This week A+ said she wanted to play a farming game, so we went through this list of farming games on Steam and she picked Stardew Valley. I bought it for CAD 17 under her Steam account. She got pretty good at finishing her homework before playtime. After some fiddling around, we managed to figure out how to play 3-person local co-op using our old PS3 controllers.¹

The first game we played used the basic farm layout and shared money. I realized that sharing all the money wasn't working out so well for me about two game weeks in because I was always reminding A+ to buy seeds before she splurged on gifts, so we started a new playthrough with separate money. A+ decided to pick the meadowlands farm layout, which meant starting with some chickens.

We now have a mayonnaise maker and four chickens. It's summer and I have a variety of crops growing. W- sometimes drops in to do some fishing or help out around the farm. We probably won't make it to the greenhouse bundle this year, but maybe next year. She'd been looking forward to getting a kitchen and trying out some of the recipes, so we saved up for it and worked together to chop down lots of trees.

Stardew Valley feels like a good rainy day activity with A+. It's a cozy place to practise making decisions and working together.

A+ can get competitive and envious, which can get in the way of her having fun. Sometimes she gets envious because I've been leveling up in farming and she hasn't yet. When that happens, she becomes more motivated to help out around the farm. Sometimes it's harder for her to channel that frustration into growth. At the trout derby, she got grumpier and grumpier. First it was because W- had caught a rainbow trout and she was only catching trash. Then, when she caught a rainbow trout, she was grumpy that W- had caught a rainbow trout with a golden tag and she hadn't gotten one with a tag. "I'm never going to catch anything," she grumbled, eventually spiraling into a lump on the couch. To her credit, she kept trying for a while instead of rage-quitting, so that's progress.

I chatted with her about it the next day, when she was well-regulated. "It doesn't have to be a competition, you know," I said.

"Of course it was a competition," she said matter-of-factly. "It was the trout derby."

Apparently this competitiveness and sensitivity is pretty common and totally not out of place for a 9-year-old, especially since she's an only child. Common approaches include:

• Stopping the game when whining starts, in the hopes that eventually the kid will learn to avoid whining: I'm not sure about this approach with A+ because I think she might benefit from some more help and support learning these skills.
• Team sports and a structured environment: This doesn't quite feel like a good fit for us, but I'm glad it works for other people.

• Switching to more cooperative activities: I couldn't redirect her from the trout derby because the time-limited event was too fascinating. We had to take the loss and try again another time. This, too, is a fish on the line; sometimes it escapes and there's nothing to do but to accept it and fish again.

  There's a lot we can learn together in the process of working on day-to-day things. I can put A+ in charge of most of the harvests, and she's getting better at minding the mayonnaise. I think A+ likes mining with me (I'm in charge of fighting monsters), and we can probably also chop some wood together. Maybe she'll enjoy collecting the eggs and petting the chickens now that there are more of them, especially since one of them is called Hei-hei. Then we can fish when we're in the mood for fishing, farm when we're in the mood for farming, and so on.

• Getting used to losses by playing lots of games: Fishing is good for this. It's easy to start trying again, and there are plenty of little rewards along the way. Once we can cook, we can use meals like chowder to boost her skill.

I love it when games gently help me notice ways I can grow as a person. I want to get better at focusing on processes, not outcomes.² It's neat to see this in contrast. At the moment, A+'s attention focuses a lot on outcomes. She thinks about things like upgrading to kitchen or getting to a certain level, but it's harder for her to focus on the steps that will get her there. I notice there's stuff for me to work on, too. I struggle a little with trying to make sure I have seed money if I let A+ take care of harvesting and selling (somewhat alleviated now that I've got chickens and corn), that I can get everything watered before bedtime, that I've kept some of the produce back for bundles or quests, or that I'm making progress towards a silo before winter. I can also practice focusing on processes, not outcomes.

