Heidi @ 14 months

Baby Heidi (no longer a baby actually!) is now 14 months, coming to 15 months. She is a cheerful, happy go lucky baby and all too cute when she flashes her signature grin! Amazingly enough, she has 16 teeth (8 upper and 8 lower) which is way more advanced than Hannah at 14 months. So it's no longer a toothless grin, and she can eat most things, munching away with all those teeth.

Vocabulary and speaking wise, she is still slower than Hannah, but what she cannot say with her mouth, she points with her finger! And she understands everything we say to her, do this, take this etc. She can also make signs for "no" - either shaking her head or wagging her index finger (she knows the difference by the way, shaking her head for something she doesn't want and wagging her finger for something she knows she's not supposed to do) and "shhh" when she's supposed to be quiet, besides the usual "bye bye" and "flying kiss" which she could do much earlier. She can also imitate very well - if I stick out my tongue she will do the same, if i do the sign for "stinky", she will do the same ;) If I say "cold" she will put both her hands on her cheeks. I did that for her one day when she was standing in front of the open refridgerator and she remembered that her hands were cold when she put them on her cheeks. She can also do the sign for "no more" when she has finished her food. Speaking of food, she can now (finally!) hold her own milk bottle. She could actually do it much earlier but she was probably just lazy too laid-back to do so ;) The words that she can say now are "ah-mah", "ah-gong", "deh-deh" (for daddy), "ko-ko", "jie-jie" "mum-mum" "nen-nen".

She can also walk quite steadily now since about 13 months so no more crawling for her. She still falls on her bottom quite a bit, but she picks herself up quickly with no fuss, unless she realises someone is watching her and then she will make her "pitiful" face ;) With all the walking around, she has lost quite a bit of her baby fat and chubby cheeks.

Don't grow up too quickly Heidi - Mummy misses her little baby!

Cameron Highlands trip

During the school holidays, Hubby's family wanted to go for a short vacation and take the kids somewhere, so they decided on Cameron Highlands. It had been ages since Hubby or I were last there, and neither Hannah nor Heidi had been there before, so we decided to go along.

It wasn't that cold when we arrived and the sun was shining, but it was quite chilly when the wind blew. We took a picture in front of our serviced apartment. We rented two apartments (total of 6 rooms) as we had 15 adults and 7 kids with us.

After putting down our stuff, it was time to go out and explore. It was in fact a good thing that our first day there was a Friday, because the jam on Saturday and Sunday was really horrendous. A tip - don't visit Camerons during the weekends and on school holidays. It's possible to get stuck for several hours for a mere 2km road in the jam, in view that there is only one road going up and down to Brinchang from Tanah Rata and vice versa.

So anyway, our first stop was this place that sold vegetables and flowers and little souvenirs. Heidi had her first (and very small) taste of a strawberry ice - very yummy!

Later on, we visited a bee farm and Hannah had a pure honey stick. It was super sweet, and even with her sweet tongue, she couldn't finish the whole thing.

The bee farm was also a strawberry farm, however it was not the strawberry season so many of the strawberries were not yet ripe.

After that, we went to the Cameron Valley Bharat tea plantation to have tea and cakes. The view was really spectacular.

Heidi was more interested in her cake though :p

Later on, we took a walk down to the plantation to take some nice pictures.

Heidi loved running around in the open spaces.

After a day of activity, we headed back to the apartment for a delicious steamboat dinner. We especially liked the sweetcorn bought earlier at the vegetable shop, it was really really sweet and juicy.

Everyone was tired after a long day, so we knocked off quite early for the night. It was quite cold at night so there was no need for any fan or air-con at all.

The next day, we couldn't go to many places as the traffic was very bad so we decided to go and have a look at the Boh tea plantation. The road driving up to the place was very windy but the view from up there was worth it. Compared to Bharat where we had to hike down the plantation, in Boh we had to hike up. I didn't go all the way up so I stayed at the tea house with Heidi, but Hannah and her Daddy and some of her cousins braved the hike.

Little girl managed to climb all the way to the top and I love these pictures of her with her Daddy with the view of the plantation in the background.

There were also some silly pictures with her cousins, like this.

Since there was not much else to do after that, the kids had to amuse themselves at the apartment. We took lots of pictures of the kids smiling and doing silly things ;)

We headed for the night market later that night, but no pictures taken as we walked 1 km to the market and 1 km back again to the car, because of, yes you guessed it, the jam! Hannah walked all the way with us and she beamed with pride when everyone said what a clever girl she was for walking the whole way.

The next day, it was time to go home. We couldn't use the way we came up the hill because of the traffic, so we used the old Tapah road. On the way, we passed a waterfall which was really popular with tourists. So we stopped to have a look.

We were not prepared with towels and extra clothes, or else the kids would have loved to go in. The water was really cold, though.

But in the end we let Hannah dip her legs in the water and she really enjoyed it.

Final family picture with the waterfall in the background before saying goodbye and heading home to Penang: