CNY 2016

Today mark the last day of Chinese lunar year celebration and the Pang’s had another round of “yee sang” tossing and more foods on the table. Here’s a super simple round-up of what and how we celebrated the year of the monkey this time. If my memory serves me correctly, I think this is the simplest and most minimal celebration we (or I particularly) ever had. Breaking the old customary tradition (I am thankful that my in-laws are modern thinking and understanding enough), we flew back to KK on the 060216 catching the earliest flight. Reaching one day before the eve, we were able to visit my maternal grandmamma, had my all time favourite bak kut teh, visited some shopping malls and checked off almost all the stuff on my list (and more) before heading for CNY’s eve reunion dinner with my paternal’s family. Although the family tree has widely expanded, this year was a quiet one as most of uncles and aunts did not manage it to come over as they are expecting to receiving or hosting their extended families at their own state/country.

Gong Xi Gong Xi

Being indifferent from yesteryears, this time, we attended thanksgiving service on Day 1 of CNY at Papar church simply because my mom had her itinerary prepared way beforehand and she had booked an appointment for us to visit the goats’ rearing farm, which was located further up Papar just for Missy’s sake. Hence, as expected, the girl was soooo happy and willingly let herself to be carried by grandpa for more than an hour. After the visit, we headed to Alamesra to get some materials and thereafter to 1 Borneo Hypermall with the intention to meet up my ex-colleague but our appointment was cancelled as she couldn’t make it in time to drive back from her kampong. After dinner, it was all packing and packing as we will be returning Sdk the next day.

                  

Gong Xi Gong Xi with her aunt as the background singer :)

Fast forward to the second day morning, it was meant for more shopping in the morning before catching up the afternoon’s flight. Time flies and how I wished that we could stay longer but I have to return to work the next day (CNY Day 3). While waiting for our plane to arrive, we met up with a family who were to return Sdk after their CNY  vacation in Taiwan. According to him, it has been their family of 5's tradition to travel during CNY as they no longer view CNY as an opportunity to gather among the families or relatives. Upon touching Sdk ground, there were more food gathering, feasting and visitations from the immediate and extended family members, the beauty I can brag about my in-law’s family. Here’s wishing everyone Gong Xi Fa Cai 2016 and may the year of monkey brings all of us an infinite abundance of happiness, health and wealth :)

18 Months

Missy turns 18months (1.5yo) on the 20th Feb and visited the clinic for height and weight measure with PIL while sleeping this morning.

Weight

Around 9.5 kilos (measured with digital scale during last CNY when we were back to KK).

Height/Length

Around 80cm.

Teeth

On top of her existing 4 bottom (2 central & 2 lateral) and 4 upper (2 central & 2 lateral), her canines (upper left & right) and first molar (upper left and right) are erupting. 

Motor Skills

• She is rather cautious when it comes to crossing the drain cover at Ah Tai’s. Whenever a drain is covered with a zinc plate (fully covered), she insisted her hands to be held prior crossing and will resist from crossing iron grilled cover (with see through gaps).
• Apart from the above, she is getting more careful when she steps into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She has started to show resistance in brushing her teeth these days, perhaps she is no longer curious with her toothbrush like before or  her gums were painful as her canines and molars are erupting.
• Knows how to take off her shirt especially cardigans, or loose pyjamas.
• Narciss in the making :P Loves to pose in front of the camera whenever she is in her jolly good mood. Ocasionally pose whenever she sees me lifting up the camera and requested to see her own photos after that.

• Loves playing with my kitchen utensils and tartlet tins. She can get into my kitchen (which is one step lower than our dining hall) with confidence now.
• Loves to peep into the bread maker and oven. She would occasionally insisted to be carried just to have a look into the breadmaker and oven.
• She loves going around to pretend patting lotion on her palm and put it on to Ah Tai’s, gung-gung’s, po-po’s and gu-po’s hand & knee.
• Loves pushing my luggage bag to and fro the study and the living hall on the first floor when i was half way packing our bags for CNY.
• Loves sitting on stairs or any stepped surfaces like doorway or half opened drawer.
• Better hand coordination. She can use her pincer grisp while holding on a ping pong ball with the same hand. She can drop coins into the coinbox and capping a pen accurately too.
• Loves stickers, especially animals one.
• Taken a liking towards Hello Kitty. She has a new Hello Kitty balloon during our girl’s day out with SILs.
• Travelled on a plane for the 5th time.
• Loves lion dance. Can gesture 'tung-tung chiang' by moving both her fists (with index fingers protruding up) up and down simultaneously and 'gong xi gong xi' by crossing her fingers and moving them front and back.

• She has been crossing her hands whenever we say our prayer before meal / sleep for quite a few months now, but with both eyes opened wide. Lately, she has been attempting to close her eyes too by frowning with her eyelids half shut :P. 
• Loves to play with my Scotch floor sweeper. I am not sure if she fancies the sweeper itself or the green color of the sweeper as I noticed that she is into green these days. My dad offered her balls of  different color in Toysrus, green prevails compared to pink and other colors  for three times! Again, when she was offered padded books in Popular, she chose an animal  book which is also green in color. On another occasion, she handpicked another green animal block book from the church library.