I know my job isn't to maximize the farm's profit. Maybe my job for now is to water the farm so that A+ can enjoy the harvest. Doesn't that sound like some kind of parenting thing I can work on learning in my bones… I know grown-ups are better at delayed gratification than kids are. I'm better at the grind. If she can enjoy a bit of the harvest and figure out if she likes it, then we can back up a little. Maybe she can water a small part of the field, and then grow from there. Maybe I can make her a little 1x1 patch with the season's fastest-growing crop, and then expand every time she gets it all the way to harvest. Tiny habits, right?

Also thinking as a grown-up, I can stagger the planting of 4-day crops like wheat so that there's always something for her to harvest.

There are other little ways we can use game mechanics to practise life skills. We can occasionally check the traveling cart for quality sprinklers, which will give us a reason to keep track of the days and save some money for opportunities. It would be great to practice this with virtual money before she needs to deal with real money.

I can also invite A+ to go mining and then use the copper to upgrade the watering cans. It's a multi-step process (copper ore, wood, coal, copper bar, upgrade), so it makes sense that I can handle that better than she can. She can focus on one step at a time and slowly get the hang of how everything comes together, just like when she was learning how to solve the Rubik's cube. It's also like the incremental independence she's growing into in other parts of her life. My job is to support her so that she can learn at the right level: not too hard, not too easy.³ Someday, after many many runs through this kind of process, she might even get the hang of creating those sequences for herself or finding people who can help her. Small steps to lifelong learning.

And when I start to get fidgety about how we play, like when she doesn't accept any of my invitations to do something (chop wood? carry water?), I can repeat: process, not outcome. It's okay for her to stand around waiting for the shop to open while I water the farm. She's excited, she's focused on the very next step towards her goal, and that's good for where she is. It's okay for things to take a while. I want to keep the process fun. The fun is the important part.

Also, there's this whole thing about taking time to talk to people, remember what they like and dislike (… or look that up in the notes), give them gifts, celebrate their birthdays, and so on. Right. There are even clear benefits for doing so. Plenty of things to get better at. =)

Stardew Valley seems like it would be great for practising these things. The general advice from the community seems to be to take it easy and not rush. Don't worry about making it to certain milestones by certain times, just have fun together. We've been playing for only a few days, but I have a feeling there's much to learn over the next few years.

I love strewing ideas in front of A+ in case something catches her interest. A rich source of in-jokes is the word "antidisestablishmentarianism", which I introduced to her when she was… what… maybe 3? 4? and which she decided to master with her usual determination. Sometimes, when she's in a "Mom! Mom! Mom!" phase, I joke about changing my preferred name so that she has to say "Antidisestablishmentarianism! Antidisestablishmentarianism! Antidisestablishmentarianism!", which always gets either a laugh or a groan.

One of A+'s friends is a 4-year-old. She was playing the copying game with her, the one where a kid repeats everything the other person says. Whenever A+ wants to wind the game down, she confidently rattles off "antidisestablishmentarianism" and that's the end of that.

I didn't want A+ to rest on her laurels, of course. I introduced another word: paradichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane. That piqued A+'s curiosity, so I told her about DDT and I shared the limerick I learned it from.

A mosquito was heard to complain,
"A chemist has poisoned my brain!"
The source of his sorrow
was paradichloro-
diphenyltrichloroethane.

A+ got the hang of the limerick within a few days. Apparently, she's already shared it with her teacher and her nature club counselors. I think she's even been coaching the 4-year-old through saying it syllable by syllable, so perhaps there will be two of these word geeks someday.

Since A+ liked the rhythm of the limerick and she also likes math, I looked up this other fun limerick, which is attributed to Leigh Mercer:

A dozen, a gross, and a score
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times eleven
Is nine squared and not a bit more.

Small words, but fun to play with too.

For our next steps, I want to get the hang of saying "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" and "hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia" (although sesquipedalophobia is the more common term).

We also pun about whatever she's interested in. At the moment, it's all red panda all the time, thanks to her enjoyment of Turning Red. ("Which animal loves books?" "A well-read panda!") We love alliteration and rhyme. We change the lyrics to her favourite songs. I had a hard time sitting down and playing with A+ when she was smaller, but now we've got so many words to play with. This is fun!

