Day at the Park

On Friday, Natalie visited the park at Caine and Seymour Road with her friends Max, Stella, and Becky. After a brief warm-up period, she took off to frolick with her friends on the play equipment.

Natalie is amazed at all there is to play with. She stands at the edge, watching Stella climbing the slide and wonders, where to start first?


How about the slide?


Natalie likes the slide, but she much prefers climbing up than going down.


Natalie smiling while peeking out at auntie Katie.


Natalie's little friend Stella on the slide.


Natalie curiously watching some of the other kids play.


Very bravely, Natalie can climb the stairs all by herself!


She carefully climbs one step at a time, always holding onto the railing. She's a careful and cautious baby. (I don't mind!)


She made it!


Later, I give Natalie some raisin bread to snack on. She wanders around, checking things out while she munches away.

Natalie meets a very cute and chubby 3-month old baby and waves "Hi" to her.

She also generously offers her bread to the baby.

Family time with the Tongs

With the birth of baby cousin Nicholas, it's been really great to have family (Grandma and Grandpa Tong) visiting us in Hong Kong. Natalie has had a chance to spend more time with family and has become really good at pointing out who's who in the family. Natalie also loves her baby cousins Victoria and Nicholas and gets super excited when she sees them. She points and yells "Beh-bee! Beh-bee!". She is also still an avid admirer of her older cousin Vanessa who can do so many wonderful things Natalie is still learning to do like sing songs and talk in full sentences.

Natalie and Victoria hanging out with Por-por and Gong-gong.


Por-por with Vanessa, Natalie, and Victoria.

The cousins sitting close. We really hope they'll play and fight and be good friends as they grow up together!

During meal times, the kids eat first (we feed them). Then, our helper will look after the kids while the adults eat. The only way for her to watch all 4 kiddies is by turning on the television for 10 minutes. The three oldest instantly become TV zomies and Suparti is free to carry and rock the littlest Nicholas.

Three cousins in a row: Small, medium, big. Here Natalie is wearing her alternate Hallowe'en costume (a school girl). That didn't work out when her stockings decided not to fit her any more.

Natalie gives little Victoria a reassuring pat.

Baby Hallowe'en Party!

Today we had our Apr-Jun Mommies' Group baby Hallowe'en party. It was so much fun! Parents and babies all had a great time. This year, the party was held at Dakota Prime, a new steak restaurant and there was lots of yummy food, including truffle mac-n'-cheese which Natalie loved (she ate TWO servings!). Natalie dressed up as one of her favourite animals... a duck!

See Video 163 and Video 164 of Natalie waddling around in her costume. It was super cute :)

Here is Natalie the duck.


Look at the bum!


The duck munching on a lady finger biscuit.


The duck admiring herself in the mirror and drinking diluted fresh mango juice.


Other animals and costumes present included this cute (home-made!) snail. Here is Holly the snail and her daddy, Alastair.

Here is hula-girl Stella with her mommy Katie.

It was such a fun party, even Madonna Moorea showed up with her grandma Linda. There was also a little vampire Jamie who really bites!

Here is Natalie trying to steal food from her friend the skeleton, Becky.

Clara the pirate has to hold tight to her little pumpkin bag. Natalie kept trying to steal the gold coins and toys from it. Of course, she also put them back.

Here is cutie Pia the pumpkin munching on a toy.

Here is Max the Amish boy sitting with his daddy Dave.

Here is Summer the mummy. She has scary spiders and rats attached to her costume. Good thing they were stuck on the back where she couldn't see them.

Here is a cute devil Nivana trying to shake hands with her friend Pia.

A little later, we had some cross-breeds. Here is Clara the pirate with a duck head.

The other babies LOVED Natalie's costume. Some of them who saw her opened their mouths in amazement and they all wanted to touch her. Here, Becky the skeleton is giving the duck a big hug.

For more photos, see our "TheWangGang" flickr account here.

Even sadder...

Why is Natalie so sad? Even with all the other major stuff going on in her life (teething, allergies, medicine, etc...), we found that with all the teeth Natalie has, her poor little thumb is growing a big, rough callous and it is often red and painful looking from all the vigorous thumb-sucking she does. So we bought Bite-X, a really bitter solution to rub on her thumb. Whenever Natalie pops her thumb into her mouth, she'll immediately pop it back out and scream and cry and then spit a big, bitter puddle on the floor, poor girl.

But she's a fast learner and hardly sucks her thumb any more (unless she's half asleep and forgets) and as an alternative, we've introduced the pacifier to her. It's been a couple of days and so far so good! We hope she'll soon forget about her thumb and only use pacifier from now on.

Here is the callous growing on Natalie's right thumb.

Here it is again from another angle. It's a rough bump and sometimes a little red, too.

This is the Bite-X solution we've been coating her thumb with over the past few days.

And this what Natalie thinks about all this.

A fruit-full belly

Today, Natalie had a belly full of fruit... and it's not from eating it! She asked Lisa Yee-yee to help stuff her shirt full of plastic toy fruit and walked around with a bulging shirt for a while. When we tried to take the fruit out, she shook her head and said "No no" and pushed our hands away. For some reason, she really liked having all the plastic fruit in her shirt. Kids are strange and funny. See Video 162 of Natalie and her big fruit belly.

Natalie ambling around with toy fruit in her shirt.


Natalie waves "Hi" to the camera.

Swimming videos

I've fallen behind on downloading, editing, and uploading videos. Here are some not-so-oldies but still goodies:

Video 161 - Natalie laughing and playing with Alex Soo-soo. She gets so excited that she accidentally loses her balance and falls. Alex quickly distracts her and she forgets about crying. Instead, she stands up to play again.

Video 158, Video 159 and Video 160 of Natalie swimming with her friends at the AMC. She is initially very scared. In the first video, she hops off the edge and is totally submerged. But later, when the toys come out, she forgets about being scared and just plays!

Saddest baby ever

The past couple of days have been hard ones for Natalie. First and foremost, she is plagued by constant pain as her bottom-right canine and bottom-left molar slowly break through her gums. She has been drooling a fountain all day, eating very little, and whimpering a lot. She tells us her gums hurt by putting her index finger in her mouth, saying "Ya-ya!" and crying. The only bright spots in her day are when we give her a warm bottle of milk to ease her hunger and help soothe her.

And then yesterday, we noticed blood in her diaper (along with the poo-poo) and when we took her to the hospital, we were told she has a bacterial infection (non-contagious) which causes it and now we put her medicine in her milk (she HATES taking her medicine and is so smart she always spits out at least half of it, staining her clothes and our clothes so it's easiest in her bottle).

And then this morning, upon taking her first dose of pennicillin, Natalie's face suddenly became all red and splotchy so I took her back to the hospital where we found out she is allergic to it. See photos below. Poor girl... she'll be on antibiotics for the next 7 days, and a variety of other meds. All in all, she's been a very brave little girl.

Hanging out at Times Square

A couple days ago, Natalie and I visited Times Square and hung out with Annie and little Ethan. Natalie really enjoyed spending time with Ethan and were given free roam of the whole area (chatting up our neighbours and checking out the shops) while us mommies sat in the comfy couches and chatted.

Natalie even learned how to climb up onto a narrow wooden ledge (see below pics) and how to shuffle side-ways to move but not fall off, and how to climb down. Afterwards, she was sooo tired she completely passed out when we met up with Por-por, Gong-gong, Carol and little Nicholas for dinner at Lian.

Me and the cute babies. They were impatient to be let down again so they could roam and wander.


The bubs taking a break. This is the narrow wooden ledge Natalie learned to climb up, shuffle side-ways, and climb back down on.


Natalie watching (and copying) her little friend Ethan.

Sitting with Summer

Yesterday, Katie and I were over at Lily's place for a quick lesson and a couple rounds of mah-jong. While we snacked on spring rolls and chicken wings and chocolates and learned how to gamble, the kiddies Summer, Stella, and Natalie spent some time together, too.

Little Summer has a turtle and a rabbit as pets and poor Natalie is terrified (petrified) of all animals. When the rabbit hopped too close to Natalie, she let out a HUGE yell and started crying and freaking out. We're considering a pet so she can learn that animals are really friendly.

Natalie sitting with Summer on her little couch.


She's found a book to peruse.


Here they are again quietly reading together (although this only lasted a few seconds).

Playroom fun

A couple weeks ago, we were at the AMC playroom. Natalie is very interactive and will climb and explore on her own now. Below are some pics from our time there with her friends.

Natalie playing lego with Ethan. Instead of doing like most other kids and scattering lego around, she went around collecting stray lego pieces and putting them back in the bin.


You can see Ethan's cute little smile here.


Natalie and Ethan in the lego room around the table. Ethan is quite the little climber!


Natalie sitting on her little car. She can climb on and off this by herself!


More climbing around the safetly bumpers.


I had to help her onto this one. She kept shaking herself (and her head) furiously to make it rock (but it only moves a little).


Natalie inspecting her new toy.


Natalie riding on her car. Can you find her?