It is Lydia’s birthday and she is playing in her room with three of her friends and Elisa. A loud scream comes from the room. This isn’t anything unusual by itself and I keep working in the other room. The scream continues. I walk into the room and see Lydia’s tall friend pulling the hair of another friend. It is that friend who is screaming. Lydia stands to the side, one eye on the hair pulling and one eye on me as I enter the room. The tall friend who is pulling the blond girls hair is intense and stoic, showing no signs of letting up. The ayi breaks it up and while the tall girl stays for the birthday cake as the other three girls distance themselves from her. ...

Elisa turned three yesterday and my main thought about her is that like most three year olds she lives in the moment, and what a beautiful thing that is. When she wants ice cream, she wants it. When she eats it, she is consumed with eating it. When she’s done with it, she’s done with it. I’m not sure when living in the moment passes and we start to reflect on the past, plan for the future, and simply not be present with those we are present with. But it happens and the next thing you know we are checking our phone to see what our friends are up to ignoring the friends sitting across from us. So I take my time with Elisa, let her draw me into her moments, try to put my cell phone down and just be. Occasionally I succeed. ...

Lydia, the day before your birthday I am lying on the coach watching an episode of House when you come and lie next to me. You watch for a bit but the show is a bit boring for a near seven year old so you get up and go to bed. It is such a small moment showing both your tenderness and maturity. It is such a small moment showing mine. I am so happy with the person you are becoming. ...

A noise wakes me up or maybe I was just getting to a restless stage of sleep. I keep my eyes shut and focus on trying to get back to sleep. I start to drift but the noise continues. It’s a kind of ruffling noise. I’m thinking Elisa’s balloon is being pushed up against a wall but I don’t remember her balloon being in my bedroom. I try to sleep again but the noise continues so I start to wake myself up. As I reach for the light switch the sounds become clearer. I think it could be some kind of animal like a mouse or rat on the floor. I flip the switch and see a black bird circling the room. I let a kind of low scream that isn’t exactly masculine and after the bird flies past the doorway I zip out of the room. After a few minutes in the living room, I decide to do the reasonable thing. Shut the door to the bedroom and sleep on the couch. ...

I’m in the 4th floor elevator lobby outside of our apartment waiting to take the lift down. The elevator car descending from a higher floor stops and a man gets out in a hurry as I walk on. I hold the open door button. He scurries to the right and sees the two right hand side apartments. He then rushes back across the elevator lobby and is faced with the two left hand side apartments. He comes back to the elevator, smiles at me holding the door open for him and we descend down to the first floor. He gets off, once again turns the wrong way but then finds what he was looking for; the building exit. ...

Yang and I come home at 11pm from a Saturday night street cook your own leg of lamb dinner and Aidan is still awake. He is not happy because he can’t sleep because of the heat and humidity. He is walking around in his underwear and resembles the old man he will someday be. Since our air conditioning works quite well it might be reasonable to ask why was the house so hot. We don’t need to ask, we know that to Yang’s mother there are few worse evils than sleeping with the air conditioning on. I’m sure this is based on thousands of years of Chinese history because you know air conditioners have been around so long. ...

Yang sends me a text message that reads My son just told me while sitting in the field: life is like a mirror, if you laugh, it laughs, if you cry, it cries, if you worry, it worries, if you angry, it angry. Since he said this in Chinese I’m sure it sounds even cooler than the English translation. Yang took the kids to Cui Ayi’s home town, about a five hour drive from Beijing. The idea was to show them another way of life, one that Yang has fond memories of from her childhood, while also giving me some peace and quiet at home. ...

I am deep in thought trying to solve a programming problem which looks very similar to 1000 or so such problems I’ve solved in the past and countless programmers have solved before me. I then hear Lydia wailing from the back bedroom. Aidan sneaks out as I walk past. I asked Lydia what happened and she said “Aidan hit me.” I asked what for and she shook her “I don’t know head” so I said there must be a reason – not that it’s justified – because Aidan is not psychotic, a role exclusively Elisa’s until she turns three next month. Lydia told me what started the fight and it really was nothing. So then I went to the room Aidan was in and asked him for his side of things. I told him it was never ok to hit his sister even if, well, she deserved it. I mean, even if she makes you really mad you can’t hit her. Walk away. Count to 100 in disparaging terms, just don’t hit. He wasn’t a big fan of the message and closed the door on me when I left so I had to go back and whack him upside the head (kidding). ...

A few weeks back Lydia was working on her homework and she was clearly overwhelmed with the task. Not the individual questions which she could mostly handle but by the sheer volume of work and repetition. She was passing the three hour mark in the night’s session. I try to support her best I can, guiding with the English homework and some of the math but there isn’t much I can do to help with Chinese. Most of the time I just surf the net and act as a calming factor when she gets upset. On this night I was reading a NYTimes article about parents revolting against the Tiger Mom phenomenon by pressing their schools for less homework, not more. In Pleasanton, the article said, there was a measure in front of the school board to limit the amount of homework in primary school to the grade the student was in. For first grade, Lydia’s grade, it would be 10 minutes. 2nd grade, 20 minutes and so on. ...

Lydia and I have baked a cake a half dozen or so times and each time when I take the baking pan out she notices the cupcake pan and asks if we can make cupcakes instead. Each time I tell her no, that we need to make a cake because..well..there is no reason really outside of lack of spontaneity on my part. So for this Sunday we agreed ahead of time that we would make cupcakes. ...