What's the use of these things? Mostly to tickle our brains and make each other smile, but also maybe the tiny chance of bumping into someone else who happens to overhear it and who chuckles out of recognition. There are people out there who like to play the kind of way we like to play, and she'll find her tribe someday.

The IndieWeb writing prompt for April 2025 is renewal.

One of the things that I struggled with in the early days of parenting was the repetitive nature of my day. Every two- or three-hour cycle brought the same kinds of tasks: nursing, diapers, snuggles, sleep. Nothing could be crossed off a to-do list, nothing stayed done. Nothing built up towards tangible accomplishment, or at least, not for me.

There was change. A+ grew by leaps and bounds. One day she could only roll in one direction; the next she could roll every which way. My job was to take care of the foundation so that she could grow, to take care of all the repetitive tasks so that she could have all her firsts.

I remember thinking of the Zen kōan (sometimes attributed to Wu Li and sometimes elsewhere)

Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.

I don't claim to understand this fully yet, but I remember reasoning: these things had to be done. I signed up for them. Every day we still need to take care of ourselves and others. Some people make major lifestyle changes and forgo a high income in order to shift to a contemplative monastic life with the same kind of cycles. I can do it where I am. Maybe I can even treat them as moving meditations.

I recently finished reading The Courage to Be Disliked (Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi, 2013). Part of the book talks about seeing life as a dance:

Do not treat [life] as a line. Think of life as a series of dots. … Life is a series of moments, which one lives as if one were dancing, right now, around and around each passing instant. And when one happens to survey one's surroundings, one realizes, I guess I've made it this far. … With dance, it is the dancing itself that is the goal, and no one is concerned with arriving somewhere by doing it. Naturally, it may happen that one arrives somewhere as a result of having danced. Since one is dancing, one does not stay in the same place. But there is no destination.

Thanks to that tide of ever-renewing tasks that engulfed my day in the beginning and is only now beginning to calm, I've been slowly learning to let go of the desire for my own forward motion. I circle, and circle, and circle, and that's okay. I'm settling into the rhythm of our days, knowing that the beat will change over time. Sometimes I look up and I'm surprised at how far we've come.

… Aaaaaaand now I've got Dancing Through Life in my head. I definitely fall on the side of overthinking things more than swanning my way through life, but maybe I can learn more about relaxing into it.

Another comforting thought, this time from Meditations for Mortals (Oliver Burkeman, 2024), about how we don't have to do something extraordinary:

The first is that it simply need not follow, from our cosmic insignificance as individuals, that our actions don't matter. The idea that things only count if they count on the vastest scale is one more expression of our discomfort with finitude: accepting that they might count only transiently, or locally, requires us to face our limitations and our mortality. … Instead, you get to pour yourself into tasks that matter for no other reason than that nothing could be more enlivening, or more true to the situation in which you find yourself.

My life is still mostly full of the everyday rhythms, but that's okay. I don't change diapers any more, but there are still dishes to be done and snuggles to snuggle. When W- offers to do the dishes, I can say, "Thanks, I got it, I enjoy this part." In between, I'm slowly reclaiming time to do my own accumulation of progress. I'm even beginning to be able to write about life. Now I feel more at ease with the undirectedness of it, the little steps in my own dance.

Sometimes, of course, we stumble during the dance. Life with A+ isn't always smooth. Sometimes I (figuratively or literally) step on her foot. Sometimes we're out of sync. Sometimes we have a bad day. I'm learning that I don't have to feel too guilty about it, or try to fix it right away, or worry that I've permanently messed things up. Today, I can take the loss, the failure. Tomorrow is another day, another renewal. We can try something else then.

Besides, there's no point in trying to sort things out in the moment, when people are dysregulated. Better to take notes and figure out what to experiment with next time. There's so much to learn, and that's good.

This is probably something I'm going to need to remember when we head into adolescence, for at least as long as there are tomorrows I can share with A+.

