her first kiss

Somewhere in the Botanic Gardens, in a wooden pavilion by a lake, my 18-month-old daughter bestowed her first lip kiss on a boy.

Her Prince Charming: 22-month-old Ethan, son of my photographer friend Huifen. They sidled up to each other, he looked up, she looked down, and with eyes wide open, the babies smacked each other on the lips.

Lest anyone thinks she is too virginal for words, she has kissed us, and Day, plenty of times, on the mouth. But see, Ethan is the first boy outside of the family she has done the deed with.

Here’s the cool dude. And to think when we last brought the kids out for an outing he was still in mummy’s tummy. (Yes that's how busy everyone is.)



So Huifen – of course! – asked me if we should set up a date 25 years on for the duo. To which I said, if Ethan turns out like his dad, I’d be most accommodating.

The girl, in fine form, spent the rest of the evening downing slice after slice of picnic ham, Ruffles potato chips and green tea, completely eschewing the healthy carrot-with-miso-paste dip which Eugene, Ethan’s daddy and a fantastic chef, had prepared.



He, by the way, the kind of man who always manages to turn any outing – whether by the beach or park – into something vaguely luxurious. A good husbandly quality, and one, like I said, which I thoroughly approve of for Dee’s future dates.

Day on the other hand, didn’t care for food. When he saw, however, that there were three cameras being deployed, he cheerfully took up Xueying’s offer of her cam, and proceeded to snap pictures of everything, including not very nice ones of me.



Day's pix of Xueying, however, was rather nice, I thought.


Pix by Day

And our group shot. Coming from Huifen the photographer no less: “Hey not bad! At least he got our heads and legs in the picture! Some adults can’t even do that.”


Pix by Day

The other half of Day’s time was spent obsessing over feeding bread (meant for our sandwiches) to the fishes.