Last night, Little Bear slept fairly well and didn’t wake up in the middle of the night.
Monday, February 20
She got up at eight in the morning. I helped her get dressed before heading to work. When I came home that evening, her stuffy nose, runny nose, and cough had all eased up, so we decided she would go back to kindergarten the next day.
She had already missed three days in a row, and after having so much freedom at home, she seemed to have half-forgotten about school. At least she had stopped saying, as she often did the previous week, things like, “Can I not go to school?”
Tuesday, February 21
Both hillway and I took the day off and stayed home. Around nine, after Little Bear had pooped at home, hillway went with her grandmother and maternal grandmother to take her to kindergarten. From what we heard, she opened her arms and let the teacher carry her. She didn’t resist going in. She only looked like she was about to cry when she saw hillway leave, and squeezed out a few tears.
Later, in a video the teacher shared of the children doing exercises, Little Bear was standing among the other kids. She wasn’t following the teacher’s movements yet—just standing there and watching.
We were still worried about lunch. Our plan was that if she absolutely refused to eat, we would pick her up at noon and let her attend only half a day for now. We didn’t want to push too hard. It would be too much for her, and hard on us to watch too.
At 12:30, I messaged the teacher to ask how lunch had gone. The teacher said she had eaten, and had done it by herself. Then at 4:30 in the afternoon, hillway and I rushed over and managed to be the first parents there for pickup. The teacher told us that not only had Little Bear eaten lunch on her own, she had also eaten her afternoon snack by herself. That felt like a big step forward, and it let us relax a little.
By pickup time, a light rain had started to fall. We sat in the activity hall on the first floor of the kindergarten and fed her a few pieces of apple. That was when we noticed she had changed pants, which meant she had wet them again.
On the way home, she insisted that I carry her the whole way. I haven’t carried her much in the past few months, so it was clearly a strain. My stomach felt tight and uncomfortable from it.
Once she got home, she wasn’t very interested in dinner and didn’t seem especially hungry. But after returning to kindergarten for the first time in three days, she was in a good mood that evening—full of energy, even taking the initiative to tell us things about school. When she answered our questions, she didn’t look upset at all.
Before bed, following a reminder the teacher had posted on WeChat, hillway reviewed the four idioms they had learned in class that day with her.
The kindergarten also sent home a textbook about hide-and-seek.
Wednesday, February 22
It was raining again in the morning. Little Bear woke up late, ate some noodles, and didn’t get to kindergarten until around ten.
Xiaomigua called to say that she knew she was going to kindergarten and showed no resistance. She behaved very well and was taken into the classroom without any trouble.
Around noon, I went to hillway’s company cafeteria for the buffet. Compared with the plain meals we usually have at lunchtime, it felt almost luxurious—meat, fish, fruit, even yogurt. After hurrying back to my own workplace to check in, I quickly opened WeChat Moments, only to find that the teacher had posted very few videos that morning, and Little Bear wasn’t in any of the ones I saw.
The weather this week had been hot, muggy, and damp, and with my cold on top of that, I had been feeling vaguely uncomfortable all along. On the bright side, Little Bear’s nasal congestion and cough were almost gone.
After work, Xiaomigua told us that Little Bear had done very well that day. She ate lunch by herself and didn’t need the teacher to feed her. But in the afternoon, she wet her pants again because she didn’t get them off in time, and the teacher changed her into a dry pair.
After dinner, hillway and I took her to the garage to pick something up, then walked around the neighborhood. We bought strawberries and bread, and she sat for a while on one of the coin-operated kiddie rides.
Back home, she was still full of energy. She eagerly told us more about kindergarten and said, “Daddy and Mommy go to work in the daytime, and I go to kindergarten.” Then she performed the dance and nursery rhyme her teacher had taught them.
Thursday, February 23
She woke up late again and was taken to kindergarten after nine.
According to Xiaomigua, she still showed no resistance that morning. When she got to the kindergarten and walked upstairs toward the classroom, she even said goodbye to her grandmother on her own.
It really felt as though she had made a lot of progress compared with the previous week. She was gradually getting used to kindergarten life, and we were genuinely happy for her.
This was her eighth day in kindergarten. At lunch, she behaved herself and ate properly, though she wet her pants yet again.
Looking back over these eight days, there had been three days when she didn’t eat lunch, and five days when she wet her pants. Between the two, the wet pants worried us less than the skipped meals. Maybe once the weather gets warmer and her clothes are easier to pull on and off, she’ll stop having these accidents.
Friday, February 24
The temperature dropped a little, and light rain was drifting down again.
During breakfast, we found that the kindergarten had started making the classroom surveillance feed available. By this point, Little Bear was no longer resisting school or crying when it was time to go. She was being very cooperative and well-behaved.
That morning, hillway followed the setup instructions, watched her activities through the feed, and sent us a few screenshots on WeChat. As for me, I had my own distractions: when I parked in the morning, I knocked over a motorcycle’s rearview mirror and had to deal with compensation, and in the afternoon I was out attending a televised conference meeting. I only managed to glance at her video feed here and there, so I still didn’t get a complete picture of everything she did that day.
But the important part was clear enough: she ate lunch, and in the afternoon she didn’t wet her pants.
Perfect.
February 25–26, the Weekend
Even with March just around the corner, the weekend still carried a leftover winter chill. With steady gray rain falling, we mostly stayed home for both days, only taking Little Bear downstairs to move around a bit in the neighborhood.