Something’s happened to Lydia

In the past six months, something has happened to Lydia. She became a sweetheart. Sure, there has been a few bumps along the way – like the time when she told Yang she would find her a better husband, one that spoke Chinese – but mostly it has been an upward ascension of niceness.

I come home from work and she runs to me and hugs me. All this without asking for candy or in tears because the ayi cannot draw a van gogh replica. The topper was on Sunday when we visited one of Yang’s oldest and closest and up tight friends in Beijing. Lydia told her “auntie, you are so pretty” and this woman of late 40s just melted. This woman who has been known to turn water into ice looked like a little kid again.

Lydia also makes sure everyone is well fed and taken care of. At dinner, when I ask Aidan for a napkin he dutifully hands me one. When I ask Lydia, she hands everyone a napkin. In this way Aidan is like me and Lydia like her mom. And grandmother – both of them.

It used to be Lydia would never want to take a nap when she was tired. She would claim she wasn’t tired and that welt on Aidan’s head was just because he deserved it. But now, she still claims she isn’t tired, but she will agree to lie down for a while just because we ask. And then of course, she falls asleep.

I would say the turning point was our vacation in Malaysia. If I was the typical doting dad who thought all his parenting was the cause of the effect, then yea, it would be Malaysia. But more like it, Lydia grows and evolves in spite of me and my main job is to not mess it up. The thing about the Malaysia trip was it was the clear turning point from the terrible twos into the wonderful fours (now almost five). Sure, she threw tantrums on the trip and puked over an entire aisle role on the flight home, but she was mostly good and worked with us when she wasn’t.

The true test was when I returned from my most recent trip to the states. And she hugged me and played with me and wanted me to see everything she was working on.

If I could just get her to speak a bit more English we’d be all set.