Beware the baby...he bites!

Well my cousin Niu Niu pretty much tries to eat everything which I believe is standard baby practice. He's particularly keen on anything you've told him not to eat. He also suffers from a terrible case of food envy. Unfortunately for me he only seems to get jealous of the food I'm eating. Not a meal time goes by I'm not offered something new to try and seconds after I've skillfully scoped it up with my chopsticks I hear the pita pata of Niu Niu's teeny tiny feet and he grabs my jumper from behind bites my lower back and tries to pull my jumper off until I offer him my food. He's very cute though so as of yet I've been unable to mind.

 

Niu Niu hasn't exactly got the hang of giving you a kiss on the check, he just kind of dives in and deposits slobber all over you. And for some reason even this is cute. He also likes to play with the dust pan and brush. He sweeps some dust one way and then back the other way and then attempts to pummel the dust to death by repetitively hitting it with the dust pan.  Every time he does this it reminds me of times when I've been with Charley and one of the cats has done something human-like, like sit at the table while we're eating and Charley says "Ah, he wants to be people". Except I have to keep reminding myself that Niu Niu actually is a person. For some reason when I first arrived I kept getting a huge urge to make that tutting sound you make to attract a cat when ever I needed Niu Niu to come towards me. It doesn't work though. He just kind of tuts back at you. 

Part of the reason I'm here is to help Niu Niu grow up bilingual and I'm proud to say he has learned his first English word (sort of) he can say bird (he say birb). He has also learned to say no, no, no, no, no which is what I say every time he does anything he shouldn't (very regularly). He has now taken to saying no, no, no, no, no, no just before he throws which ever expensive glass object he's managed to grab as you carry him up the stairs on the floor. So basically saying no five times is not a successful deterrent for babies.

I appear to be bad at discipline. Not only does the baby not listen to me but the dog is the same. If anyone else goes outside and they sort of shoo him out the way he just moves but if I go out he bites my leg. It's very playful but a little obstructive. Whenever the dog is like this Niu Niu gets worried and I have to pick him up. The other day I'm heading outside and the baby decides he's coming too, the dog is ready in waiting. I pick the baby up and head out the door and the dog immediately bites my leg, I pull away but he keeps hold of my trousers. I sort of dance around in a circle with the baby and the dog and for reasons unknown to me Niu Niu picked this exact moment to bite me in the face!

I think my lack of discipline skills might come from my parents discipline techniques. Which basically consited of them assuming that if we did something stupid - such as jumping off a 3 meter high shed - we'd learn our lesson from that when for example we sprained our ankle. Fortunately this didn't happen to me as I decided to jump second.

I have named the dog Mao Mao as this is what Niu Niu kept calling him when we first got him. Initially I thought mao meant cat so I was a bit confused when no one seemed to be correcting Niu Niu about this. But it turns out mao also means fur. So basically it's a terrible name but I'm sticking with it. Presides a lot of Chinese names don't translate that well. Niu Niu means cow cow.