“Hairy” Story – Lang’s Got His First Haircut!

Lang was born with little hair, completely opposite to baby me as per my mom. She told me that I had a full head of thick, black and shiny hair when I was born. My parents immediately nicknamed me Black Hair (weird when translated to English) at the birth as they had yet found a perfect name for me. This name, even in Chinese, was actually one of my growing pains. My little buddies always made fun of me because the pronunciation of it sounds similar to a popular cartoon character at the time and that cartoon character was not a good association with a little pretty girl (Yep, I was a very pretty girl!). From my teen to tween days, for some reason I don’t understand now when I look back, I felt somewhat ashamed when my classmates found out I had such a nickname. I had to constantly remind my parents, sisters and brother not to call my nickname in public wherever my classmates were presented. My family still calls me in my nickname now. It actually sounds sweet to me, sweeter and sweeter as time passes. After all, to my parents, the name is their love-at-first-sight to me.

Back to Lang’s hair, they are very thin, soft and in light shades, an obvious gene mutation as both XJ and LXJ have thick black hair. We should have cut Lang’s hair when he was one month old. Traditional wisdom says babies’ hair would grow thicker and darker if infants' hair were shaved. But my mom insisted keeping the hair because she thought Lang looked even cuter in those hairs. I developed the same opinions about Lang’s hair under my mom’s influence. You know what would happen when women reached unanimity. In the meantime, I did want Lang to keep the hair as long as he could because they were carried along from my body. Watching his little hair dangling in the wind was an enormous joy when we brought Lang to parks!














With Memorial Day’s weekend approaching, New England quickly dives into hot summer. The weather is so hot that Lang’s hair is always damped with sweat. After all, it is selfish to trade babies' comfort with adults' eye candy. Mom and I decided to cut Lang’s hair. Imagine the difficulties to give a haircut to a six month old baby. We tried everything we could to only hold him still for a second in order to cut a stream of hair. From the morning to the afternoon, between Lang’s long and short naps, we finally accomplished his first haircut. What a huge project it would be if Lang were like any of us. The insane price tags for professional infants haircuts start to make sense to me.

As anticipated, Lang is as cute wearing skin head as ever, just looks more sharp and masculine! Go little man!!

The Power of Body Languages

(Lang 6 months old)

One night these days, Lang sat on my dad’s lap cooing, ahing and goggling happily with my parents. I found some watery stuff on his feet so I asked what’s going on here with a serious face unintentionally. Lang heard me and observed my face for a while. He quickly changed several facial expressions and started to cry, so sad that his little face turned purplish with tears gushing out. I immediately held him and tried to comfort him. But he resisted my hug and turned his head to my parent with a helping needed look…

Obviously, Lang understands body language very well now. Recently, I read an interesting book The Definitive Book Of Body Language by Allan and Barbara Pease. The book mentioned a lot of body languages are inborn. People display body languages unconsciously. Being bale to read a person’s body language will give you an edge in social and business settings. People who are not able to hear or speak are more alert in observing other people’s body languages. Also a baby is much easier to be read than an adult because adults are educated in somewhat degree to cover their body languages from revealing their true thoughts…

At his sixth month old, it is really fun to play body language games with Lang before he can literally speak. Lang is super alert. He tries to get a hold of everything going on around the house. When he is eating or playing, he won’t forget turn his head to any sounds, familiar voices and movements like a wary hound dog. He mirrors a wide smiley face when we smile at him; He bounces when we show up joyfully; He gets intense when we talk in a sharp tone; He cries when we are hush on him unintentionally or purposely (sometimes we are just teasing him to cry in order to see that cute little crying face); He raises his both arms to embrace a hug when we extend two hands to him…

Lang is a real doll!

From Little XJ&XJ to Lang (朗)

Lang can respond by turning his head to us when we call his name “Lang3 Lang3” now. It is amazing, isn’t it? I remember around this time last year, we were still brainstorming a name for the Little XJ&XJ.

I guess everybody wants to pick the best name for their babies because this is actually one thing that they can CHOOSE for her/him. You can’t choose the sex, the physical appearance or her IQ/EQ. Those are god sent, pre-denominated by genes, statistics and some luck. Family name is a given in our culture. Little XJ&XJ will have XJ’s family name. Since first name is called given name, a name to be given by parents, it is gotta be a gift to be selected carefully.

(Lang 5 months old)

Like most men, XJ doesn’t enjoy doing this kind of “superficial” chores as much or is not as picky as I am on these “little” things. I volunteered to take the lead on naming our precious little thing who was rapidly growing inside of me. Except for the common cliché such as jampacking parents’ best wishes to the child’s name, I utilized the methodologies a marketing guru would use to create a killer brand name for a new product: market research, trend prediction, macro/micro environment, benchmarking and several focus group meetings. I also initiated my very own 3 “L”s that the final decision of the name will be evaluated upon:

• Simple – The name has to be simple because I don’t want my first grade kid to struggle on writing his name especially in Chinese. More importantly, simple names reduce carbon footprint because they consume less paper and ink! :). In hindsight, I should have named him “L” or “一” in Chinese!!
• Universal – The name has to have the same/similar pronunciation across different languages. My baby will have only one name and this name is easy to be pronounced in different languages. A combination of Chinese name, English name and middle name is too confusing. Improving efficiency and eliminating culture barriers from names, every effort counts!
• My call – It is very nice that every family member contributes in naming the baby. But you’ve got to be careful because this process bonds the family and in the meantime creates disruption . There is only one baby to be named and one name to be chosen. Unanimity is rare. So I make it very clear that no offense, the mom will make the final call.
  

Naming our baby was a time consuming, soul searching and fun process. With my gushing hormones during the pregnancy, you bet a lot of arguments were involved. But the truth is: I don’t remember any unpleasantness now at all. All I am enjoying is my baby’s official name – Lang. No matter how much I loved Little XJ&XJ, how adorable and descriptive it is, it is not up to my 3 “L”s and I had to let it go...

And there is one last step you can’t skip in the information age. I Googled Lang, no negative meanings are associated with this word and I surprisingly found that Lang is actually an interesting, real word in many languages. It is indeed a serendipity!

Breast Feeding Is A State of Mind

I can't believe how fast time goes by and how unproductive I have been since Lang's birth! Only during nights after Lang is in sound sleep, would I sit in front of the computer and go through mail boxes and tell myself I've got to updated my blog or I won't be able to remember those precious moments with rapidly growing Lang anymore.

Lang was 6 months old on Monday. We brought him to see his pediatrics. Lang got another round of vaccinations. The doctor and I talked about my breastfeeding plan with Lang:

"Are you still breastfeeding Lang?"
"Oh, yeah, but only once to twice a day. :( "
"Well, you should say I am still breastfeeding him once to twice a day when he is already 6 months old. I would be proud of myself. :) "
"Well, ....... That does sounds better..."

But with a face like this, who wouldn't breastfeed him for ever?!