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.