That's the last aspect of renewal that I wanted to touch on: how parenting is helping me (re-)learn and examine all sorts of things. The skill of figuring things out together. The lessons that A+ is taking at school. The things I find fun. The hang-ups I've been carrying within me since my own childhood, and how I can untangle them. The parks and playgrounds and libraries in the city. The joy of sunshine. The way seeds sprout and perennials return in the garden. Everything is new all over again.

This is probably something I'll want to learn as much about during my kid-phase so that I can still enjoy it in my post-kid phase. I think the people who age the most gracefully are the ones who keep wondering, learning, and enjoying life, both familiar ground and the new opportunities that arise. I'd like to be one of those people. Renewal isn't just about going back to a previous state, like an axolotl regrowing a lost limb. Even with the rhythm of the same steps in this dance, I can find myself in new places, and I myself am changed.

Text and links from sketch

A typical weekday

family time: 11/16 hours, me time: 5/16 hours

• 7 AM: Morning routines
• 8 AM: piano practice
• 9 AM: gardening, recess
• 10 AM: Walk, braindump
• 11 AM: Lunch
• 12 PM: focus time: code, write, draw, read, do stuff
• 1 PM: tidying, recess
• 2 PM: writing, hanging out with A+
• 3 PM: hang out with A+
• 4 PM: sometimes a play date
• 5 PM: dinner with W- & A+
• 6 PM: chores, evening routine
• 7 PM: hang out with W- and A+: Minecraft; watching; Pictionary, other games
• 8 PM: hang out with W- and A+
• 9 PM: A+'s bedtime routine
• 10 PM: call my mom, read

Context: A+ is 9 and in virtual grade 3. W- is retired.

https://sachachua.com/2025-04-10-01

Feel free to use this under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

I came across Hourly Comic Day¹ in anhvn's weeknotes. I've been meaning to make some kind of timeline, even if it doesn't feel as insightful or humorous as other people's comics. That's a skill, I can develop it. Besides, capturing bits and pieces of my life now is likely to be something I'm glad for later on.

Some things I notice:

I'm A+'s default parent, so she comes to me for snuggles during recess and lunch, and she wants to spend time with me when she's bored. She's 9, as I keep reminding myself, so this is a time-limited offer. It's amazing. At the moment, she often chooses to hug me instead of read books or play Minecraft, or chooses to play Minecraft with me instead of by herself. Inevitably, the day will come when she'll switch to just grunting at me from time to time and then disappear into her room for hours on end. This is the time to snuggle and hang out.

I have maybe an hour of reliable focus time right after lunch. I could have more, but I like setting aside some time for playing the piano and for walking.

Playing the piano is an exercise in humility. I can't quite get my fingers to do what I want them to do, and my brain picks up phrases more slowly than I'd like.² But it's also enjoyable to hear myself learn, so I continue.

Walking is good for me. It's important to keep moving. Biking gets me farther, but I have to pay more attention. Walking helps me have extra thinking time. I take a lapel mic along so that I can use the time to talk to myself. I notice I'm not the only one talking to myself in the park. I also like how I see other people out there with books, or with cameras, or with their lunches, or simply sitting on a bench and enjoying the sun. It's reassuring to see other people enjoying a slower pace.

I usually run out of thoughts to think before I run out of trails to walk. It's interesting. Sometimes I wonder how I might tinker with that. I have plenty of source material to think about from books and life experiences, but maybe I can dig into things further. Or maybe lowering the threshold with stream-of-consciousness dictation will help me bring more of my monkey mind out into the light. It's also okay to enjoy the quiet. Running into the limits of my thoughts makes it easier to use my computer time for tasks or coding instead of staring at a blank text file. When I do find myself drawn to a topic, then the braindumping gives me a head start on figuring out the parts of it that I care about.

I'm here because I choose to be. I could theoretically have a two-hour chunk in the evenings if I really wanted to, but then A+ tends to just watch videos. Sometimes if she's in a video-watching mood, I'll squeeze in some writing or some code, but it's not reliable and she might stop at any time, so I don't like to get into anything too deep.

