Imitation

Two can play at this game: Emi snaps photos of me with a camera while I photograph her with my iPad.

Checking to make sure she's got the shot -- she has all the moves of a photographer.

I like her expression as she looks at her camera; this is apparently a serious business.

When two-year-old Emi puts a cutting board on her little red play stove and whacks away at detachable wooden fruit and vegetables with her pretend knife, her gestures mimic perfectly her mother Aya's in the kitchen next door. Turning the taps on her play sink to wash her dolls' feet, she is a study of what she's seen her parents do -- twist on, scrub, twist off. And when I hold up my iPad to take pictures of her playing, she dashes out of the room and returns immediately with a camera. As I point my technological device at her, she click-click-clicks away at me with hers as madly as any press photographer.

All parents know this, but as a non-parent experiencing a toddler close up for the first time, it strikes me with force: You must be very very careful about the language you use when the juice spills all over the kitchen floor.

Emi's stove, cutting board and knife. 

This is a piece of wooden cake with an apple on top. Imitating her mother's hospitality, Emi offers me the same delicacy. 

Here's the cake: Delicious!