One of our favorite things to do here in China during the winter is go to the indoor playgrounds. Aiden loves having so much space to run and playing with the different items there. He is just starting to figure out how much fun it is to play with other kids but sometimes they still scare him.
The Chinese children and parents love the fact that a white kid is there and they all want to touch him. This is one of my greatest motivations to try and learn Mandarin, I want to have some good conversations with them. This occurs even more when I see a kid who gets afraid of Aiden. At the playground last week Aiden was running around and rounded a corner and came upon a boy about his age and his mom. I guess Aiden was the first “white” kid he had ever seen and he was SCARED. No, that is an understatement. He went into a full blown panic trying to crawl up his mother and wailing. Needless to say, I was torn between feeling awful for the kid and wanting to comfort him, and busting my gut from trying not to bust out laughing. This happened anytime that this child caught even the slightest glimpse of Aiden. My sweet friend Mabel did her best to try and get a picture or video of this, but it was hard to do so without looking like a stalker!
To make this day better, there was a 2 year old girl there who was cute as a button and kept playing with us. But later in the day her mom kept telling her to go give Aiden a kiss. Thanks to Mabel, for your viewing pleasure, is this event in a detailed picture form.
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| Here she comes... |
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| The kiss. |
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| What just happened???? |
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| She kissed me???? |
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| Breaks into tears.....NOOOOO! |
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| She is pretty proud of herself. Ha! |
Don’t you just love it! We laughed and laughed about this for hours afterwards. I have since told Aiden that the only girl he is allowed to kiss is Mommy and I think he is ok with that!
We went back to this playground a few days later and this girl was there again. Needless to say, Aiden was a little leery of her this time and when she tried to kiss him, he ran away. I was so proud! Ha!!! But he loves to play and its a lot of fun to try and connect with these different families.
