Yang is having dinner with her college classmates and I am taking Lydia and Aidan to explore the Solana mall. It is not so cold today and is nice to be out and about. Aidan asks the security guard where the kids playground is and we head towards it. Lydia runs ahead and ends up in a toy store. Aidan forgets about the playground when he discovers the lego store. I point out the disney store to Lydia and she dashes for it and is soon playing with a Cinderella dressing table. The stuff in the lego and disney story are more expensive than the equivalent in the states so aidan and lydia know not to even ask to buy something. But they don’t give up looking for bargains. We find a small knick knack toy store…i call it knick knack because they seem to have a random assortment of toys without any rhyme or reason. The reason seems clear that their stock is the excess inventory from other, more expensive stores.  Lydia and Aidan zero in on this as a place they could score a toy. Lydia finds a barbi coloring/sticker book and with Barbi misspelled on the cover. I knew the price would be reasonable, 15 kuai (about $2.25). I told Aidan who could buy a toy for up to 20 kuai but despite 10 minutes of looking, nothing in that price range looked good too him. They had a bunch of model cars going for 25 kuai each so I suggested Aidan get one of those. He confirmed that he could get one and when I said yes, he went to the store clerk and asked (in chinese) “what do you got for 25?”. Smart boy. On the walk back to the car Lydia fell asleep in my arms but before she was out she kissed me on the cheek. Her first unprompted kiss that I can remember. Sweet….or was she just planning he next shopping expedition?