth, grabbing the bunny, watching the window curtain come down, turning off the lights... I can't count the number of times she saw her wearable sleep blanket come out and she just started sobbing inconsolably.  Lola  fights sleep with all of her might.  This month Lola learned how to express her distaste of sleep through some variation of, "please no sleep," "no sleep," and "Lola doesn't want to sleep," in English and Mandarin.  You certainly cannot say that she doesn't know how to express herself very clearly and emphatically! 

In order to get out of sleeping, Lola has concocted an elaborate evening ritual of fighting sleep which she has honed over time.  Since she was really young, she has uttered this low moaning sound to try to keep herself awake.  She also repeatedly tries to sit up or pull herself up to standing so that she does not fall asleep.  Lately, she has this long, drawn out nearly-hour-long stream of consciousness recap of her day and thoughts which are, on the one hand, frustrating and tiring, but on the other hand, such an interesting insight into the workings of her fierce and precocious mind. 

In one particularly difficult bedtime (the same day she went on a field trip to the beach with her playgroup and her whole routine was pushed by nearly 2 hours), as I sat in her room with her waiting for her to sleep, she asked about her dresses, requested to hear the Happy Birthday song, then immediately requested to hear Row Row Row Your Boat, flopped around repeatedly, laughed and said "funny!" and then kept pulling up her crib bumper to look at me and say, "peek-a-boo!" in a slow, drawn out voice, sat up, asked me to hold her, laid back down reluctantly, rolled over, shouted that she wanted to buy grapes, and bananas, and apples, and buy fish for mama, and bread for baba... then declared that tomorrow she would take the "el-e-va-tor" (enunciated very elaborately), a taxi, the BUSSSSS! and the subway, and that she wanted to "hua hua ti" (slide) and "qiu qian" (swing) and "you yong" (swim), then asked to hold my hand, then groaned as she held her bunny, then picked herself up again to lean against the crib and ask for me to hold her.  Strewn in with all of that were long, long sentences of incomprehensible words that were spoken with such intent and purpose that I am sure they meant something, but I really did not know what Lola was saying in her own language. 

I have been fighting a cold and sore throat for almost the entire month of May (since the first weekend) and it still hasn't gone away.  Benadryl, zinc supplements and an asthma inhaler from my GP were only going so far.  I listened to my mom (and my office receptionist - she fancies herself like my mom I guess) and went to a traditional Chinese medicine clinic and asked for help.  I got a big bag of little individual powder packets that I used to make an herbal drink, two times a day.  I remain a skeptic of its efficacy as I still have a cough and my throat really hurts at night.   While there, though, I also decided to give cupping a try.  I have never done it before - frankly, I was always a bit turned off by the scary looking red and purple bruises that the hot glass cups leave on your body - but my curiosity was piqued and, well, this non-abating cold is making me desperate.  The sensation is very curious - it really does feel like succubus are attached to your back for ten minutes.  It does not hurt, per say, but there is a bit of a pinching sensation and I would describe it as mild discomfort.  I felt good afterward but it was not as amazing as I had expected to feel. I'm not sure I will be doing it again.

I can't believe it's Friday again tomorrow - between work being busy and my trying to find time to do yoga, run errands, and still spend meaningful time with Lola, it's no wonder it's nearly June!

A 17.5 Month Update

We often find ourselves marveling that Lola isn't even a year and a half yet.  Her language and comprehension and observation skills are phenomenal.  She never ceases to amaze us with a new skill that she seemingly has acquired out of thin air.  We have never used baby talk with her and now more than ever we don't feel the need to.

Lola learned to count from one to ten in both English and Mandarin a few weeks back, and now has taken to counting at warp speed and with a musical lilt.  She surprised us out of the blue one day a couple of weeks ago by reciting, "A B C D" and now has gotten to "H" before she falters and switches to numbers.  She has long been able to recognize red, blue, green, yellow, and orange and I think she has purple and pink down now also. If you offer her a selection of colors and asks her to pick, she can also deduce the right one by eliminating the colors she knows.

Lola can also sing the first two lines of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in Chinese on her own.  She can also fill in the blank if you continue singing the rest of the song.  Whenever she sees a sheep now, she says "Baa baa black sheep!" very excitedly.  She continues to love the happy birthday song and wants to wish (and sing) happy birthday to everybody.  If she wants the heads, shoulders, knees and toes song, she will demand, "knees and toes!"  Lola clearly loves music and songs - she learned a bunch of phrases from her Chinese songs as well, such as "shake hands," and "bend at the waist," and "how are you."

