Memory

I read somewhere that children have a short memory (that's why we can distract them by something else when they are having a tantrum). But Mimi seems to have a quite good memory, longer memory than I expected (and much longer than her poor mommy). This morning, hubby was tired so he still lied on bed in our room while I was entertaining Mimi in her room. Mimi, as usual, asked for her daddy. I replied that daddy is in the bedroom. She thought for a while and then asked "om?" ("sick?") I was surprised. But then I remembered that few weeks ago, when Linh was sicked and had to lie on bed, I told Mimi that her daddy was "om". She remembered it and used it in the right situation!

Daddy's girl?

Since Mimi was born, she always attachs and clings more to me than to my hubby. Yeah, the fact that I was the one who nursed her, put her to bed, had 4 months maternity leave explained why she clings to me more but quite many babies have great bond with their daddy eventhough their mommy is still the prime care taker. Another reason is that Linh had quite little time to play with Mimi. She is a early sleeper so this leaves little time for Linh to play with her after work.
Anyway, for the last two weeks, Mimi suddenly becomes a daddy's girl. She calls "bo" (papa) all the time. The first thing she does in the morning when she wakes up and see me greeting her is to call "bo". When we go back home from work, she sees me first and immediately call "bo". As Mimi cannot say "mama" or "me" (although she can speak a lot of difficult words! Very strange!), she sometimes calls me "bo" as well. This morning, Linh left home early for a business trip so only me taking her to my parent's house. Mimi got out of the flat first and then I followed her and locked the door. She suddenly realised that daddy is not with us (as normally daddy is the one who lock the door and go with us) so she turned back and called "bo". I had to explain to her that daddy is gone already. Not sure whether she understood but she stopped calling "bo" and walked to the lift.
For the last few days, Mimi likes to seat in the car like an adult with the seat belt on. Normally she leans toward the gear and never sit in one place (my mistake of not forcing her to sit in the car seat for children). She looked so funny as she is so small with the seat belt on.

Language development

Mimi surpised me everyday with her progress in comprehention and her language vocabulary.
Like few days ago, before Linh took Bin, our dog, out for a walk, Mimi was so excited (she always laugh and get excited when she sees Bin) We told her that we need to feed Bin first and then I asked her where the food for Bin is. To our surpirse, she walked to the drawer in the kitchen where I store dog food, openned it and took out the dog food bag. I have never showed her where we put the dog food and she must remember it from observing Linh when Linh fed Bin. Yesterday, she repeatedly openned that draw and said "an" ("eat" in Vietnamese) to us to tell us to feed Bin. She loves to look at Bin so this is the way to get us to open the door to the balcony where Bin lives.
Mimi's vocabulary has improved significantly. She can now says quite a lot of words like "mat" (eye), "mui" (nose), "mom" (mouth), "tay" (arm), "chan" (leg). She can also say a lot of words learning from her books (like butterfly, bee, swan, frog, dog, cat, mouse etc.) Not only she can repeat the words after us, she can call things when she sees them. Remarkable development!
Mimi has quite a good memory (at least much better than her poor mommy) She remembered things that happened weeks before. For example, MIL asked her to find her bracelet. She found it under the bed. Two weeks after that, when I asked her what the granmom asked her to find, she answered "vong" (bracelet) and pointed to her wrist.
Last weekend, I took her to Daewoo hotel's swimming pool and then to Big C. She was so happy and excited with the water. She refused to leave until I had to lift her out of the pool. On Sunday, we went to Highland cafe in the West lake for breakfast. Mimi was fascinated with the stair case there. She climbed up and down (with our help) so many times without getting bored. Children have some weird hobby that adults can never understand.
Ah, another thing to update (after such a long time not writing) is that I have found the nursery for Mimi. After spending a whole morning visiting 6 nursery schools, I decided to send Mimi to Ohana this September. The school is managed by an Australian. I like to outdoor and the way they focus on education. I don't know how Mimi will cope with the change. I hope she will like the school

Card sorter

Yesterday Mimi surprised me by giving exactly the card I requested. She was playing with a bag full of old cards and postcards. I sat in the corner of her room, quite far away from her, asking her to bring a postcard with a picture of a cow to me. She picked the right one and brought it to me. I then asked her to bring the card with flowers on it. Again she found the right one and gave it to me. I repeated several times with other pictures. And she did it all correctly. Smart girl.
Mimi drinks more milk nowadays. She can drink 200ml each time and about 500ml-550ml a day. Keep up with good work, my girl. If you want to be a model in the future, you need to drink a lot of milk to improve your height :)

