I hope I never forget Kaia’s precious early years. I suppose that’s partly why I write about seemingly mundane and everyday moments with her here. Even in times when she is extremely disagreeable and having her worst tantrums, I realize that I still find extreme joy in having her in my life. She has given me a different view of the world, which is the view through a young child’s eyes. We are all children only once, and so it is a sweet reminder of innocence to have young children in your life who happily and eagerly share all their observations with you. They truly live in the moment, whereas we as adults don’t; instead, we constantly obsess over the future, whether that future is the next hour, next day, or next month or year.

While in San Salvador, we did not have a bathtub in our room, so I had to do showers with her to bathe her. While in the shower together, we’re obviously both naked. Kaia is generally not a fan of the shower, and so it took a while to get her comfortable. Once she stopped whining, she got excited and started pointing her fingers towards both of my breasts.

“Those are mummy’s watermelon!” she exclaimed with glee.

Hmmm. I barely have A-cup breasts, even after 14 months of breastfeeding. She has an interesting perception of what size “watermelons” are.

Then, Kaia proceeded to point at my anus while I was rinsing my leg off of soap. “That’s where mummy poops!”

She is, as Chris’s dad says, “a real delight.”

A couple weeks ago when I was on my period, she accompanied me into the bathroom while I peed, which is one of her favorite things to do lately (which I’m hoping means she will be ready for potty training soon…). She peered into my underwear and noticed my pad, which had some blood on it. She then looked up at me and smiled.

“Mummy have diaper,” Kaia said. “Diaper have poop.”

I told her that it wasn’t a diaper, that it was actually a pad. “Mummy have pad,” Kaia murmured. “Mummy have diaper pad.”

It’s so damn cute. I just want to grab her and squeeze her sometimes… and just sniff her again and again.

On our last morning in El Salvador, we went to Tin Marin Children’s Museum, which is reputed to be one of the best children’s museums… possibly in the world. It is incredibly extensive, with both large indoor and outdoor areas. The indoor area has numerous sections and rooms devoted to learning and development, from construction (building), supermarket shopping (of course, my baby’s favorite), restaurant cooking and dining (of course, play pupusas were represented even with their fresh tomato salsa and curtido accompaniments, so we’re very in touch with local flavors, plus a pizzeria, an ice cream/sorbet cart, a dairy shop, and a dried grains/beans vendor), an education area about your mouth and dental hygiene, volcano and earthquake education; a real car for kids to paint (so messy but fun!), to even a full fledged mini theater with dress up for slightly older kids and a puppet show. No detail was overlooked in the creation of each of these sections; I was truly blown away by the thoughtfulness of the tiniest features throughout. The outdoor area was also incredible, with a real fire truck from the 1930s area (shipped from Canada, one of the attendants told me), part of a real ship, as well as a real part of an actual airplane. You could even smell the airplane interior — there was no mistaking that old airplane scent. The museum outdoor area also had a butterfly conservatory where many tropical and colorful butterflies were fluttering about.

I thought about this experience and how comprehensive it was in comparison with the experiences I know to be true of the Manhattan Children’s Museum on the Upper West Side. The entry fee has gone up since last year and is $16.75 for children (over the age of 1!!) and adults. It doesn’t even have half of what Tin Marin offers. The supermarket area itself is depressing next to the massive, comprehensive one we experienced here. Tin Marin’s little supermarket even had “salmon” fillets made of rubber, as well as an entire dairy section and medication/formula area. Here, the admission fee was a mere $3.50 for endless exhibits and hands-on fun.

In general, I left El Salvador marveling over how child-friendly and inviting it was. Entre Nubes, the coffee farm/cafe we went to yesterday, also had a huge children’s play area with a massive, colorful play house with a play structure attached to it with slides and all. The library from our first full day was made for young children. In New York, or really, the U.S., children aren’t really included or considered when people build general public spaces. That’s why museums like the Children’s Museum on the Upper West Side cost so much. Why should a child, age 1, be charged $16.75 to enter a children’s play museum…?! That just sounds like price gouging at its worst!

Over a year ago, when my friend told me that her then 2-year-old was expressing strong preferences about clothes she wore to daycare, I was really confused. As a child, I remember I didn’t express clothing preferences to my mom until I was seven years old. So age two seemed very premature to me.

With Kaia in the last few months, she’s definitely expressed affinity to certain pieces of clothing over others. Most of the time, she’s pretty indifferent, but when she has an opinion, she really really has that opinion. For instance, she loves this little knit/crochet cardigan that Chris’s cousin handmade for her. She loves all vests and pull-over dresses. And she especially loves all her dresses; the bigger the fluff and tulle, the better. She’s been gifted at least seven or eight different tutu dresses, so she certainly has no shortage of tulle. She doesn’t seem to understand why she cannot wear the same dress, pants, or shorts multiple days in a row. The concept of being “dirty” has not quite developed in her head just yet.

The funny thing is, sometimes, you just have to put your foot down and make her wear something. There is no way I’m letting her just wear the 10 percent of things she has in her closet that she loves. So, I make her wear certain things despite her tantrums and crying. She needs to wear all of these nice clothes that she’s so privileged to have… before she outgrows all of them. I do NOT like or tolerate waste. And somehow, just somehow, after I manage to get the new dress or sweater on her, she ends up loving it. I put on a new dress for her on Friday, which she refused and said she didn’t want — always a struggle the first time. She even tolerated the matching headband (a total shock since she hasn’t worn a headband in over a year!) and didn’t rip it off. And when she emerged from her bedroom with it, Kaia twirled around in her new blue, yellow, and white dress, and said to Suma, “Look at my new dress! I like it.”

Welp, that’s Pookster the Punkster for you.

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.