“Mom, can I have that ice cream sundae?”, asked my daughter while pointing at the McDonald’s poster in the wall at the food court. We were having lunch, rice and viand because you can’t force a McD into her. The ice cream sundae seem to attract her attention, though. My husband and I looked at each other and we were thinking of one same thing.

M handed Pristine 2 coins and told her she can have her sundae if she can go and buy by herself. Honestly, I expected she’d freak out, refuse, give up the ice cream but the opposite happened! She gladly held the coins and confidently went to the counter, with big proud steps like and army ready for war!

It was lunch time and the big people were queuing at McD’s. Pristine, at 4 and a half years old can barely be seen from the counter. I think the crew can only see the part from her eyes and above.

Looking from afar, we were nervous. Will the crew take notice? A couple of minutes passed, no one minded her and she kept on looking back at us - we tried to pretend we were not looking. One time, I wasn’t able to help it and attempted to stand to go and help her although she was not sending any SOS signal. I restrained myself and instead gave her an approving nod.

I could see the adults smiling and looking at this little girl in the counter. In a big, confident voice, she blurted out, “Excuse me!” then again until one crew saw her.

“Can I have one ice cream sundae, please?”

The magic words came out! Added with, “in chocolate please”. She then handed the coins and with a beaming smile, held the ice cream cone in her hands and walked back to us.

We were so proud. Our girl is not a baby anymore; she conquered one huge task by battling adults twice her height and got what she wanted - without the help of either mom or dad.  I held back some tears. Yeah, you can say I’ve become corny since having a mom and you know what? It’s true and I don’t think it’s bad.

We do not have a TV in our home for almost two years now so believe or not, we have not watched any American Idol, Lost or Grey’s Anatomy. We do, however, rent or buy DVD’s to watch and see the news in streaming videos. We listen to the radio for news flash.

Last week, we borrowed three DVD’s: High School Musical, Superman Returns and Pirates of the Carribean 3. The babe loved the first two and we stopped seeing the Pirates movie just three seconds after the hanging scene. I was excited to see the pirates movie but it is not kid friendly so I had to wait for the kid to sleep. She loved High School Musical so much that  she requested for it over and over again. We had been watching those song clips in youtube and seeing the real thing was really different! She had been smiling from ear to ear after each showing until it was time to return the DVD.

She asked repeatedly, “Why return, mom? Why?” I explained that because we just rented it and it does not belong to us. “But I liked it! Why?”

We took her to the DVD shop (we did not bring her when we rented it) and showed her how people do it. There were people renting and returning. She finally understood and handed the dvd’s to the counter lady saying, “Thank you!”

We learned a lesson today. If we feel that she’s going to really like a movie — particular would be favorites are musicals or any movie with lots of singing and/or dancing, we are going to buy it to add to her collection. She likes singing a lot she would prefer to watch The Sound of Music, The Little Mermaid over Tom and Jerry(we don’t let her watch this, I think this has some violent scenes) anytime.

I work six days a week, having only Friday as day-off. So what do I do on my so called one day free time? For one, I try not to wake up early but miserably fails. I still end up up and about before 6 am - ah,  the joys of having a very fixed body clock that knows no weekends.

I have a lot of things to do in my mind like blogging, catching up with the news, cooking, cleaning the closet but I always end up frustrated at the start of the work week, which in my case is Saturday. One day off is not enough! It’s family time, we go to the park or buy our groceries sometimes we explore our adoptive country and take pictures. When it’s time to go home, I rarely have energy left to fold the laundry.

Lucky for me that my mom lives with us, she takes care of the things I should have taken care of. I owe her big time and I don’t know what I’ll do without her.

My mother always tell my daughter as we walk out the front door every morning: “Behave in school, ok?”

I have never said that to my daughter. I always say “enjoy” but never “behave” as if she is misbehaving in school when she is not. I believe that children, especially toddlers who are going to school this early should enjoy
this part of their lives with less expectations from us adults. Children move around a lot, laughs out loud and makes surprise messes but it’s all part of growing up.

My daughter is smart and very conscious of her surroundings. She says nice to people, appreciates every detail of her teacher’s clothes or accessories. She always greets them and say what a lovely dress you have, or simply, you look
beautiful today!