Communication and Social Skills

• She is rather observant. For as long as we have been rocking her on the Fisher’s price bouncer (blue background with lion print), I have overlooked the fine animal printing around the fabric. One of the day, she pointed to the dog image and uttered “woo-woo”, and followed by the cat with “meoo”.
• She calls “fee” for fish. She has yet being  clearly able to distinguish sea animals well but all sea animals i.e dolphin are called fish.
• Knows what ‘painful’ means and apparently making full use of it :P. While playing with her deh-deh’s Nerf collection (again), she accidentally drop one of the parts on her foot and ran over to me and pointing at her foot with deliberated mild whining sound. Whenever she knocked her head (even with the slightest impact), she would touch and come to me holding onto the respective area.
• She can pronounce words with b sound rather clearly now, i.e “baba” (an alternative to call her deh-deh), “bear”, “book”, "burr" for bird and recently, “bah-boo” (for bubbles). She would call out “bear” whenever we passed by the boss’ glass cabinet and looking for Gloomy Bear. All the soft toys and furry friends, i.e koala bear, teddy bear, polar/sun bear images on the books are called “bear”. 
• Still showing great affection towards soft toys. Each time we visted JR House, she would insist to get down and run towards the soft toys department and hug any of the gigantic furry friends around the store. I am glad that she accepts reasoning (sometimes) and willingly put those toys back to the respective shelves before we leave. Only until recently, I have just recalled receiving a pair of furry bears from my cousin sisters for my wedding. I took it down for her and as expected, she was head over heels.
• She has been a “yes” girl most of the time and lately she can comprehend “no /no more” better. We used to have a single mattress next to our king sized bed after her 2 uneventful fall. There was once when our helper lean the mattress against the wall to facilitate cleaning. She shook her hand, while shaking her head and uttered “ooo?” after realising that the mattress was no longer there.
• Recently, she has been uttering a rather long sentence. Despite her vocabulary limitations, she pointed things accurately and shook or nods her head to get her message across. She babbles a LOT since she got back from KK for CNY. At times, her babbles sounded the same when she was “talking” to us quite frequently but no one was able to paraphrase them :)
•  She loves to mimic us. I have to constantly remind myself and the boss not to sigh (without we ourselves noticing) and she has picked up that bad habit lately. On another occasion, she imitated me along with hand gestures while talking through the phone for Pizza Delivery with her Duplo made-shift phone.   
• Can put simple two words together i.e “wow-wow bubye” whenever we pass by a dog, “fah (attempting to say ‘flower’) bye bye”
• She still couldnt pronounce “gung”, hence she was taught to call ‘yeh-yeh’ instead. She picked that up very fast and called FIL “yeh-yeh”. Grandpa was pleased as pie.
• Still waves goodbye willingly, and recently accompanied with a softly spoken “ba-bye”.

Food and Feeding

• Eversince she started to take a liking towards Tasty, she has been insisting to be brought to the mini mart opposite MIL’s shop every evening for a stroll and of course to bring home a packet.
• When she was down with flu and cough, i introduced her with soluble Vitamin C. She downed them happily.
• Lately, she has prefered to drink her Vitagen through the mouth of the can instead of using a straw.
• Still loving corns, fish and fell in love with french fries and Popo's signature fried wonton. 

Sleeping Patterns

• She was restless for the whole night on the day she was down with flu.
• I have finally started to put her on socks or rompers with booties attached and she still rejects whenever I put her on with the comforter. I started to coax her into her routine with a 3D ball socks and the following day with a lovely owl romper she picked for her own.
• She sleeping routine is getting better, gradually. She wilingly lies down, nurse and sleep the next minute after lights are switched off. Hence, the boss had no choice but to move to the study or watch his Ipad under dim light as early as 9pm.

Her firsts

• The youngest church library patron and borrowed her first Animal block book.
• She had a bad fall to the hard mosaic ground when she attempted to stand up on her high chair. It was such a heartache to the whole family (30012016).
• First Hello Kitty towel and balloon.
• She had a whale of fun in my hometown. It was our first time celebrating CNY eve and first day of CNY in my hometown.
• She first touched a dog at my home. She loves Odin a lot and has the courage to stroke on its ears/head with supervision. 
• She has her first play with her 3 elder boys cousin during CNY. She was only 5m+ when she first celebrated CNY. This year, she was rather playful and in the midst of learning how to adapt and handle her own emotion when her toys are dominated, when the stuff she was holding were snatched away and etc. The first night was a hard one for her, as if she had bad dreams and ended up waking up crying and wanting me to cuddle her throughout the night.
• Didnt sleep on the flight back from KK-Sdk for the first time. Thank God that she was all good and a happily concentrating on the new toy we have just bought at the nearby mall after checking in. 
• Visited a goat rearing farm. 
• Introduced to Kodomo Lion's toothpaste.