Teatime with Pia

The twins turned two last month and it came with a lot of nice surprises! Pia has learned to enjoy pretend play. She likes to make tea with her tea set or pretend to cook and pretend eat with us. As a boy, I never got the appeal of this pretend house chores things. Since my cousins who were my age were all boys, we just played ball games, jumping games, video games, etc. Cooking or washing veggies did not make the list at all. But Pia enjoys it so much. I think she enjoys it when Nikki asked her to help her make brownies that one time. Pia did such a great job mixing all the ingredients in the mixing bowl.

Anyways, Pia got a nice little tea set with a teacup, a container for milk, and sugar container. She was giving everyone who asked for tea a teacup with a donut inside the teacup for some strange reason. But she consistently puts the donut inside the teacup. One time, Saks asked Pia for a cup of tea but all her cups were served already so she prepared her pretend tea in the milk pourer thing. She gave Saks the tea and she thanked Pia for the tea. Saks then proceeds to pretend drink the tea but a second later, she sprays water and spit on the floor. Pia looks at Saks with shock on her face. It's one of those scenes straight out of a cartoon or a sitcom where the spit literally sprays every which way from the mouth.

What happened?

One of our other aunts had earlier suggested putting some water in Pia's teapot so it has more weight to it - just so she get the hang of it. So we did put some water... into the milk pourer. Poor Saks didn't know of this at all. And Pia didn't really know as well. As a result, we were treated to a lovely little story that I'm now relaying to you all as well.

Lesson learned: Always check what Pia gives you.

Toots or No Toots... That is the question!

When the twins turned one, we got excited since they're able to express themselves more and more. When Joey was one and a half, we heard this weird word he started using - Toots. He'd add it to "Mommy" or "Daddy". He'd say, "Mommy toots" and "Daddy toots" or "Pia toots".

So we'd asked him, "Is Yayi toots?" And he'd say "Toots!" We'd ask him if Nanay was toots and he'd say "No toots." We didn't know what classified as "toots" and "no toots" but Joey knew. And Joey would consistently say a person was toots or no toots but he'd never tell us what made someone toots or no toots. Here are our observations:

• Older individuals (Nanay, Poppop, Bela, Guakong, Guama, Taima) were consistently "no toots"
• People he didn't like or didn't know so well were consistently "no toots"
• It is possible to transition from "no toots" to "toots" without effort on the "no toots" individual
• Transition from "toots" to "no toots" is possible but rare. If you become Toots, it's highly likely you'll always be toots thereafter.
• Joey and Pia have always been toots
• There is currently a scarcity or "no toots" individuals as all the older folks have now been consistently classified as toots.

More study is required to figure out what toots means. Joey will not spill the beans. I suspect he's even forgotten what toots means.

We no longer ask him if a person is toots or no toots but it remains one of the questions we still don't have any answer to and it's highly likely we'll never get an answer to that question.