Anyway, I just think that it’s not right to tell children,to “behave” in school without explaining to them what that word means and the opposite of that one. Pristine is not misbehaving so I do not see the reason why she should be told to behave.

Last night, I saw Alice in Wonderland the Disney animated version in DVD for the first time. I have read the book and saw illustrations so many times in the past. When I was young, I thought it was amazing and I have dreamt of falling down the rabbit hole a couple of times over.

But seeing the whole story on film, I’d say I am quite disappointed. My 4 year old was amused, obviously, as she is chuckling from scene to scene. However I find that the Mad Hatter’s tea party scene was too much. There are too many pranks and violence in it: throwing of tea cups, spoiling food, burning with hot water, destroying the White Rabbit’s precious possession. I didn’t like it and I feel a little bad that was the movie me and my hubby came up for the babe on Christmas. The story revolved endlessly on mostly nonsense that would not qualify to call it a wonderland, at all. At least not in my standards.

Have you seen the movie too? What do you think of it?

Would you believe that we come inside Toys R Us, spend at least an hour and go out empty handed? I should add, come out with no one crying or screaming, “I want this or that!” ?

I can count by my fingers the toys that my daughter possess. Surely there are more bits, mostly free stuff from Kinder Chocolate Egg (she loves to assemble and collect them) or things she brings from her school during birthday parties. Other than that, we don’t buy her toys. To date, she has only one doll I bought with my mother in-law’s prodding.

Mean parents, you say but with the recent massive toy recall on toys made in China (aren’t 99% of the toys come from there?), the lesser, the better. On her 1st birthday, we had a small party. I bought her a dress. Some of my friends who came bought toys but little girl is not used to toys, she plays with plastic cups (the normal ones we use in the house) or I make ducks and penguins using face towels as she loves it very much or sometimes we just sing and dance and make stories.

On her 2nd birthday we got her something big. She is very active and loves to go to the park but the winter season prevents us from doing so. So we got her this so she could burn all her energy inside our warm room (in Japan):

So how do we survive without toys?

We read, a lot. I play with her, whenever I can. I go down on the floor, I crawl, I run, sing action songs, I do stunts for her, lol! In other words, we (mostly I) are her toys and amazingly and thankfully she is very much happy and contented with that!

She still brings home toys from birthday party giveaways but mostly, the toys just gather dust in one corner of our house.

I am thankful for the energy that we have to spend time with our child. Thankful that she is not craving for toys and don’t go ballistic everytime we go out shopping. She enjoys going to toy shops and plays with the sample things there but since we never took any toy to pass through the cashier, she does not demand anything. I don’t know until when this will last but I am thankful that she is not giving us headaches on impulsive buying now.

One of a child’s main developmental tasks in from the second year of life is to demonstrate that he/she is a separate person with a mind of his/her own. Children sometimes accomplish this task in noisy and irritating ways - at least, for us adults.

So our three year old daughter, to show us she is her own person, resorts to using the only tools she has for right now: saying no, doing the opposite of what she’s told and throwing a tantrum when her efforts fail.

I will not make this sound so bad because actually, it isn’t. My daughter is making it easy for me to slide into the world of parenting with less skills than what is actually needed. She almost always listens to what we have to say and rarely throws a tantrum unless she is really sleepy and tired. Most of our home wars originate from her head-strongness.

Our daughter is a girl in every way. From her expressions to her vanity! Whenever possible, we give her choices. For example we let her choose whether to wear the red shirt or the pink by opening the her part of the cabinet and show her her clothes. She chooses and dress herself up on her own. That saves us a lot of time for battles in the morning.

So how did we get out of the terrible two’s stage? Actually, I don’t believe there is such thing limited to the age of two as terrible. Every stage is different and with some trail of terrible in it. The toddler period is also the time for us to begin developing a very important parenting habit: catching the child being good. When Akari follows a simple direction or calmly accepts a limit we’ve set, we give her a big smile, a hug or a kiss and tell her we like what she did.

Young children want their parent’s approval; when we pay attention to their positive behavior, they are likely to repeat it again and again.