Parenting

I know a lot of my stories recently have been about Li Jiang, but besides class and dinner with my Chinese roommate she is about the most interesting thing that happens to me on the weekdays. 

…And because of her I realized that I have horrible parenting skills…

During my one hour lunch break I went over to my favorite street corner store and bought some tea and egg pancakes for a quick snack.  Li Jiang was working the cash register with her uncle and squealed when she saw me.  She jumped down from his lap, almost tumbling to the floor.  She gave me a big hug and asked me to play.  I agreed seeing that I had an hour.  The family has started to warm up to me as well and does not allow me to pay for anything over 10 yuan, so basically I get all the snacks I can eat for free.

Outside Li Jiang and I were playing our running game and she tripped and landed hard on the concrete.   She did that little kid thing where she looked up at me and then looked for her Mum and did not know if she should cry or not.  Once I reacted and came to her side she immediately began to cry.  Her crying was so loud that it overpowered the roar of the noon time street traffic.  People were looking at me like I just slapped this little girl, and it does not help that I am a foreigner, so I could have been getting looks for either the little girl bawling at my feet or the fact that I have tan skin and a beard.  To solve the problem I tried to hush her by asking if she wanted me to take her to go buy a toy.  She said yes and I told her that we will get a toy if she stopped crying.  She immediately stopped. 

Now I was bound to my promise, so we walked down the street and I bought her a stuffed animal.  It was a little rip off Mickey Mouse doll, definitely not a Disney product.  I could tell because on Mickey’s tags Disney does not write “Happy Fun Mouse Man.”   Either way she could not have been happier swinging the doll at her side singing, “Lao shu, tiao wu, lao shu tiao wu!” which means, “Mouse dance, Mouse dance!” as we walked home.

Moral to the story, if I have a little girl I will probably spoil her with gifts and resolve crying by buying more gifts…I do not think I will be writing any books on parenting in the future.