This is a flashback post I wrote almost three years ago when P was still attending daycare in Japan.

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I am real proud of my daughter. After almost a year in daycare, she is a changed toddler. LOL. She does not cry when I am away and is enjoying her time playing with the kids there. I took a peek before I picked her up yesterday and saw her playing with the toy telephone and talking as if I was on the other end of the line.

The sweet conversation went like this:

“Mom, this is me!”

“Are you working?” and then capped by

“See you later, I love you!”

I was touched at the sight of that gesture and melted when I heard the little, unscripted chat she made up in her innocent mind.

She sings songs on our way back home, in our bath times together and even when she is playing alone. She loves the action songs taught in school! But because all the kiddie songs are in Japanese, I had to ask her teachers for a copy and practiced the movements with them. The other Jap moms looked at me thinking I was crazy but I don’t care, I want to participate, make up for the lost time during the day when I am away from my precious one. I want us to sing and dance together, not just because I know she will love it but because I am enjoying it.

I am simply amazed by my young daughter’s progress. Lately, she can even let out words in English and in my dialect, words she picked up from my everyday mixed conversations. I am talking in English and in my Philippine dialect more and more because she readily repeats them and it is so funny to hear her talking in my language.

During bedtime, exchanging kisses of goodnight is an everyday ritual. But lately, she “enhanced” it by holding both my cheeks with her little, soft baby hands and then pulling me closer before she rests a kiss on my face. That is the most loving gesture any one has ever done to me!

Isn’t it amazing how your heart fills with so much joy at the sight of your child doing the (loving) things you thought they are still incapable of?