After laolao went back to China, our daughter suddenly became attached to stuffed animals. For several days, she always wanted to have one to cuddle.

Meanwhile, she has taken her first baby steps -- in the handbag section at Burlington Coat Factory. She then repeated the feat, with some extra flourishes, at my parents' house over the weekend.

She is going to the same daycare provider who cared for Michael from shortly after his first birthday to shortly after his third. In other words, Michael started with her as a baby and left as a kid. This happened in just two years. Now mei-mei is already starting to seem less baby-like. Instead of onesies, she's wearing little dresses and her Robeez, and of course she is also upright most of the time, cruising and getting ready to walk.

***

My 41st birthday came and went. I felt pretty indifferent about it -- 41, 42, who cares? However, it gave me a reason to buy something I've long wanted: a premium subscription to Chinesepod.

Lately I've finally started to get a handle on tones, one of the most difficult aspects of Mandarin. By "get a handle" I mean that my brain has started to accept tones as an element of meaning -- it is starting to feel more natural. In the beginning, I just tuned them out and sort of hoped one could be understood without them. Unfortunately...

Chinesepod had a great example of a situation where the wrong tone can lead to saying something different from what you mean. If you're at a restaurant and want your food medium-spicy, you say "zhong-la". But if you want it extremely spicy, you also say "zhong-la". The difference is in the tones:

Zhòng-là (falling tone) = mouth-burning, stomach-vaporizing spicy
Zhōng-là (high level tone) = moderately spicy

Luckily, as the podcast hosts pointed out, most Chinese restaurants assume foreigners don't really want extra spicy and will serve you the mild version no matter what tone you use.

Of all airports that I know, the approach to JFK is the most interesting. Even though the traffic is routinely awful, I love crossing over the Verrazano Bridge, the way the road spirals down into Brooklyn, and then the 16 mile drive along the shores of Jamaica Bay, past scenes that often seem weirdly remote and un-urban.

I like the cosmopolitan mood at Terminal 1, which serves airlines from China, Japan, Korea, Greece, Turkey and other countries. Within a short distance I can hear my wife's language (Mandarin) spoken, as well as my mother's (Greek). Up a flight of stairs, there's a food court and big windows where you can sit and watch planes taxi-ing in and out. It reminds me of a past era when plane-watching was encouraged -- some airports even had outdoor terraces where you could study the planes through coin-op binoculars.

We've made the trip to and from JFK several times in the past four years, but we probably won't be doing it again -- there's a new direct service to Beijing from Dulles.

***

My mother-in-law has returned to China. I wonder what it's like to be there again after a year in suburban Maryland. Does she miss us or is she relieved to be back? I wouldn't characterize Yucheng, the birthplace of Mulan, as an easy place to live, but it's her town, with her friends, haunts and husband. And while suburban Maryland is comfortable, life here is in some ways absurd -- you have to drive to go anywhere. When Y. and I were at work, she was stuck in the house.

Heidi, who my mother-in-law cared for during the past year, didn't seem taken aback by her departure, or by the sudden transfer to daycare. When I arrived to pick her up, I expected a shocked child, but instead I was presented with a bubbly, excited one. Maybe it's not so surprising -- she's almost a year old, restless and impatient.

By contrast, Michael, who was frequently disrespectful to laolao and sometimes just plain mean, was very upset. He demanded that we produce his passport and buy him a plane ticket.

It's time to dispose of my disposable lenses. Michael watches with interest, then retrieves one from the wastebasket. "Are these your eyeballs, Daddy?"