When I was growing up, I fondly remember claiming all of my mother’s belongings as my own. I’d try on her shirts and sweaters. I would put on her jewelry every time I was able to get my hands on them (and occasionally, much to her anger, would break some pieces…). I’d walk around with her high heels (and then subsequently fell down the stairs that way). I even got into her bathroom cabinet and applied her face cream. She drew the line, though, when I attempted to apply her eyeshadow and lipstick: she did NOT want me putting anything on my face. I did all these things before the age of 5. Like most little kids, I loved the idea of “playing grown-up.” The world of grown-ups, from a child’s perspective, is truly riveting and endlessly exciting, full of possibilities. So it’s no wonder that Kaia shows all of these same desires every time she sees Chris and me do anything she knows she’s not supposed to do.

She will oftentimes ask if she can drink some of our coffee or tea. She always tries to put on my shoes and has recently attempted to put on my hoodies and socks. Instead of playing with her own play pots, she will want to play with my real pots. She knows that when I put sunblock on her that I have my own sunblock, and so she’s asked to use mine (and I usually say no). She has recently asked if she could wear my earrings, but I told her she can’t (yet) because she doesn’t have her ears pierced. She loves to twirl them around in her hand and play with them while they’re dangling from my ears. The rare times she gets her hands on my phone or Kindle, she says that these items are hers.

And perhaps the most frustrating (and cute) thing she has been doing lately is that at some point in the middle of the night, she will creep over from her bed onto ours. I will try to set up a pillow for her at the foot of the bed, but she will consistently refuse. Instead, she will insist that she sleeps right in the middle of MY pillow on my side of the bed. And she knows exactly what she’s doing: she will have this huge grin on her face as she looks up at me, sleepy eyed staring back at her. I have to fight her for my pillow and side of the bed. Sometimes she will stage a protest and try to sit up and not sleep. Or, she will run to the couch and just sit there and wait for me to get her. Chris always wakes up and lays down the law, though: she either has to sleep at the foot of the bed between us, or “you have to go back to Hoji’s bed,” he admonishes her. She usually listens to this and then acquiesces, placing her head on the pillow at the foot of the bed and minutes later, passing out.

Since Kaia has started at her new school, we figured it would only be a short time until she caught something from one of her classmates. She became boogery and snotty about two weeks in. The last week of September, I also became a little under the weather and had a stuffy nose. I was constantly blowing my nose, but the good news was that it ended there. It didn’t develop into a sore throat or cough or anything worse. I was still functional, as was she. But in the last week, she is still boogery and coughing, and I can hear phlegm when she coughs. This past Saturday morning, I woke up and knew something wasn’t right. My throat was sore, and my nose didn’t feel right. After Saturday’s Rendang Hang, I woke up with my throat hurting even more, plus my body felt sore. All the talking probably didn’t help that evening, and fast forward to now, I definitely know I am under the weather: headache, sore body, phlegm, stuffy nose, sore throat. This is no fun.

I am lucky to say that this is the first time I’ve actually really been under the weather this year. To date, I’ve taken zero sick days from work, which is pretty impressive since Kaia has been in school this whole time, actively collecting germs and snot from her little friends. So I guess October isn’t too late in the year to take a sick day.

Like every toddler, Kaia has her moments with food. Although relatively speaking, she is a very adventurous toddler and loves a large variety of foods, I suppose it’s also helped that I was extremely rigorous with exposing her to as many flavors, foods, and cuisines as possible before she turned age 1. I am proud to say that she loves many of the foods of her cultures, whether that is various forms of tofu (she is particularly fond of pressed smoked or five-spice tofu), gai lan and other Asian vegetables, dal, many different curries, cha lua, and pho broth. And her absolute favorite food, noodles, certainly defines her as my sweet noodle slurping baby. Today, she gobbled up a large amount of stir-fried pressed five spice tofu with celery and bell peppers for both lunch and dinner.

Sometimes when I watch Pookster eat, I am reminded of a conversation I overheard between my aunt (my dad’s younger sister) and one of my cousins shortly after he and his wife had their two kids. My aunt was asking my cousin what his kids like to eat. When he named a bunch of generic American junk food like chicken tenders, fries, and pizza, my aunt, clearly not happy, asked why he and his wife let their kids eat all this junk. “Do they eat Chinese or Filipino food?” she asked. My cousin said they did not, and my aunt goes into a rage, pressing him as to why. My cousin insisted they “just don’t like it.”

“They are Chinese and Filipino! This is their culture!” my aunt cries. “How can they not eat their own cultures’ food? This is your fault! You are their parents! You have to teach them!”

As much as I disdain my aunt, she had a valid point. It’s really on parents of children to lead by example and teach them how to eat, what to eat, and what their heritage is about. The easiest way to appreciate culture is through food, and so if you cannot teach your child to enjoy their culture’s food, then what luck are you going to have with your child embracing other parts of their culture?

