Panda Santa

Here are some pics of Jude from Christmas time. They have nothing to do with the story I am about to tell you, but I thought they were cute. (We are pretty sure Santa was drunk when we took this picture.)

We moved to Japan in the middle of November- right before the holidays. I tried to make Jude's world as similar as it was when we lived in Texas. So, we went to story time, playgroup, the park, etc.

One Monday, during Japanese story time at the library, the librarian had puppets. She was attempting to teach the kids how to say 'hello, my name is...' in Japanese. She had two puppets: Panda Santa (a panda puppet with a Christmas hat) and Mickey Mouse. She wanted each child to shake Panda Santa's paw and say their name. She went up to each child, and each child performed to the best of their ability. Even the very shy kids participated. She went around the room, and then it was Jude's turn. She said "Herro my name is ...what is you name?" She spoke with a very thick Japanese accent and motioned for him to participate. Jude was very annoyed at this point. Instead of shaking Panda Santa's paw like the other kids, Jude punched Panda Santa right in the face. I was mortified!!! My son just assaulted a Panda puppet dressed like Santa in front of 20 kids and adults. I was so embarrassed. My son theoretically just assaulted the Japanese librarian!! We had been in the country about 3 weeks and we were already causing trouble for our wonderful host country. I wanted to crawl under a rock and die!! I grabbed him and asked why he punched Panda Santa. He just made a silly face and ignored me. I apologized repeatedly to the lady. She looked at me like 'stupid American- why don't you have control over your little heathen of a child.' I felt like a complete jack ass. My sweet son just punched a woman- a Japanese woman! After that incident, I was too embarrassed to go back to the library for fear of being labeled 'the mother of that wild abusive American child.'

Just another day in Weenie's World!