Friends

My posting today is about something simple, yet complicated - that of friends - friends who constitute our families outside of our actual family members.

To start with, friends who have given us feedback on the choice of Chinese names for our baby - comments ranged from "cute", to "hope you are kidding...", to "very imaginative, and can be a pet name for baby, but a name is for life...". Well, we'll have to ponder on this for awhile more, but in the mean time, Daddy Wayne's convinced it won't make our daughter hold this against us for life...

Also, friends who have thus far been expressing heartiest congratulations and care/love for us, and baby - thank you all lovely Aunties and Uncles - baby is indeed blessed to be so loved even before she has set foot in this world. Heh. I've received very precious pearls of advice from friends who have "been there, done that". For example, Jeannie's very useful advice on "It's all in the mind." when dealing with morning sickness is actually very true. Although my 21 bouts of throw-up meant my body transcended over my weak mind instead, haha.

Moving on, I also wanted to highlight that my colleague in New York told me, upon finding out that I was expecting a girl, emailed me with "I have three, two daughters and a son, and I must say that having a girl is a great great way to start. You will always have a friend when you have a girl." My heart just lightened up at the thought of a "friend for life", how sweet. This was actually what also kept my spirits up when Wayne was away in Shanghai for a business trip yesterday (he's back tonight). As I slept on the bed alone, I told baby "Baby darling, I'm not alone. I have you to sleep with me. Thank you for keeping Mummy company." I'm so looking forward to having a friend in my kid!

Lastly, to end this posting with a slide show of some weekend trips I took with friends. Upon the request of good friend, also Mum-to-be Vanessa, who wanted more photos on this blog, enjoy the pix of us over the past few weeks - to Huairou to see some silly part of the Great Wall in the far, far, far distance (Jiankou); to Tianjin over the Dragon Boat Festival long weekend; to Huairou with my team members for an outing; and the latest - our BBQ session last weekend. At this last session, I saw a strong friendship foster between Sophie (lovely Dutch daughter of Erwin and Karen), and Dou Dou (lovely Chinese daughter of the staff at the BBQ site). These girls are only 5 months apart and quickly built up strong ties and played so happily with each other - they even gave each other a goodbye kiss on the lips when they parted ways at the end of the day...so sweet!