Lola loves books and is a great mimic of our expressions and words.  Everyone says she has a real talent for language.  When I sat down to flip through her Baby Einstein books with her this week, I realized to my shock that she knew practically everything on every page.  Orange, duck, horse, pig, baby, swing, slide, ball, flower, car, tree, bird...and for every word she knows, she usually knows it in both English and Mandarin.  Her vocabulary is pretty astonishing.  She has started to put sentences together, including "I love you Mama" and "Go out to play"!  When we were looking at a book together, she pointed out an escalator, then, noticing that it was blue, she said in Chinese, "lan se de dian ti" which translates to "blue escalator".  It doesn't sound particularly difficult in English, but in Chinese, to use an adjective correctly, you have to know to put the adjective in front of the noun and use the modifier "de", which Lola did perfectly.

What makes Lola so special and funny though, is that she not only picks up words quickly, she really knows how to use the expressions correctly.  It is a never-ending source of delight to us. For example, she always knows how to use "Ooops!"  She has been saying it for a few months now in the context of a dropped item.  More recently she picked up the word "aiya!" from Jovie.  But she doesn't use it when she drops something or when she makes a mistake - she uses it to express her frustration.  One of the best stories this month has got to be when Michael and Lola were reading "We're Going on a Bear Hunt."  Lola is super, super excited about the page where they run up the stairs once they find the bear.  She kept saying to Michael, "Up the stairs! Up the stairs!"  But Michael had no idea what she was saying and kept trying to guess but was clearly not getting it.  But Lola refused to give up, and kept pointing, and kept repeating herself.  Finally, when Michael exclaimed in understanding, Lola put the book aside, threw out her hands in exasperation, and said in the loudest voice, "AIYA!"  These adult mannerisms in such a tiny little munchkin... they really slay us.

Speaking of munchkins... on our trip to Macau, Michael referred to Lola as a munchkin, and she immediately picked up on the term and mimicked him, repeating munchkin a bunch of times.  Today, I came home from work to learn that Lola said, "Lola, Lola, what do you see?" while reading her "Brown Bear Brown Bear" book.  And guess what she answered to her own question?  "I see a munchkin looking at me." I mean, I know I am coming across as a crazy doting mother right now, but that is clever! 

Speaking of Macau... Lola is very observant.  We had known this for a while because ever since she could talk she would point to different things and say who they belonged to - and she was always right.  Mommy's purse, Tita's shoes, Daddy's glasses, etc.  But her powers of observation really surprised us on this trip when, emerging from the elevator on our floor on our first day of our stay, Lola could pick out our hotel room door.  How is that possible?  We were about 15 rooms down from the elevator bank.  The only thing I could see that might be helpful was that our door faced the hallway directly because it was where the hallway turned slightly.  But even then - I think an adult would be hard pressed to find the right door!  And even more (or similarly) amazingly, Lola emerged from breakfast on the ground floor the next morning and knew, as we started down the long, large hallway, that there was a broken escalator ahead on the right.  It was a long, long ways ahead - way out of sight.  She must have remembered it from when we returned home that way the evening prior. 

Lola continues to be a constant source of joy and delight and a little charmer - she has won over all of our security guards and building people, blowing them kisses, waving hello and goodbye, and giving out high fives freely when she marches in or out of the lobby.  We are often stopped in our building or in the neighborhood park with a delighted shout of "Lola!"  One of our neighbors is a sweet 3.5 year old who tells me solemnly when she sees me that she really likes Lola.

All of this is to say, I love this munchkin so, so much, and I am so proud of her and so honored to be her mama.  She is such a treasure. 

Mother's Day Weekend in Macau

We spent a lovely three days in Macau this past weekend.  Hong Kong had yet another public holiday on Monday(!), so we decided to go to the Four Seasons and soak it up in (Chinese) sin city.  The weather cooperated beautifully, breaking out into a hot, bright, sunny day on Saturday after a week of gray, drizzly, cold rain.  Michael planned a bunch of meals for me and we just generally got to hang out in our little family unit enjoying all of the fun children-friendly activities that Macau has to offer.


Macau is such an easy trip for us that it's essentially a staycation.  We left our apartment on foot at 12:08pm on Saturday, and managed to arrive at the ferry terminal, clear immigration and pull away from Hong Kong ferry terminal by a minute after 12:30.  We were checked into our beautiful hotel room before 2:30pm.  It was pretty great.

We booked an executive suite which gave us a huge living room with a desk, sofa, dining table, hallway/foyer and separate bathroom, bedroom and king sized bed, a full walk in closet and wardrobe area, and a huge bathroom with free standing shower and soaking tub.

the bedding is already messed up because we couldn't resist letting Lola play around on it

The Four Seasons really knows how to be hospitable - they arranged the most amazing package of necessities for Lola, lots of goodies like crayons and coloring paper, and, probably Lola's favorite, a big tent that she could run through and hide out in. 

Just look at that smile!

