Luving the yummy spaghetti sauce!

Remember the spaghetti sauce I made recently? Well, since there was leftover sauce, I saved it so that we can have instant yummy spaghetti sauce whenever needed. Here's Alicia taking her dinner today - spaghetti topped with the yummy sauce!

In addition to her spaghetti, she had 3 mini cottage pies! :) happie mummy... well, that's only because I didn't cook a lot of spaghetti... lol.

Using chopsticks - HER way

Alicia always has her own ideas about how to go about doing things - and here she is, deciding that chopsticks should be used in this manner:

Alicia eating double-boiled fresh lily bulb dessert...

I cooked double-boiled fresh lily bulb dessert last night and my little one as usual, got a share of it...

Slurping up the yummy dessert!:

She didn't like the white fungus but I think she was alright with the other ingredients... hehe.

Eating cheerios

Alicia and I have Cheerios with milk for breakfast most of the time since we started on it. I realise that breakfast is the only meal in which she can sit quietly and obediently in her chair for the whole meal. Recently she's been getting her soft toys to sit with her in her chair while she takes her breakfast - and they must share the chair with her.

Anyway, this is how we usually eat our Cheerios: Cheerios in a bowl and milk in another bowl. I think she finds it very fun to pick some Cheerios and drop them into the bowl of milk then eat them. She usually uses her spoon to eat the wet Cheerios but I dunno why she kept using her fingers today... messy gal...

yum yum... see how big my mouth is? :D

Mummy, will you stop taking photos of me when I'm eating?

I'm not gonna pose for you!

It's finger-licking good!

Do you want some, baby bear?

Let me check how much is left...

Not much left, baby bear... I'm finishing it all!

Bear with it... :D

The messy little kitten...

Someone's luvin' chicken wings... yumz... :)

Alicia loves to eat chicken midwings so I usually bake or braise them for her then I'd tear out the meat for her. Recently, she wants to eat the wing on her own and she does it really quite well! Here she is, eating her baked chicken wing (this is her second chicken wing - she'd licked one clean already):

Udon... not!

I gave Alicia udon on Monday (fried udon for lunch and udon soup for dinner). This is the first time Alicia had udon and although she ate some of it, she didn't quite like it. Hubby hates udon and I'm not particularly fond of it either... maybe it's a genetic preference in Alicia's case... lol.

Anyway, for some reason, she refuses to use her cutlery lately and sometimes she refuses to be fed... I've got such a temperamental girl! sigh...

Independence

Took these photos of Alicia eating lunch today. Actually I was trying to capture her trying to pick out the broccoli to eat only but I only managed to get one shot of that (unfortunately, I can't see the broccoli!)... Anyway, whenever she's in the mood for self-feeding, she won't let me help her, even if she's not successful in her attempts....

Sometimes it's really exasperating to feed her. Take for instance, today, first I fed her noodles... then after three mouths of noodles, I thought to try one piece of broccoli to break the monotony. Then the fussy one spat out the broccoli... but had second thoughts so she started digging around the noodles to pick out only the broccoli and when I tried to feed her noodles, she spat that out... and tried to salvage the broccoli bits from the mouth-full that she spat out... *faint* so I left her to eat on her own after that... she picked around some more then decided she had enough. Sigh...

My adorable little mouse!

It's the last day of Mandarin PlayClub for the term and it's the last lesson for Alicia too since she's only gonna continue with the Bilingual PlayClub next term. Hence, to spice up the partying mood, the teacher drew a mousey face on Alicia - which is really quite appropriate since she's born in the year of the rat. Isn't she cute? :D

The ironic part was that she was meowing on her way home... such a strange little mouse...

Anyway, I managed to capture some cute shots of her after I got home from Julia Gabriel today:

Here she is, playing with the learning aid for the letter B at home just before lunch:

And here she is, playing with the cutlery in her chair before I got some noodles from my packet of wanton mee for her... such a playful mouse! (ooh, did I mention that I can actually get her to sit in her chair for meals now? :) )

squeak squeak! :D

The little mouse seriously eating noodles and Heinz beef casserole (and watching Sesame Street):

Here's when she got bored self-feeding so I gave her some beans to entertain her (read more about this activity in an earlier post):

The pincer grasp and the first self-feeding

Alicia mastered the pincer grasp and self-fed for the first time on 27 April 09.

