We flew on Sunday, arriving in Manila on Tuesday night after an overnight stopover in Korea. The flights were uneventful, and jet lag wasn’t too bad.

The descriptive language I read about in books on early art education seems to have clicked. A- said “Circle!” when she drew roughly circular things, “Dot!” when she dotted the page, and “Line!” when she slowed down to draw vertical or diagonal lines. She was interested in breaking crayons, so we broke a few. I wonder if I should redirect her to something with similar feel so that we can keep crayons whole.

She also started holding the knife perpendicular to the chopping board and cutting straight down instead of at an angle. Cucumbers and strawberries were just right for her to practice cutting on her own, and she was able to cut them into tiny tidbits. Working with playdough, she rolled clumps flat with a rolling pin and sliced the pretend-pizza with a spreader.

She opened a Vector bar wrapper all by herself. W- told me that she ripped the wrapper by accident and she put the bar down. Then she realized what she could do, picked up the bar again, opened it, and started eating the bar. Clever girl!

She often says five-word sentences now, like “no mama eat fried rice.” We packed three books for the trip, and she spent five minutes asking for the board book version of Pride and Prejudice before we fetched it from the overhead bin. She’s still scared of dolls and doesn’t like them even talked about.

She’s slowly getting reacquainted with my family, although stranger anxiety still sometimes gets in the way. She warmed up enough to take one of her cousins by the hand, play with her giraffe toy, and ask for that cousin by name. She also offered her sheep toy to Lola, and she accepted blueberries from Lola too. Lolo’s still waiting for his moment, though.

My sisters and I met with our dad’s doctor, and that conversation was very helpful.

One potty accident this week, although it was probably because she was hungry and distracted due to cooking. No worries!