 

No request was too difficult - they brought up a well padded Stokke tripp trapp high chair for Lola right after we asked for one, and also provided us with sterilizers and bottle warmers (though we don't need those anymore).

I can confidently say that Lola loves Macau (because she told us so!) and Michael and I had a great time.  The room was comfortable and it was so great to get a break from our apartment in Hong Kong.

The grounds were beautiful as well, and we thoroughly enjoyed our time at the pool.

Breakfast was included in our stay and we pigged out on their buffet. 

 We enjoyed letting Lola run barefoot in the grass.  She scampers around like a little sprite and is so adorable!

Lola got to see a glimpse of a casino - she was fascinated.  But also by the elaborate painting on the rotunda. 

 

She liked the Eiffel Tower, but not as much as eating fruit by the pool and playing in the multiple indoor playrooms that Macau has available (see below).

 

Michael and I enjoyed dinner at Zi Yat Heen on Saturday night.  I thought the food was just okay for the price - certainly not bad, but probably not worth what they charge.  Unfortunately, I neglected to get a picture of the braised pork ribs, which was probably their best dish.

 On Sunday, for Mother's Day, Michael brought me to Belon at the Banyan Tree for their seafood buffett.  It was a beautiful place and the spread was pretty ridiculous.  We managed to get a beautiful table on its own elevated platform.

 

On Saturday and Sunday, we went to the Qube playrooms at the Venetian and the Parisian hotels.  Before we did that, we also played around the Four Seasons' grounds.  Whenever Lola saw Michael on the swing, she was very adamant that he come off and kept saying "no sit no sit" which made us laugh.  But she refused to get on the swing herself.

It was a rare weekend when Michael didn't have to work as much as he usually does (or, more accurately likely, he still had work but could put them aside for a little longer than usual).  Things were also surprisingly quiet for me (I at one point refreshed my email twice because I couldn't believe it had been that long before I got any messages).  It was so nice to hang out altogether.  Lola definitely agrees - she has started to say "Mommy Daddy" in the cutest voice when she wants us to go or when we are all going somewhere together.

The girl loves her snacks.

 She was so brave with the slides this time - totally willing to climb up on her own and also come down on her own!  She must have done this slide at least 30 times.

 

Activities with Lola: AMC, Cinco de Mayo, Fun Zone

Here are some pictures of what we have been up to lately:

Two weekends ago, we went to the Aberdeen Marina Club, an awe-inspiring private club on the south side of Hong Kong island.  I am not sure how to explain the sheer size of this place - it has two wings with multiple swimming pools, multiple playrooms containing slides, life-sized trucks, cars, buses, helicopter, play dressing area, multiple play kitchens and grocery area, a play pet store, ball pit, and toys, toys, toys toys everywhere... and that's not even getting to the slides and adventure zone for bigger kids, or the arcade... seven (I think?) restaurants, an ice skating rink....  It's heaven for children.  Lola does not disagree.

We then went to the American Club, another private club, last Friday night for their Cinco de Mayo dinner.  This club is also so children-friendly - the place was full of families and kids hanging out on the grass for movie night.  It is still a bit chilly by the pool so that part was quiet when we went.  Lola loves their children's playroom, The Eagle's Nest, an incredibly elaborate, fully padded, two story obstacle course with slides and ball pit and all the makings of great adventures.

 

As you can see, it has been pretty overcast in Hong Kong.  It has been pouring every day and downright frigid (for Hong Kong in May), hovering in the upper 60s to low 70s.  Yes, I know, it's all relative.

Last Saturday, I took Lola to the Fun Zone, a padded playroom that you have to pay for entry, located in the Westwood mall at Belcher's.  This place was SO loud because they were blasting the dance music and at the same time the kids in the place were shrieking and laughing as they chased each other around.  I got some pictures before the place got crowded.  It was a very popular venue for birthday parties.

 

 

 The Fun Zone had a huge, huge red slide with a nearly vertical (hair raising) drop, which Lola really wanted to try.  I took her twice and I was probably more terrified than she was.  My imagination was getting way ahead of myself and I was picturing all kinds of doomsday disaster scenarios, such as Lola flying out of my hands, or one of us breaking an arm or something.  As Michael says, there is no doubt who Lola gets her super cautious, scaredy cat instincts from! 

I was really proud of Lola though, she got off the slide after our first run and immediately said, "hai yao!"  But I think she was really terrified - and after she went down a second time, assured of her accomplishment, she didn't want to go again.  I get the sense that for her a lot of it is being able to say that she did it.

 I blame this place for getting me sick.  I came down with a nasty sore throat and cough this week.  My tonsils are burning.  I am walking around with a light blue surgical mask over my mouth to avoid contaminating anyone else.  But on the upside, Lola had a pretty good time.

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