Learning from a 3-year-old

in
Angel will grow up, she will go into society and she will face tough times along the way. And when she does, I want tell her to look back and learn from her 3-year-old self.

This is what I will want to tell her:

Don't be afraid of failures
Everyday you make mistakes, you do the wrong things, hurt yourself, and get scolded. You keep saying "umbrella" wrongly, we have to repeat it about five times. But each time we correct you, you repeat after us immediately without any sense of embarrassment, until you get it right.

Always step forward
Sometimes you get sad and you cry, but you can turn it into laughter in a matter of seconds, as though the sad thing never happened at all. This is incredible.

I hope she will always remember this.

For now though, I think it's me that need to learn from Angel...

My everyday mission

in
Is to make Angel laugh.

One way is to copy everything that she does. Be it talking, singing, dancing, or just just some simple hand gestures, it never fails to get a laughter out of her.

But more often than not, Angel likes to bully me. She likes to order me around, pull my hand, make me carry her, make me go her direction, rub her hands on my face, kick me, pull my hair, slide down my legs, make me piggyback her, put toys on my head while I sleep, and push me down the bed, repeatedly.

That's ok though. If there's only one person in this world that Angel can bully to make her laugh, I'd gladly be the one.

She spotted me

in

Angel has just changed to a new school. A rather big change for her - new environment, new teachers, new friends, longer hours at school, and she now has to take the school bus on her own. It has not been easy for her.

On her 5th day her school was having a Chinese new year celebration and performance, I decided to drop by and take some pictures. I waited outside the glass window when I spotted her holding her teacher's hand and slowly walking down the stairs. Angel spends most of her time with us, so it's quite an incredible feeling seeing her trying to blend in with others on her own, I can't help but smiled big time.

She's still extremely shy, her teacher had to hold and comfort her the whole time. She was looking emotionless. When they let the parents go in, I quickly went in and sat as near as I could to her.

She spotted me.

I waved to her, and she gave me the faintest of smile! This totally melts my heart, knowing that she was pleasantly surprised to see me there. During the entire performance Angel would often turn her head towards me and check on me.

I love this girl so much.

A little push of help

in
We brought Angel to Paragon's playground and let her run loose, and boy, did she run loose. She was literally jumping all over the place and playing everything available. One time we saw her pushing a kid down the slide so that she can have a go, we thought she was being bad again. I wasn't too happy.. then a while later I saw something amazing.

Angel was climbing up the steps and going down the slide repeatedly. At one point, she stopped at the steps for some reason, probably to count the steps. Then she turned around and saw a small little toddler boy behind her trying to climb up, with his mum holding him. Realizing that she's blocking the way, Angel quickly climbed up to the platform and waited for him. While on the platform, Angel kept looking at the boy and pointing her finger to the slide, as though to cheer him up and lead him the way. The little boy struggled to climb up with his hands, Angel then kneel down, grabbed his arms and attempted to pull him up. He eventually made it, Angel let him walk to the slide first, then followed him behind. The boy didn't know how to slide down, so Angel gave him a little push. It's then I realized it wasn't a push of selfishness, it was a push of help.

Angel normally doesn't get along with other kids, so it's really heartwarming to this.