A toddler in the house

Mimi has grown up to become a real toddler now. The baby has gone. I have treated her and talked to her like to a "friend". I ask her before feeding her, before dressing her etc. And she replied back either by nodding or by shaking her head. In the morning, she wanders around the flat while I do some housework and get ready for work. From time to time she comes back to me, clings to my leg, tilts her head backward, looks at me and gave me her sweet smile. This morning Linh had to leave home early so the driver picked me and Mimi up to go to my parents' house. As I had to carry many bags, I couldn't carry Mimi so I asked her to walk by herself and follow me. And she did. She walked along the corridor, walked into the lift, and then walked out of the lift confidently as if she did it so many times. Looking at her, I realised how grown up my girl is now. She is no longer little baby that I can carry around in my arms. She can now understand most of the things I tell her and reply back in her own way. Soon she will go to the school. Time is flying fast before we realise it.

An active weekend

On Saturday we took Mimi to the swimming pool and garden in Daewoo hotel. As usual, she showed the joy when she saw the pool. This time I brought a long a floating jacket with the hope that she may be able to wear it to practice some floating and kicking. But it was too lose for her so she still had to use the floating “duck” (she literally sat on the floating with her legs under the water). On Sunday Mimi spent all day at my parent in law’s house. In the afternoon, we took her to the park nearby. She was so excited when she saw a lot of balloon sellers outside the park. She said “Bong” (balloon) all the time. She walked all the way from the entrance of the park to the lake (around 400m), taking her time to watch people, to point out balloon. When walking by the place where people had the radio loudly, she stopped and shaked her head and her hands with the music. She looked so funny. It’s pity that I didn’t bring my camera this time.
The weekend’s gone so fast. A new week starts tomorrow already…I need to focus more on the CFA. Mimi has been very good at sleeping (she sleeps around 8am) so I have quite a lot of time at night for study. But lately I was just to tired to read the CFA book

Personal servant

Mimi is really keen on doing “adult” things. Each time when I ask her to do something as if she is a grown up girl, she does it with all the pleasure. Like this morning, I opened my wardrobe, took out a shirt that I intended to wear for work, gave it to her, and told her to bring it to the bedroom for Mommy. She did it so diligently with a beaming smile on her face. She had to drag the shirt all the way along from the study room to the bedroom (about 10 metre away). And then after leaving the shirt in the bed for me, she came back to the wardrobe, eagerly to serve again. I took a trouser, gave to her and told her the same thing. She did it again. All I needed to do was to walk to the bedroom and got change, with a servant standing with a smile there waiting to serve! It’s so cute.
The hospital called yesterday to inform me that the result from the urine test is good, nothing unusual. What’s a relief! For the last few days, Mimi has been drinking a lot of water (thanks to my Mom) so her eyes are back to normal. She also took fruit smoothies again this morning (half of banana + half of sapoche + 5 grapes).
Today she also did so many funny things. She sat with her bottom on the floor and jumped like a frog. She imitated GrandMom’s doing exercise with the arms. Everyone laughed when she did it as it looked so funny: a baby with gestures of an old women.

Waiting for the test result

Mimi went through a hard time this morning again. Yesterday afternoon when I took Mimi back to the hospital for further consultation with the doctor (after I've got the blood test results), the doctor further advised me to do another urine test as she said the fluffy eyes are more likely to do with the kidney function. She also advised to do the ultrasound scanning of the kidney and liver. So I brought Mimi back this morning. Mimi cried right from the beginning of the ultrasound section (even before the doc rub the cream and put the device on her tummy) until the end of the section. The tone of her cry was not on a painful note but on a sulky note. I had to hold her body still and Linh had to keep her legs still. The section lasted around 10 minutes. The result of the scanning is positive. Everything is normal. Phew.
I'm still waiting for the result of the urine test. It will come sometime this afternoon.
The doctor said that if all the tests come out good then we can't do anything else. Just continue to observe her to see if there is anything else abnormal. That' s all I can do at the moment. Just hope for the best

