China is Far Away

As I mentioned, M's favorite toy of the last year and a half, his big Wall-E finally broke. We are both very sad. If I could find someone to fix this toy (re-wire the eyes and glue the neck), that'd be wonderful. But since I don't know anyone like that, I got M a different Wall-E. But I told him that we're going to send this one to China for repairs and it will come back to us even better (since the new one is not the exact same model).

While I'm thinking about how to pretend-mail Wall-E to China, M is busy trying to figure out more important issues. One is "how come there are no toy factories in America". I am not sure how to explain that one. Another issue comes from me telling M that it will take 2 weeks for the updated Wall-E to arrive to us. So now he wants to know "why can't it be delivered sooner, maybe with a rocket instead of an airplane". The simple answer is that I didn't feel like paying extra for expedited delivery, but I'm not about to share this with M (although believe me, after 3 days of non-stop whining and complaining and asking me when will the two weeks be over, I'm regretting not shelling out that money).

Then M is working on the idea of his about all three of us travelling to China. At first, after finding out that virtually all his toys were made in China, M wanted to move to this promised land. I explained that he would have to start learning the third language, Chinese, which is pretty difficult. I also mentioned something about environmental pollution in China. So my 5-year old thought really-really hard and then said "let's move China to here, mom". How would we do that, I asked. Here's his explanation: "we'll build a factory and bring all the toys from China and pollute our environment and then we'll have China here". Hmm, I think we both need a more in-depth lesson about this country.

In the mean time, M's got another idea (he just can't stand the fact that Wall-E is missing all the fun, i.e. watching garbage trucks on Thursdays). This idea comes from a Russian cartoon M loves. The cartoon is called  Фиксики (Fix'ems). In it tiny people called Fixiki live inside all the appliances and electronic/electrical equipment. They help us keep all our things working and, using their awesome multifunction tool called помогатор (helper), they fix whatever's broken.

So yesterday M set his broken Wall-E in the middle of the living room, built scaffolding out of building blocks (so Fix'ems would have no problems climbing up to Wall-E's neck) and tasked me with watching out for Fix'ems while I work late. Unfortunately, no Fix'ems showed up. So now M is trying to figure out why they didn't. I really don't want to tell him that they only live in Russia 'cause what if he says we now need to move Russia here?

But for now M is taking care of the other Wall-E toy he has. This one is a little Wall-E, so M says it's Wall-E's son. Since Wall-E is temporarily without a dad, M's taking care of him and even teaching him manners (I recently overheard M lecturing Wall-E on when to say "thank you", "please", "sorry", and "you're welcome").