Our interactions with the teachers at Kaia’s new school have been a lot more limited than at our last school. We’re not allowed to enter the classroom as we please like we could at our last school. They keep the doors locked at all times. The only real time we can talk to them is at drop off (which Chris rarely does), or at pickup. At pickup, Kaia’s Chinese teacher has left, so there is another teacher’s assistant there along with the main teacher, but they are not the ones in charge of getting Kaia ready for dismissal. That’s the admin’s job. So I usually end up asking the admin quick questions about Kaia’s day. She always seems a bit frazzled, so I try not to ask too many things at once.

The other day, the admin wasn’t there, and another one of the teachers got Kaia ready and brought her to the door to meet me. I recognized the teacher’s face but forgot her name, so I reintroduced myself so that she’d tell me her name, too. I asked her how Kaia’s day was. She didn’t really give much of a response other than, “It was good.” But when I asked her how she ate, her face immediately broke into a huge grin and she said, “Oh, she eats well! She eats a LOT! She definitely enjoys eating and has no problem there at all!”

I laughed. Well, I already had a feeling she was eating well given the admin had told me, plus they had written us quick “kiddie grams” for her first two weeks, so we got quick summaries of how she ate, played, and interacted during the day. But it makes me happy to know that my baby is eating well when I am not there and that she doesn’t need much help in that area. I want Pookster to have a happy, healthy relationship with food and to eat to her heart’s content…. as long as it’s not processed garbage.

In this calendar year, it’s amazing how much Kaia’s speech has advanced. It’s almost like every day her sentences get more complex and her vocabulary grows. In just the last seven days of her new Chinese immersion school, she’s started speaking complete Chinese sentences to me. And when I’ve heard them, I’ve done a double take and stand there a little shocked. It’s as though she knows what she’s doing is impressing Chris and me because after she says a whole Chinese sentence, she will sit there and grin ear to ear. Or, the other hypothesis I have is that she’s been holding out all this time and just waiting to unleash her Chinese sentences on me, which could very well be the case since she’s such a cheeky bubba.

Sometimes, she will say sentences when she thinks neither of us is in the room or listening. The one time I laughed out loud earlier in May of this year was when she was in the snacks bar of a hotel where we were staying during Chris’s parents visit, and she kept going on and on when she got excited and saw the goldfish crackers: “Wow, goldfish! Ooooh, I like goldfish! Goldfish is yummy! So tasty, so good! I can’t have that!” She also knew she wasn’t allowed to touch it, so she never got her hands on it and just kept staring lovingly at the bags of goldfish crackers.

Today, she said, “I want orange” in Chinese. This doesn’t seem that exciting or complex, but the fact that she actually said, “I want (fill in the food)” was a big deal because she’s never even done that once before with me. She will say “want” or the name of what she wants, and that’s been it to date until now. She’s also said she likes x. It’s literally verbal baby steps.

While reading her Dragons Love Tacos book lately, there’s a page where there’s a large dragon sitting on top of a house. In the last couple weeks, she usually points at that dragon and says, “That’s a dinosaur on the house!” I’ve corrected her a few times and told her that it’s actually a dragon. She usually fights with me and gets upset, saying that it is really a dinosaur. So I’ve let her have her way with it and relent, responding that sure, it could be a dinosaur. Yesterday, she looked at the dragon on top of the house, paused for a bit, and said, “This is not a dinosaur. It’s actually a dragon!” I squeezed her and gave her a kiss and said, “Yes, Pookie! That’s right! It is actually a dragon!”

They grow so fast, people always say. It could not be truer for my Kaia Pookie.

When I was a kid, my parents always used baby words for my vagina/butt hole. They usually called my private parts down there “doo doo.” It was usually said in a funny or joking way. But they really did always use that word. Later on as a high school journalist for my school newspaper, I found out that the word “vagina” was banned from being said by any teacher, administrator, or school staff to K-12 kids in the San Francisco Unified School District. I had no idea why and could never confirm what the rationale was. And it made zero sense given SFUSD had a very progressive stance on comprehensive sex education. How do you teach sex education without saying the word “vagina”? I thought it was beyond absurd and just flat out stupid and wrong.

So since then, I’ve felt very strongly about using real words to describe… real body parts for any children I might have. There really shouldn’t be anything controversial or shocking about this stance. If you want your child to call their arm an arm, then why the hell would you not want them to call their penis a penis or vagina a vagina? What exactly do you presume you are “protecting” them from — knowledge or facts? What, ultimately, is the end goal here or desired outcome (here, I can think about work for a second)?

So for the last 10 or so months, during bath time, I’ve been teaching Kaia about all her body parts as we wash them, and the ones that are a bit more “advanced” for her age, like her eyebrows, her forehead, her chin, her shins, her calves, her heels, her thighs. We cover all the major areas. And I’ve also called her butt hole a butt hole or “anus,” and I tell her about her vagina. She has asked me if Daddy has a vagina. I always respond the same way: No, Daddy does not have a vagina. He has a penis. You have a vagina. No, you do not have a penis.

I texted Chris on Thursday to ask how things were going given I was gone Thursday-Friday. And this is how he responded:

“She spent part of the train ride down putting her hand up her shorts saying, “I am touching my vag” pretty loudly with a big smile on her face. Then putting same hand in her mouth. Your deviant child.”

So, I suppose I am getting what I wanted? She did call it the correct abbreviated name…