Wiggly Piglet’s Playpen

Last  night, while I was talking to my Mom and Grandma on the phone,  Mckayla kept fighting to take the phone away from me. She gets all excited when she heard her name from the receiver and started babbling back at the receiver. And that definitely created lots of excitement on the other end of the phone. After I got off the phone, she was busy playing with her toys again while I watched her from the couch. While she was playing, I noticed she picked up the phone several times and randomly pressing the butons. I took away the phone from her and checked the redial list – she dialed Taiwan’s phone number several times, but I wasnt’ sure if the calls actually went through because I didn’t get a call on my cell phone telling me Mckayla’s calling them again. She continued to play with her toys for a while and somehow she got hold of the phone again. I didn’t pay much attention to it until I saw her babbling to the phone and I heard someone talking back to her. I grabbed the phone and realized she called her Grandma K this time (according to Ted’s Mom, that was the second call from her that evening). I dont’ know how she did it, but I think Ted’s parents were the last number that dialed in on the phone and somehow through her magic touch, Mckayla was able to pull up their number and made calls herself.

Mckayla has been cruising along furnitures for a while now but hasn’t made much progress. She loves to get down and “walk” herself but we have to hold her up with both hands. But this past weekend, she’s made some progress. Our friend Nhi/Thoi with their son Khoa visiting from Virginia brought Mckayla yet antoher new toy – The Drumming Bear Push Toy. She’s so intrigued by the bear drumming along as the toy’s being pushed, she’s so eager to ”walk”. After two days of practice, she was able to walk while we held one of her hand and she pushed the toy herself. And when we praised her ”good job!”, she even let go her both hands to clap while standing!

We couldn’t wait til Chinese New Year to try out this new outfit from Autnie Margaret

Mckayla’s appettite has been erratic. Some days she would eat a bunch and other days she would only nibble on few pieces of Cheerios and yogurt. And the worst part, she doesn’t like to be fed by spoon. She prefers to pick the food up on her own or I hand feed to her with my fingers. Nanny made her porridge yesterday with fish and carrots. According to Nanny, she ate most of her food with some coaxing (and lots of patience). But when it came to our turn to feed her last night, she refused to eat from the spoon again. I didn’t want to feed her with my hands because we were also eating dinner at the same time. So I placed a spoonful of porridge in a plastic bowl for her with a spoon. She had no interest in the spoon and went straight in with her hands. You can imagine the mess she made but at least she at her dinner!

When I came home yesterday, Nanny told me Mckayla can kick the ball. I couldn’t recall having any balls in the house, so I had no clue what the Nanny was talking about until Mckayla’s demonstration. Mckayla has a Sesame Street book called Zoe Scores Goal (I think that’s the title). The book has a little squeaky soccer ball on it. So when Nanny told Mckayla to kick the ball, she indeed kicked the ball, the tiny soccer ball on the book.

We bought several books in Chinese for Mckayal from our last Taiwan visit. Some of the books were English books that have been translated into Chinese. One of her favorite books is Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?. We’ve been pointing out “teacher” (Chinese) in one of the page in the book. Two days ago, when we ask her “where’s the teacher?”, she would dig out the book from the pile then handed it to us. Last night, I asked Mckayala, “where’s teh teacher?”, she not only pick out the book but also flipped to the page of the “teacher” picture. I coudln’t belive it, so I tried it again few minutes later. And she pulled out the book again but this time flipped to the page AFTER the “teacher” picture (it’s the page with a bunch of kids).

Jackie’s been trying to get Mckayla to kiss her but without much success. She played with Mckayla last night while I was in the shower. They were having their bonding time since Jackie was leaving tonight for the Philippines for the next few months. She finally got Mckayla to kiss when she was showing her family pictures. She would point out “Auntie”, “Uncle”, “Grandma”, and “Grandpa” and tell her to kiss. Mckayla followed the command and kissed the picture. But Jackie asked Mckayla to kiss “Auntie JaJa”, she turned her head away and wouldn’t kiss her. When I asked her to kiss Mommy, she turned her head away too. So we asked her to kiss “Auntie” again, she picked up the picture frame and kiss the picture with Auntie Margaret.

We’ve been trying to re-establish Mckayla’s sleeping routine. She used to fall asleep herself in the crib after her last bottle. We were able to put her down and she would played for a bit by herself then doze off. Since we moved back from my parents’ house after Cancun trip (Fourth of July), she’s been having trouble falling asleep on her own. She either falls asleep while taking her last bottle or we have to rock her to sleep in our arms then put her down in her crib. We started putting her down in her crib after her last bottle while she’s awake on Saturday night. First night, she cried for about an hour (while I was sitting next to her crib) before she fell asleep. In between, I had to pick her up several times to calm her down. On Sunday night, it took Ted about 30 minutes. Last night, it was 15 minutes. She only woke up once in the middle of the night and whimpered for a little then fell asleep again. I was so happy to get a full night of rest without too much interruption. But when the alarm went off and I flipoped over to Ted’s side of bed to snooze it, I felt a wet spot on the bed. MeiMei peed in our bed again! She’s been coughing more last few days and even gagged some fluid out on the floor on Sunday, so I decided to up her Lasix dose to get rid of the excess fluid. But I forgot to up her outings to the backyard to release the fluid.

Mckayla’s new trick of the moment is to pass things to people. She would pick up anything (including lint from the rug) and hand it to who’s nearby. We started teaching her “give to XXXX” both in Chinese and English last few days and have been pretty successful most of the time. She loves playing with my cell phone (only when it’s turned on and flipped open for dialing) and I always had to forcefully take it away from her to make a call. Yesterday, she got hold of my cell phone again and when I told her to “give to MaMa” she handed me the phone!

Poor MeiMei’s been coughing more last week, not sure if she got sick also from me, Mckayla and Jackie. But every time MeiMei coughs, Mckayla would cough, too. And she also tries to sneeze (not very successful) when I sneeze. And she hears Ted and Jackie burp (I don’t know how to burp intentionally like them), she would try to make burping sound, too.