A Lengthy Reboot

By Richard Hsu
Latest | Archives | Contact | Others

Milestones

My daughter reached an important milestone today. She was allowed entry into Ikea's children's play place called Småland. Ikea shoppers can leave their kids in the supervised play place for 40 minutes at a time. The play place has toys, movies, sponge balls etc. that keep the kids entertained while their parents/guardians shop in peace. My older son has played at the play place every time we have shopped at Ikea over the years.

Since the facility is designed for a certain age group, there is a minimum and maximum height requirement for entry. Few months ago, my daughter was shorter than the minimum height requirement and wasn't allowed to play in there. She was disappointed but I told her if she ate lots of food, she would grow the few inches she needed to get in. Today, we were shopping at Ikea again so I took her to the play place. The entry supervisor asked her to take her shoes off and stand against the measurement wall. To our pleasant surprise, the top of her head was just touching the line marking the minimum height and they let her in!

This marks a small but significant milestone in her life and ours. We don't weigh or measure our children's height so it is these simple and small life events that makes us pause and think about their growth.

Another funny story related to my daughter happened last night. I was dressed and ready to go out when I realised the cell phone wasn't in my pocket. Thinking it was upstairs in my office room, I asked my daughter to go get it for me. She could not find it(it was in my jacket pocket) but came back with the cordless phone handset. She said she couldn't find my cell phone so I should have the cordless phone instead.

Dated: Dec 5th, 2015.