I head downstairs after my morning workout and Lydia and Elisa are in the playground. Elisa is coming down the slide and Lydia is going way high on the swing. Lydia beams at me on her way up and says “babi, babi”. Elisa reaches the bottom of her slide, stands up and runs to me also saying “babi, babi.” I am quite happy at this moment. I greet then, tell them I am off to work, then hop on my bike and confidently push off for the 15 minute ride to the subway station. A half block away, I realize my tires are too low on air to make it, so I circle back home and pump them up. Upon my second exit, the girls still wave but seem as interested in their play than saying goodbye a second time. I am left with an impression of my two girls being very close, kind of like in this two pictures:

My path home from work takes longer and I don’t end up getting home until 8pm. Lydia has been having a tough day and is in her room moping. I walk in and and ask her what’s wrong – something that almost never helps discover what’s wrong – and she says nothing. So I talk to her about a drawing in my office at work. A drawing that when I look at it, just makes me happy. I tell her that she drew that picture. This puts her into a better mood and she goes and fetches a book of chinese school kids drawings. She flips through it looking. And then she points at a picture and says this one she drew. And then points at a picture of herself in the book. We then flip through the book looking at other pictures, discuss what she likes. She points out the ones she thinks are funny and the ones she thinks are pretty. I start to tell her about a similar drawing I did in kindergarten – a dark landscape (poor crayon choices) than was made into a plate – but she barely acknowledges and continues to flip through her book. Here’s the book and Lydia’s drawing (lower right corner, Lydia’s picture is third down from top.

Then Lydia gets up and goes to the book shelf and returns with Little Mermaid. She informs me that this is an English book. I volunteer to read and we start. Elisa comes into the room, sees what we are doing and grabs her own book and beckons me to look and read. I interrupt my reading to Lydia from time to time to pay some attention to Elisa and her book. Lydia moves over from her bed to Aidan’s bed to get away from Elisa and Elisa interrupting our storing telling. I continue to read to Lydia, so Elisa comes over to Aidan’s bed. Lydia lifts her onto the bed; friendly enough. Then Elisa interrupts, wanting attention. Lydia picks up Elisa’s book and tosses it on the floor, telling Elisa to go away. Full on screaming from Elisa. Yang tells me that Elisa normally fights back pretty hard at this point. She doesn’t this time and I hold her until the Ayi comes and tells Elisa it is bath time. I pick up on reading the story to Lydia, she seems to like it and makes sure I cover each page, before she too goes off to her bath. Lydia goes to sleep happy and content.

Tomorrow is another day after all.