I haven't been doing much consulting lately, since that's hard to do in small bursts. There are a couple of front-end Javascript requests on my list, but it's a little challenging for me to get into front-end tinkering because I have to load a fair bit of context into my brain when I'm trying to work around the vendor's way of doing things. I'll probably let them know I can't get around to those requests for now. Maybe someday.

I miss being in flow,³ but since that can often result in my experience A+'s desires for connection as an interruption (the Ovsiankina effect⁴ doesn't help), that's not a good fit for right now. Instead, I'll accept that this is the time for (mostly) fragmentary chaos, but I can still occasionally squeeze in 15 minutes here and there.⁵ The lack of focused time used to make me a little frustrated and antsy, but I think it's becoming a little easier as A+ becomes more independent. I can both see the light at the end of the tunnel and know that our paths will diverge.

I could have oodles of focused time during the day if A+ were to go to in-person school, but fortunately, I know from my experiment with semi-retirement that I probably won't actually end up writing a book or changing the world even if I have more focused time. Virtual school continues to be a reasonable fit for us.

Since I know I've only got about an hour of focused time a day, I can try to choose things carefully. It's surprisingly freeing, knowing that I'm not going to get to everything.⁶ I tend to:

• Code little things for myself, because it's fun and it can make things marginally easier. I like tinkering with Emacs, although sometimes I also write Javascript or Python to automate things.
• Writing and drawing, because then I can understand and remember things a little better
• Working on important tasks, like doing our taxes

And then the odds and ends of time can be used for:

• More writing: usually on my laptop, but sometimes on my phone too. It helps to keep my laptop on the main floor instead of leaving it upstairs.
• Reading books and blog posts, especially when I can highlight and capture snippets. The iPad has come in handy for this.
• Coding, but only things that I can put down easily
• Tidying: always good to stay on top of things

E-mail tends to fall to the bottom of my list, especially e-mails that require thought and consideration. Even reviewing my inbox tends to be lower-priority, unless there's something I remember and want to work on.

So this is my life at the moment. This is already a big step up from before. Since A+ handles virtual school a little more independently now, I can mostly count on a bit of focused time, instead of living my days in interruption limbo.

It's pretty easy-going. It feels a little like we're making this breakwater around a bay, so that A+ can learn the ropes in a reasonably calm environment instead of being buffeted around by the stormy waves outside, and then she can sail out when she's ready. As lives go, this is all right.

Seasons come and seasons go. I'm glad my day gets to look like this. Even if it might seem pretty humdrum, I want to remember it, because there'll be a time when I'll miss us.

Trawling through blogs to add to my feed reader, I came across a number of posts related to the February 2025 IndieWeb Carnival theme of affirmations. It nudged me to think about the words I rub into A+'s brain with repetition.

Once a year or so, A+'s virtual school teachers typically play a video about affirmations as part of the social-emotional learning aspect of the curriculum.¹ The perky narrator exhorts the listeners to repeat the affirmations after her. A+ doesn't. I don't know if many of the other kids do.

The words I use with A+ are more powerful, so I want to be thoughtful about them. There's this idea floating around: the way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.²

Here's what I find myself repeating:

• "You worked hard on that." I'm not 100% clear on the results of the meta-analyses of growth mindset research, but it makes sense to me to focus on acknowledging her effort rather than things that might be considered fixed characteristics. It's a good contrast to the "You're so smart!" that she might get from people impressed by her skills at solving Rubik's cubes or her enjoyment of math. She likes it when I see what she's doing, so I also add specific descriptions, and I extend it with a long-term perspective. Today she excitedly told me about how she worked together with a classmate on their literacy groupwork, so I echoed that back to her and connected it to her growth over time. I also often say "You did that!" and flesh it out with details.
• "You got this." Because it's important for her to feel my belief and trust in her, and to enjoy confidence and self-efficacy. She's been doing well with increased personal responsibility for things like homework. Sometimes I say "We got this" instead, when we're working together.
• "You know the way." Because it's extra fun (and extra effective) to sing the things I want her to remember, and because often she already knows the next thing she needs to do and this is a fun way of sending her off. This one is from the We Know the Way song from Moana. I like how I can use snippets of Disney musicals and bring in all the emotional storytelling connected to them. I occasionally touch on another line from that song: "We set a course to find a brand new island everywhere we roam." She's going to have to find a brand new way. She can do it. We're wayfinders.
• "I got you." Because sometimes she stumbles and falls, and that's okay. We're here. Sometimes all she needs is a snuggle. Sometimes she needs a bandage or an energy bar or an emergency frozen treat. Sometimes she needs an extra pair of hands or someone to brainstorm with. We can figure things out together.
• "You're wonderful." Because it's good for her to know I'm glad she exists, in a way that focuses on her wonderfulness rather than my act of loving her. Along these lines, I also frequently say, "You're awesome!"
• "It's your experiment!" Because trying things out will help her learn, and this reminds me to back off and let her decide.

Over dinner, I mentioned this list of things I often say to A+. She wanted me to add these ones:

• "I appreciate you, child."
• "I love you."
• "I'm going to pounce on you." Which is usually interrupted by her pouncing on me. This amuses her greatly. I like this playful way to offer a hug.

It is easiest to say these things when we're both well-rested and in good moods, so part of my job is to manage myself so that I can be in that state as often as possible.

A+'s beginning to echo these words back to us. She tells me what she'd like to use her allowance to experiment with. Yesterday at dinner, she told me, "You're awesome!" in the same way that I often tell her. Sometimes, as I send her off on her next task, she sings, "We know the way."

One night, as I was tucking A+ in, she asked for snuggles. I burrowed under the blankets and said, "I got you." She said, "You always do."

We have two cases of mangoes on our kitchen counter: the last case of Ataulfo mangoes W- could find at the Nations supermarket a short bike-ride away from the house (slightly underripe at purchase; it's been a few days, so now A+ says they're perfect), and a case of Tommy Atkins mangoes that are greener and tougher. He had meant to buy Hadens, but accidentally picked the Tommys up instead. That's okay, I said. I can turn them into mango shakes.

Wikipedia describes the Tommys as:

Although generally not considered to be the best in terms of sweetness and flavor, it is valued for its very long shelf life and tolerance of handling and transportation with little or no bruising or degradation.

Thomas Atkins submitted the fruit to the variety committee of the Florida Mango Forum multiple times during the 1950s, which rejected it due to its unremarkable eating qualities and considerable fiber in the flesh.

A+ has definitely developed mango preferences. Like me, she likes the smooth, sweet creaminess of Ataulfo and other Philippine-type mangoes. She's the one who regularly checks the mangoes for ripeness and reports on their status, letting us know as soon as they're soft. After a good meal, she often prepares a mango for herself, using a paring knife to skim it close to the seed. Sometimes she cuts a criss-cross grid and flips it into a turtle, or scoops out the insides for chopstick practice. She's gotten much better at getting most of the mango out; there's usually very little for me to scrape off the rest of the skins. Without prompting, she remembers to wash her hands before and after. One evening, watching her deftly cut her mango, I said, "People pay good money to send kids to cooking classes so they can pick up knife skills. Could buy a lot of mangoes for that money." We had fun joking about the short-term and long-term benefits.

I grew up eating mangoes in the Philippines. Sometimes they were on the breakfast table. Sometimes I had them at merienda (afternoon snack). Mangoes were either yellow, kidney-shaped, soft, and sweet, or the tart green mangoes that were also delicious in a different way, either straight-up or with salt or with bagoong (fermented fish or shrimp paste). (It took me a while to appreciate bagoong, but eventually I got the hang of it.) Green mango shakes were also a treat.

After I moved to Canada in 2005, I went a long time without regularly buying mangoes. Still mentally converting costs to Philippine pesos, I balked at the expense of individual mangoes. The supermarket rarely sold good-looking Ataulfo mangoes, mostly just other mango cultivars that were more fibrous. If they did have the yellow kidney-shaped mangoes of my memory, the ones sold individually tended to be wrinkly and sad. A case of mangoes felt like overkill for just me, and I never quite got around to seeing if any of my friends wanted to, I don't know, rotate mango buying.

