Lydia wants to go outside, down to the open space the sits in the middle of our apartment complex. I’m tired from driving visitors around and want to take a nap, but the eagerness in her eyes is not resistible. We take the elevator down the four floors and head outside. Once there, the place is like a UN (or at least east asian) convention for small people. There are of course Chinese kids, but also Japanese, Korean, American, Australian, and Euros. Lydia fits in with them all and is soon playing while I take my seat on a bench and obsessively check my cell phone. Eventually I put my headphones on and listen to an ESPN podcast. Just in time for Lydia to come running toward me in a mix of whining and crying and outrage. Turns out a little boy had captured a small frog (I’m tempted to say tadpole .. but it is indeed a complete looking mini frog) inside of a plastic coke bottle. Lydia is whining/crying/outraged because she wants one, and not able to find one she wants the little boy’s frog.

At first the little boy and a sidekick little girl are adamant. No frog for Lydia. Help Lydia find her own frog? No, she’s on her own. And so it went. Long after I would have given up Lydia persuaded to the little boy to help find another frog. They looked and looked. At least halfway through my ESPN podcast. No luck. I told Lydia I would go upstairs and take a nap, which I almost did.

Lydia returned home later with her diet coke plastic bottle which was once mine and inside was that same small frog. I guess she charmed it out the little boy. I asked her what type of food the frog would eat and she put in cookie crumbles.

The next day, much to my surprise the small frog was still alive inside of the diet coke bottle. Lydia was quite happy to show me. “Look, bobbi, it’s not dead” she said, using the Chinese word for dead. Indeed it was not dead, it looked quite active, even diving down to the bottom of the coke bottle looking for either a way out or food. Or maybe just because.

By afternoon the frog had died, unable to sustain life on cookie crumbs. Lydia appeared less concerned than when she couldn’t have the frog to begin with.