When in Rome…

I’ve uploaded more photos on Flickr, though they might only interest the family members, seeing as all but two are of the Chickster.  (Okay, so maybe Josh will dig them, too…)

This is quite the late-night culture we live in here.  As singles or a childless couple, this would probably be fun.  As the parents of a two-year-old, it’s hard to know our cultural limits.  It is not uncommon for young children to stay up until midnight or 1 a.m., then to sleep in until 11 a.m. or even noon.  I’ve been told that if I want to take Chickpea to the park and give her some interaction with other kids, I might want to take her after dinner, around 7:30 or 8 p.m., because that’s when most people here have their social time outside.

Last night we decided to go downtown for dinner on the pier.  It was a lot of fun, but by 10 p.m., we were still waiting at the bus stop to get home.  It was cold, it was windy, and Chickpea was whining and crying out of sheer exhaustion.  She was sitting in her stroller begging us to pick her up; but I know my daughter, I know when she’s crying because she genuinely needs something, and when she’s manipulatively whining to guilt us into letting her have her way.  The latter was true, but that didn’t stop the older generation waiting at the stop with us to give us dirty looks and to keep telling us in broken English, “It’s very cold.”

This cultural clash made my neck tense me for several reasons.  One, child coddling here is as natural a part of childrearing as breastfeeding – the child cries, you give her what she wants.  I knew I looked near abusive because I wouldn’t take my two-year-old out of the stroller knowing she was perfectly fine.  Two, as I mentioned before, people here tend to irrationally fear the wind, and I know they were thinking of all the diseases Chickpea was catching before their eyes.  Three, they don’t shy away from unsolicited advice, and if I knew more of the language, I know I’d get an earful about how I needed to give Chick my arms, freedom to play near the busy street, some candy, a soda, whatever.  I’m not always the best at taking unsolicited advise, especially from strangers, so seeing their looks from my peripheral vision made me tense and slightly frustrated.

30 minutes later, the bus still hadn’t arrived.  We caved and paid for a taxi.  She was in bed by 11 p.m.

posted: 07 March 29
under: