Happy Valentine's Day!

Yesterday, Katy was invited over to Ellie's to celebrate Valentine's Day. She was so excited all afternoon about going to a "party" (although I don't think she knew what a party was). Here she is catching sight of her favourite Hire Car Uncle coming to pick her up...And presenting Ellie with her Valentine rose.
Ellie, Tiffany and Evelyn had prepared a bunch of activities. Tia Mila went ahead to help set up and learn how to do these activities with Katy at home. First up was a marble rolling exercise, which fascinated Katy. She really didn't know what to make of it all.

Katy's favourite activity was doing the handprints. She loved the feeling of the brush on her hands. Her first glimpse of this was watching Ellie have her hands painted and you could practically hear the cogs turning in her brain as she tried to figure out what was happening and reconcile it with all her previous experiences. She has not been a big fan of yucky stuff on her fingers and for a while now, she will ask you to wipe food or crayon or colour marks off her hands.


Pleased to have gotten the hang of it, Katy took the opportunity to sneak in an extra handprint when Miss Tiffany leant away to help another child!
Katy loves playing with water so the whole experience was topped off nicely with a little swirl in a bucket of water.
The next activity was decorating heart-shaped cookies that Lynne, Sam's Tia, had made.

Katy was quite enthusiastic about icing (frosting) the cookies and sprinkling the decorations on them, but she refused to actually taste the icing or the decorations. I guess they looked too much like the paint? At least she was refusing to eat the icing because it looked like paint, rather than trying to eat the paint because it looks like icing!

Sam tried to persuade her to try some of the candy hearts and sprinkles...


After all that activity, the kids ran riot with all the toys and the playhouse in Ellie's backyard. Here Katy is with Natacha, whom she really took a shine to yesterday.
And here she is trying to give Callum a ride on the princess car.
We all had such a wonderful time. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. After an hour or so, Katy kept clamouring to go home and then to go inside. She just wanted some quiet time with Mama. So she sat happily in Ellie's high chair and shares some strawberries and watermelon with me and we just chilled out for a bit. It's amazing to watch Katy and her friends mature - it's great that she is learning when she needs some space and peace and quiet and asking for it in a quiet and measured way rather than having a meltdown from being overtired. Our little babies are really growing up fast!

In Hong Kong, our playgroups are our families and it is wonderful to have such a loving and active group to create and share family traditions and celebrate holidays with! Rick and I really love celebrating holidays and family traditions, and sharing them with Katy.