Satang

is the most adorable child i have ever seen. she's the perfect cuddly little doll. and then she opens her mouth and you go, "oooh. not cute." this child is a punk. i in turns adore her and really really want to smack her. once, in the middle of making a hotel reservation, she looked at me with a little smile on her face and clicked the hang-up button. i threw her out of the house. but she makes up for it a lot of the times by running to me in her cute toddling way and lifting her arms and demanding, "ooom noi!" (up!)


i discovered her love of putting things in her mouth. in the middle of a phone conversation, i heard the sound of pill getting popped out of its plastic casing and looked up in time to see Satang put one of my birth control pills in her mouth. i screamed, which startled her into spitting it out.

i've cleaned my house since and baby-proofed it. you'd think a child of five would be out of the habit of randomly putting things in their mouth, but i apparently assumed wrong. Satang hasn't been coming around much since she's discovered new friends among the boys who live behind my house. whenever she does come around though, she speaks in gibberish that the other kids can't understand. i once asked her when she was going somewhere and she replied, "dton lek" to which Min (another girl who comes over frequently) shook her head and told her, "that doesn't mean anything." or if she's here and she's not speaking in a language unknown to any of us, she's throwing a tantrum.

Satang here with Min (left) during Loy Krathong.

tonight, a few kids were over and were playing games with the giant pile of garden debris in my front yard. while they debated over rules and how they should jump over the pile of debris, Satang was puttering around in my house. she loves spotting things and asking if she can have it. since it's usually candy she finds, i usually say yes. she picked up a bar of hotel soap (you know, the little chunk that's enough for two showers) and asked what it was and if she could have it. i told her it was soap and that yes, she could have it. i went back outside to preside over the garden-debris jumping game and judge distances. Satang came up to me and i looked down and saw her clutching her bar of soap... and nearly had a heart attack.

she had taken a bite out of it! i looked at her incredulously and said, "that's SOAP. SOAP, Satang." she looked at me with a puzzled expression on her face. now you may say that maybe i said the wrong word, but the other kids gathered around and asked "did you eat soap??" and it was the same word.

so, to sum. i think child has gone feral. she speaks in unintelligible shouting. throws tantrums for no apparent reason. and eats soap.