I remember she picked up the Gerber star and put it into her mouth and was so pleased with herself. Hehehe. But I think I was happier than she was! :D I recall she was trying to pick up the star for a few days before that and didn't succeed. I thought it'd take a long while more before she could pick it up and self-feed but she was faster than I expected. :D

On the third day of new year...

On the third day of new year, we went to my mum's place for dinner and also to my uncle's house just across the road. Here's Alicia in her third CNY suit, stuffing her face with fruit after dinner:

And here's the pretty jelly my uncle gave!

Alicia eating noodles!

I gave Alicia some noodles today and here she is, trying to self-feed. But due to the fact that these noodles were very slippery, she had problems trying to pick the strands up with the fork. Hence, whenever she got impatient (which was quite often), she would use her hand to pick up the strands of noodles instead. :D I love the cute look when she's sucking in the noodles!

Here's the successful attempt at self-feeding:

Isn't she just adorable??? :)

The bumbo re-visited

It's been quite awhile since we managed to get Alicia to sit down nicely on her bumbo. Today I brought out the bumbo and told her to sit down and she obediently walked over to me and sat down in her bumbo. Surreal isn't it? :) Well, that's just coz I was holding her pink bowl of snacks and she wanted to eat her wholegrains. So here's Alicia sitting in her bumbo with her blue tray and pink bowl of snacks, watching tv. Just in case you're wondering why I'm not using the original tray, well, she hates the tray because it's too restrictive (she can push away the blue tray when she wants to get up but she can't do that with the original tray!) and I've definitely got a gal who literally, doesn't like to be tied down.

In the past, she used to hate to sit in bumbo. We surmise that it's because she had difficulty getting out of it in the past. Now that she's so adept at climbing out of it, she doesn't view bumbo as a threat to her freedom anymore. In fact, we see her climbing into bumbo to sit down ever so willingly at times even when we didn't ask her to do so!

A tale of two utensils

Alicia has decided that she wants to be independent recently and insisting on self-feeding is one of the most obvious ways of demonstrating this desire. Fortunately I had the foresight that this day was nearing and I bought a set of utensils for self-feeding from Toys R Us on the same day that I bought the reindeer hairband for her. I thought that it would be expensive but it's really a great buy coz it only costs $1.90! The fork and spoon are angled so that the toddler can get the food into the mouth easily.



Here's a pic of the fork and spoon:

Alicia has amazed me by being able to self-feed some meals so far. Her best attempt thus far I must say was the day that she self-fed a bowl of noodles for dinner when we came back from Cameron. She sat herself on the edge of the sofa at my mum's place and ate skilfully: there was hardly any spillage despite the fact that it was the first time she was using a fork! And after she was done, she just put down the fork and went to pick up the newspapers to read. Toddlers are really amusing!

The milestone chart I got from babycenter states that a handful of kids at 14mths will be able to use a spoon or fork, 50% of toddlers would be able to use a spoon or fork by 16mths and most kids at 19mths will be able to use a spoon and fork. Well, so far it seems that she's already able to use both the spoon and fork and honestly it's quite a surprise to me because I don't actually let her self-feed all that much!

Quietly eating her breakfast

Recently, as Alicia has rejected other breakfast items like pancakes, bread and fried egg (probably coz it's teething season), I've been giving her a mixture of whole grain healthy snacks which she eats like toddler cereal in the morning (but without the milk). She has her milk later from me after she finishes the bowl of whole grains. :)

I've been giving her the whole grains in this pink bowl so she has already come to identify the pink bowl with her yummy whole grains. Once I 'set the table' for her (i.e. put the pink bowl on the blue tray), she'd just sit down and eat her breakfast quietly. Sometimes after sitting down for awhile, she gets bored, so she shifts herself, and the bowl of course, to the coffee table, where she would stand and continue eating. Almost every time, she will explore what happens when she tilts the bowl or turns it upside down. I try not to be annoyed and will get her to help to pick up the pieces of food and return it to the bowl. When I sit down with her to eat the food, I will give her a spoon to try to self-feed. Well, it's easier to start getting her to self-feed 'dry' foods definitely as it's less messy!

Here's a video of her quietly eating breakfast on her own: