A year ago, when Kaia started saying fruit names correctly (from “bluey” to “blueberry,” from “manga” to “mango”), I couldn’t help but feel a little sad that her incorrect names for these fruits and vegetables would be a distant memory. It was just too adorable, and while I want her to mature and progress, I just had moments of sadness and wistfulness at the incorrect names. Now that she’s moving into full, complex sentences, I have the same feeling now, but for the sentence structures.

In the last few months, she loves to say to me when I come back from the gym, “Hi, Mummy-Dear! Did you have a good gym?” But this morning, she greeted me with, “Did you have a good workout?” I thought it was really sweet and cute, but I got sad that she didn’t say “have a good gym?” She did, though, ask Chris’s parents when they came back from Texas, “Did you have a good Texas?” which I still love. Whenever they leave the room she’s in, she says, “Are you going to Texas?”

Kaia is slowly but surely showing signs of potty training readiness, but she still isn’t quite there. She still doesn’t know how to pull her pants up and down fully and needs help. Sometimes, when she gets frustrated, I gently ask her, “Can you pull your pants down? Take your time.” And sometimes, when she doesn’t want to do it, she smiles and responds, “I want mummy pull your pants down.” She doesn’t mean she wants ME to pull my pants down, but she wants me to help HER pull her pants down. And when she said this today, I just grabbed her and squeezed her. Sometimes, I really just can’t get over her cuteness and sweetness.

“I love you SO MUCH, Pookie Pie!” I exclaimed, holding her close.

When she has to go to bed or out for her swimming class, she loves to make her rounds, giving each of us hugs and kisses, sometimes multiple times and circles, before saying “bye bye” to everyone. I just love how affectionate she is and hope she never stops being this cuddly.

I love watching Chris’s parents interact with Kaia. I love that they adore her so much and enjoy actively spending time interacting with her, whether that’s in person or via video calls. It’s the type of grandparent interaction I always hoped she would have. After our last trip to Melbourne, Kaia’s memory has been quite strong in remembering her Suma, Topa, and Shushu (Chris’s brother). She always mentions them and calls them out whenever she sees photos or videos of them. She also has associations with them, such as remembering that Suma played piano with her when she saw a piano in her Habbi Habbi book. In the same vein, it also annoys me (at least, when I actively think about it) how uninvolved my parents are with her. They have actively refused video calls. The one time we went to visit, they barely interacted with Kaia directly and had to be forced to hold her. It was embarrassing to witness. Yet somehow, they insist how much they love her and how she’s the most important thing to them (really). Kaia has zero memory or association with either of her maternal grandparents. While I think that’s sad and pathetic, there’s not much I can do about it.

Last weekend while we were traveling in Pennsylvania, Chris kept on trying to get Kaia to engage with sights on the streets and roads we were walking and driving on. He’d say things to Kaia, like, “What color is the car?” or “What animal is that?” And oftentimes, before Kaia had a chance to look or respond, Topa would eagerly respond with the correct answer. I found this absolutely hilarious. It was almost as though Chris were the adult, and Topa and Kaia were the pupils learning in class; Topa had reverted from a 70-year-old grown man to a 2-year-old toddler in just seconds! So eventually, Chris got frustrated with his dad constantly answering, so he yelled out, “What are you, 2?! The questions are for Hoji, not you!!”

Was Topa trying to help Kaia? Of course he was. But he wasn’t giving her enough time to respond, and sometimes, you have to give kids the time and space to grow, otherwise they won’t grow and mature. There’s always a fine line between helping your children and hindering their growth. And the line is always very different and grey depending on the situation. It’s something as parents you have to consciously and constantly navigate.

Tonight, Chris had a consulting call around the time of our dinner, so while he went into the second bedroom to take the call while Pookster and I were eating, Kaia did her usual thing of getting upset that Daddy was closing the door on her and leaving us and started whining. I tried to distract her with things like crunchy roasted chickpeas and kiwi. It all worked for a while… until it was time to clean up, and she immediately made a beeline to the second bedroom to be reunited with Daddy.

I tried to lure her with a new pair of shoes I had saved for her during a big Stride Rite sale last year in her next shoe size. She’s been showing more interest (and opinion…) in what she wears, so I thought she’d get excited by new sneakers.

“Kaia!” I called. “Want to see your new shoes?”

It was like dog ears went up when you looked at her face and how she immediately turned to me and smiled.

“Yeah!” she responded immediately, and then I told her to come with me into our bedroom so she could look. She came running.

I let her open the box to unveil the new blue, turquoise, magenta, silver, and white velcro sneakers. She held them up and turned them around on all sides to admire them. I asked her if she liked them, to which she responded with a curt, “No!” with a high pitch at the end. I asked her if she wanted to put them on, and she got annoyed, “No, no, no, NO!” I tried to put a shoe on her foot, and she started yelling.

Okay, she didn’t consent. I shouldn’t push it. So I put the shoe back in the box (as she threw the second shoe) and let the shoes be, separate from Pookster.

So, my new theory is that she likes the idea of new shoes, new dresses, new clothes… but when it actually comes to putting them on the first time, it seems like it’s still going to be a struggle.

Okay, I can deal with this, sort of.

Kaia is almost 2.5 years old, and knock on wood, she still enjoys her vegetables. She does not enjoy ALL vegetables (does any human?) and definitely has her favorites and her lesser liked and touched ones. She has strong preferences about vegetables being cooked (she hasn’t eaten any cucumber since before turning one and still refuses any type of salad) and does not like thick sauces on any vegetable (or protein, for that matter). And she also seems to know when she hasn’t had enough of them.

While at So Kong Dong in Fort Lee yesterday, as soon as our server brought an array of delicious banchan to our table, Kaia’s eyes immediately stopped on the little plate of lightly dressed and blanched sesame studded broccoli. She asked for it immediately and proceeded to eat two plates of it all by herself. It was almost as though she was “making up” for not having much veggies during our Pennsylvania long weekend trip. I’ve read that some toddlers actually do this subconsciously, but a lot of my colleagues and friends who also have toddler-age children (who hate vegetables) would beg to differ here.

Some of my colleagues, who occasionally watch my private Instagram stories, have jokingly accused me of “mom-shaming” by posting videos of my toddler happily and voraciously eating massive amounts of Chinese greens while they can barely get their kids to eat a single bite of any vegetable. All I have to say is: I’ve reinforced vegetables (and foods) of all shapes, colors, and sizes since her first bite of solid food when she was six months old; I have been really intentional about not sending her the message that vegetables are gross or lesser than her carbs or protein. I’m just doing my best as a parent. I can just hope that peer pressure doesn’t eventually take over and have her suddenly go on a vegetable strike or decide she hates vegetables.

For Christmas last year, Chris’s cousin Rob and his wife Abbi gifted Kaia her first doll: a brown-skinned cotton doll with a removable yellow dress with flowers, plus matching yellow shoes and pigtails also tied in yellow. Back then, I was touched by the doll: Kaia had a near-replica dress that I’d purchased for her in Kochi last summer in a mustard yellow color that could make the doll a mini-me to Kaia. We asked Chris’s parents to bring back the doll this visit so that Kaia could be reunited with her and “build a relationship” with her first and new doll Abbi. While Kaia has enjoyed getting acquainted with Abbi the last few days, she was not necessarily amused by the matching outfits of this morning.

For school today, I dressed Kaia in the mustard yellow dress. She marveled over her “new dress” and seemed to enjoy it once I zipped her up. But when I presented Abbi to her and told her that she was matching with Abbi with the same dresses, Kaia was immediately dismayed and started whining. “Take off Abbi dress! TAKE OFF ABBI DRESS!” Kaia demanded, whining nonstop. She tried to remove the dress on her own, but other than undoing the velcro in the back, she was unable to. So I helped her remove Abbi’s dress, and she proceeded to run around holding Abbi naked, just in her white underwear.

When Chris came back from his morning swim, I told him how Kaia didn’t want the two of them to match. He proceeded to put the dress back on Abbi, which Kaia seemed nonchalant about… until I announced that I wanted to take a photo of Kaia and Abbi together in their matching dresses. Kaia got very upset and started crying, yelling, “I don’t wanna take picture with her! I DON’T WANNA!”

I snapped some photos of Kaia and Abbi, anyway, and eventually Chris whisked Kaia off to school (not with Abbi, but with Peter Rabbit to comfort her). I later shared the picture privately on my Instagram Stories and tagged the actual Abbi. Abbi responded and said, “That’s not how I thought things would go in my head. Nothing ever works with kids!”