I think we only started buying cases of mangoes last year or the year before that. Now we're more comfortable knowing that even if we buy cases one after the other, we'll eat them before they go bad. We'll never say, "I'm all mangoed out." (And if we ever do get to that point, I can just dehydrate whichever mangoes are left.) It is definitely a frill and we're lucky to be able to enjoy them.

When it's warm enough for the kids to complain of the heat, we tend to ramp up our mango consumption even more. For the past two years, I've been bringing a cooler of frozen treats to A+'s park playdates. It started as a way to fend off temptation from the ice cream trucks that like to prowl around parks, and as a reaction to the ridiculousness of retail/wholesale pricing when it comes to summer refreshments. My days in A+'s sphere of friends are numbered, so I may as well make the most of it. It's a splurge, but time-limited. She will probably not invite me to lurk in the background with a cooler of popsicles when she's 18 years old. So yes to all the things, for now: home-made mango freezies; strawberries and peaches from the farmers market when they're in season; freezies made from pick-your-own strawberries when we make it out to a farm. (Child labour!) Raspberry freezies are sometimes too intense or too seedy for the kids. A+ is not a fan of cantaloupe freezies, but I like them. For the watermelon freezes, we're a bit divided. I like to add a little bit of sugar to the watermelon if it seems like it needs it. A+ takes pride in not adding any sugar to home-made freezies, so whenever she wants to be in charge of making them (which is almost always), I let her go with whatever she wants. She likes to use the mini-watermelons and add a splash of lemon juice. It always tastes refreshing.

Sometimes we bring Chapman's ice lollies (the kids prefer the single-flavour ones) or other store-bought treats. Sometimes A+ proudly insists on paying for these herself; early experiences of prosocial spending, hooray! When the fruits are in season, I prefer to make home-made freezies. We don't follow any recipes. We just prepare the fruits and put them into the blender.

I use disposable popsicle bags from AliExpress since I haven't found a local source I like, and have determined that:

• Zipper seals are nice for filling, but difficult to open. The best bags have a little notch for tearing under the seal, but this is hard to see in product photos. I often bring scissors if the bags don't have notches.
• 22cm x 5cm: just right
• 28cm x 5.5cm: too much

We have a couple of reusable freezie molds that we sometimes use. I save those for A+ and me because I know they'll find their way back to the cooler.

I used to walk to the playdates with A+ in a stroller (she still fits in the Thule Chariot Cheetah XT, even at 9 years old), with the cooler balanced on top of it. It took me 45 minutes to an hour to walk to her usual park playdates, but the freezies were fine if I packed the cooler with lots of ice packs. With the cargo bike, I can get to the playdates in 15 minutes or so, which means there's plenty of time for A+ to play and get warm before she decides it's time for a freezie break, and the freezies are all still nicely cold.

A+'s favourite friends get first dibs by virtue of proximity when she decides it's popsicle time (after A+, of course, who gets first pick). It feels quite satisfying when A+'s friends sidle up and ask very politely if there happen to be any more of those mango popsicles. Then we extend the selection to everyone else in the playgroup, and then, when everyone's sorted out, the occasional brave soul who wanders up to the strange woman handing frozen treats out to kids. I try to make eye contact with their grown-up first to check if it's okay. Sometimes when I'm distracted, I ask the new kids if their grown-up is okay with it, but I get the feeling that their quick nod might not be entirely reliable as it tends to be done with their eyes fixed on the prize. Gotta find their actual grown-up. I know A+ likes to go back for seconds or thirds on really hot days, so sometimes I keep a special stash for her in a nylon drawstring bag in the cooler. Sometimes I have one too.

I'm Filipino. Part of my love language is food. Taste can anchor memories, and I hope these are part of her core experiences of childhood. I want these to be part of my memories of her. That's worth the mangoes.