Milk, milk, please

For some reason, Mimi drank more milk today than usual. Early morning when she just woke up, I made 150ml for her but she finished it all and asked for more. Another 50ml and then she was happy. At 10am, before the mid morning nap, she also took around 200ml milk. She never took that much before. As a result, she didn’t eat much at lunch. I had some colleagues coming over for lunch. Mimi was so well-behaved. She smiled at people and just watched TV (“Baby Einstein” and “Play Along” CDs) with the maid. I got a good lunch with lots of laughs
Mimi showed so many face expression today. She pretended to touch the hot cup and then quickly took back her hand and gave me a cheeky smile as if she knows it’s hot but she just wanted to try. She pretended to cry using her hands to cover her face and made the noise “Huuuuu” from the mouth. She took the CD out of the cover and tried to put it into the DVD. When she did something funny, she turned to me and gave me a sweet smile. When I pretended to look around and asked “ Where’s my little Mimi” , she said “Ahhh” to let me know where she is. During her day nap, I slept with her on the mattress which is normally folded to become the sofa in her room. Tonight when I changed her clothes to sleeping pyjama, she held my hand and dragged me to the sofa, put my hand on the sofa and used her hand to signal that she wanted me to pull the sofa to make the bed for both her and me (she tried to pull the sofa and then tap tap on my hand to urge me to do the same). But I told her firmly, “no, this is for day nap only. Now is night time already, where do you normally sleep at night?” She pointed to the cot (with hesitant). I put her into the cot, left the room. She still cried (but in lower voice) for about 10 minutes and then felt to sleep.
You are so well-behaved today, baby. My friends were really impressed with you. I’m so proud of you.

A day full of events

Today is a very tough day for Mimi. She had to go to two medical appointments in the morning. Mimi's skin has been so dry and rough recently espectially at her back and in her belly. It's so itchy and she has been scratching so badly. So I decided to take her to a specialist today. The doctor said that she has ezcma ("cham kho") and gave some cream. Poor little Mimi. The doctor said that it will take a long time to heal. And after the first appointment, she had to rush into the second one with the doctor at Viet - France hospital. This time is for her eyes. Her eyes have been stuffy for a week. At first, I thought that it's just because she's lack of sleep or she sleeps on her tummy with the face down. But then when the stuffiness did not go away, I started get worrying and decided to take her to the doctor. The doctor ordered a urine test for her. The result of that test showed that she has some blood and biliburine (the thing that caused "yellow skin" when she was a newborn) in her urine so the doctor advised to do a blood test for her. At first, I was reluctant because I know how painful it is for her and I thought it's a bit overdo. But then I thought it's better to be more cautious than to be careless especially when it comes to the health of a baby. It was such a painful experience for both me and Mimi during the process of taking blood from her hand. She cried and cried. I had to keep her body and her arm still. My heart cried out as well. The torture finished after 30 seconds. It seemed much longer than that. Mimi still cried after that and she still cried all the way to home. She felt to sleep without taking lunch when we nearly got home. In the afternoon, she ate some porridge but much less than her usual portion. I had to go to the supermarket to buy food for tomorrow party (I invited some colleagues to my flat for lunch) so I brought Mimi and the maid to Big C. Mimi played in the play corner ("Kolorado") where they have a lots of balls, slides, papers to draw. It took me more than 1.5 hours to finish my shopping. It was such a big crowd today in the supermarket and I got so angry at the queue and I actually shouted at some guys who tried to cut the queue short.
By the time I got out of the supermarket, Mimi had got bored of playing in Kolorado. We quickly went home. At that time I got a call from the hospital informing about the blood test result. The liver enzyme of Mimi is higher than usual (1.5 times higher). As the doctor who called to inform about the result was not the one who examined Mimi so she advised me to book another appointment on Monday again. I really hope everything will be Ok for Mimi.

Mimi, you were a brave girl today. You had to go through so much scared things today and you were still my usual smily Mimi in the afternoon. I wish I could bear the pain for you. Sleep tight tonight. You need lots of rest as you only slept for one hour at noon. Sweet dream, my little girl.

An ordinary day

A typical Mimi's day starts at 6am. Mimi sleeps in her own cot and in a separate room from us so I only know when she wakes up by her scream or by her cry. In this weather where the temperature is over 30 degree even at night, we have air-con in both rooms: ours and Mimi's so the doors of both bedrooms have to be shut. That's why we can only hear Mimi when she calls us with her loud voice or when she cries. We tried baby monitor before but it didn't work in our appartment. Anyway, back to Mimi's business. When I hear her call, I quickly jump out of my bed and came to her cot. And here she is, sitting in the cot, with the face looking out to the door and when she sees me, she greets me with her sweet smile. Sometimes she may have some tear on her face and look at me with her sulky expression as if she says " Why don't you come earlier? I thought you've abandonned me here". So 1,2,3 out of the cot and into Mommy's lap. In the mean time, Linh is making her milk. She normally just takes 100ml. She lays down, her head on my lap, her feet tapping on the floor, her two hands holding to the bottle and drinks her milk. She looks so relaxing. She sometimes stops drinking and gives us a smile. So sweet. Last week I gave her about 100ml fruit smoothies (avocado, banana, kiwi, or mango - Chew Lee and Yvonne gave me the recipes) but this week she refused to take it. May be she got bored with it. I need to think of different ways to make her eat fruits.
By the time we all get ready to go out of the flat, it's normally already 7-7h15am. Mimi is quite well behaved in the morning. She just hangs around me playing with my make-up stuff while I dress or she goes up and down the flat to discover new objects in the living room and Linh's study room. She specially loves to look at my wardrobe.
Linh drives us to my Mom's house where I drop Mimi and then Linh drives me to work. Mimi will have breakfast there. She normally has a half bowl of porridge or of soup. My Mom and the maid take care her all day until 5h30pm when I'm back from work. They feed Mimi milk twice (at 9h30am and at 3h30pm, about 150ml each time). Lunch is served to Mimi at 12h (normally porridge with chicken, fish, beef, or pork and vegetable). She has a nap after lunch for about 2.5h and then she is ready to play the whole afternoon.
When I come back from work, I or Linh bath Mimi. She likes the water very much but she just hates having her hair wash. She cries and cries until the hair wash finishs and she can sit in the bath tub. She loves putting the soap on her chest and loves using the cloths to clean her neck (hmm, she may mean to "clean" but she really makes a mess after that)
After having a bath, Mimi's ready for a feast. Sometimes when she's hungry, she doesn't stop "mum mum" until I put her in the high chair. But her hunger and her eager to eat is only very short-live. After a quarter of the bowl, she eats very slowly and want to play with the spoon and the bowl. I normally put a plastic bowl and a spoon on her high chair table so she can play with it and can self-feed her self abit (more of what falling out of her mouth on to her clothes and on the floor than what goes in!). If I want to make her finish the whole portion, I sometimes have to take her out of the chair and let her play some thing while feeding her. I know it's bad but I really want her to put on some weight. She's quite skinny now.
While we (my parents, me and Linh) have dinner, Mimi either play alone (hardly!) or she wants to sit with us and use the chopsticks to poke at our meals on the table. Very bad table manner indeed. I don't want to let her do that but my Mom always gives in to her request. I'm so afraid that she will become a spoit girl so I and Linh try to give her discipline. The difficult thing is that we can only do it at our flat, not in my parent's house. I know I know, consistency is the key in discipline but how can I do it when my Mom always want to interfere!
By the time we finish dinner, Mimi is quite sleepy already. So we takes her home to our flat. I change her to sleeping pyjamas, clean her teeth and put her into the cot at around 8pm. I sometime read a book to her. Before she really love sitting on my lap and look at the pictures in the book and listen to my voice. But recently she doesn't like it that much. May be I need to buy some new books then.
After lowering down the light, I say good night, sleep tight to Mimi and leave the room. She normally falls to sleep 5 minutes after that. To set up this sleeping habit, I and Linh had to bear her crying (very very loudly) for a week. She cried as if it's the end of the world. She cried until she spitted everything out and I had to change her clothes and the bed sheet again. She cried for about 45 minutes before falling to sleep because of tiredness. But after 5 days, it's getting better and now for most of the time she can sleep without my presence there.
That is a typical day of Mimi.
At 15 months and 20days, here are Mimi's milestones:

- Weight: 9kg , Height: 77cm,
- No of Teeth: 8 (have been 8 for 4 months!)
- Emotions and Character: emotional, stubborn, very lively (Mimi has so many different face expression)
- Language: Mimi is now able to say quite a few words in Vietnamese. She can say very clearly words like "ca" (fish); "choat" (small), "ao" (shirt), "cuc" (button), "thich" (like), "bo" (daddy), "ba" (grandmom), "ong" (granddad). She can repeat a word after we say it to her (without understand the meaning). But she refuses to say "me" (mommy"! Whenever I ask her to say "me" she says "ba" (grandmom) as if she does it on purpose. .
- Dexterity: Able to walk steadily. Mimi loves walking up and down a step with somebody holding her hand. She can do it 100 times!
- Other gestures : use her hand to pat on her chest when she wants to sleep, goodbye kiss, wave bye bye, shake head for "no" and nodding her head for "yes" when she is asked to do something; pretend to scare people by pointing the figure and shut her mouth tight, staring and make the "hmmm, hmmm" noise (it's so funny when I see her doing this); like to use a clothes to clean the chair, the table, the floor (imitate the maid); and lots of other things...
- She can drink from sippy cup (holding the cup herself). Love eating biscuit (cheesy biscuit with the fish shape) and able to feed herself snack food.
- Diet: 3 solid a day; 300-350 ml of milk ; snacks in between (biscuit, cheese cube, yogurt)
- Sleeping pattern: 8pm till 6am; 2.5h nap during the day (after lunch)

Here is a picture of her taken in Da nang in May. A very big smile, very "Mimi". Keep smiles always on your face, my little angel.