I hope one day, when Kaia is in elementary school, middle school, high school, and an adult that I will not forget her cute toddler moments, soaking in all her surroundings and making sense of the world. Being able to watch her grow every day and develop in the most seemingly small ways has been beyond rewarding, more fun and exciting than I’d ever really thought about when I was trying to conceive and when I was pregnant. It is actually even more exhilarating now than theoretically, which is saying quite a lot. But it’s not even just witnessing and being a part of her growth and development that is so amazing; it is also being forced into a moment with her and ultimately enjoying and living in that moment that is so great. As adults, we always have so many things on our plates, things to worry and stress over, things to plan for in the next day, week, month, year, that we often forget to really enjoy and be in a single moment. But toddlers, given how developed their brains are, fully and completely live in the moment; they have no conception of tomorrow or any future. And for us to really enjoy this time with them, we, too, must live in the moment. Otherwise, this time will pass, and soon, they will be grown adults who don’t want to spend as much time with us or cuddle with us anymore.

One of the things I love most is being in the same room or the room next door to where Kaia is when she’s playing with her stuffed animals. I love listening to what she says to them and how she addresses them. Her mouse stuffed animal is named RaRa (she named the mouse after I asked her one day), and she wears a red sweater with a button. She was telling RaRa today that it was time to get ready for bed.

“Okay, time to go to sleep, RaRa mouse!” Kaia declared while climbing onto her bed and grabbing RaRa. “Xi zao (take a bath), shua ya (brush teeth), shu tou (comb hair), suck nose. Do you want to take off your sweater? I help you take off your sweater for bed.”

I looked over at her, and she glanced back at me and stopped talking, but she continued to try to remove RaRa’s red sweater. She then moved onto her kangaroo, which holds an Australian flag that you can remove. She patted the kangaroo gently on his head and back and said, “Kangaroo, are you all done with your flag? Can I have it?” Then, she proceeded to take the flag away from the kangaroo and play with the flag.

A few mornings this week, I’ve taken Kaia to school, which means I also get to see her teacher. She’s usually not there at pickup since she leaves at 4:30 given her schedule. So it’s an opportunity to ask how Kaia is doing and to hear anything interesting she wants to share. Her teacher told me that Kaia is constantly chatting with her and all the kids all day long: she is a true chatterbox. And she’s very helpful and supportive to the teachers as well as her classmates. When other kids are upset or having tantrums, Kaia goes to them and tells them, “It’s okay, (insert name). Don’t cry. Do you want to go over there and take a break?” Sometimes, she even offers them a hug or to hold their hand.

My baby is blossoming into this sweet, empathetic, caring human. I could not be prouder.

I had read about the magical SeaGlass Carousel downtown at Battery Park, how all the glittering animals were from the sea and how glorious the carousel looked just at dusk when all the colorful lights came on. It looked like this picture-perfect Instagram photo op for parents with young children. Given how early Kaia’s bedtime is, I figured we’d wait until she was a bit older to get on this carousel during the evening time. A closer carousel option for daytime would be the one at Central Park, and so today, we went with her school bestie and his parents there for one last playdate before their big move to a Jersey suburb.

Her classmate’s parent suggested we get at least 2-3 tickets each (one per rider, including the adult) because the kids would likely want more than a single ride. I watched Kaia as she observed the carousel go round and round, so I thought she’d enjoy it once we were on. But… how wrong I was. As soon as we got on with her friend and his parent, it was total hell: I tried to get her on a horse, but she screamed that she didn’t want to go on and screamed and cried endless tears for the entire duration of the first ride. Chris and her bestie’s mom were observing, and they wondered if the crying child was Kaia… and yes, they were right. Chris captured a bit of the screaming on video, just to “document” the first carousel ride experience, and I was completely worn out after just one ride of having Kaia scream in my ear and battle me to get off the moving carousel.

The second ride was a lot better: Chris came on board and judiciously chose to have Kaia sit on the chariot with the friend and parent. She happily got on and got off when the carousel stopped. Then, the third and final ride was with me again. She was happy for the entire ride, once again in the chariot, but when it was time to get off, she absolutely did NOT want to get off. And she screamed and yelled that she didn’t want to get off this time. I literally had to drag her off. The operators gave me sympathetic looks as I got off and thanked them.

“I should have warned you ahead of time that the first ride would be brutal,” her bestie’s dad told me. “The first ride, they scream and cry bloody murder and hate every second. Then, the second ride, they have fun. The third ride, they love it so much that they refuse to get off. It’s like a textbook experience, ride by ride. Kaia is the same as Jacob.”

Welp. It goes without saying that we did not capture any good photos during these carousel rides. But hey, maybe in a couple years, we’ll do better?