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steve & wangting

here's a photo of svp gang at steve & wangting's wedding in hongqiao.

there was a slight mishap where scott had to rescue some confused doves, but who noticed with wangting looking so gorgeous?

 

o market

cal and i are thinking about trying out the organic delivery market after getting an alarming e-mail in the parent newsletter from peggy.  but what really sold me was seeing this on their website: 

now, that's gotta be authentic.  this hippie family is obviously delighted with their fresh fruits and vegetables.  you can tell by the dad's pants.

day out with the moms

here i am celebrating the arrival of sophia's baby girl at "the kitchen" in lujiazui.  yes, that's spencer.  and no, it's not that he didn't match my outfit.  he was was held, squeezed and cuddled by hot mamas all day!  although you can't see from the picture, my sleeves are hiding massive pre-governator conan-the-barbarian arms.  what can you do.  big baby.

from the bottom, there's mae-ling, peggy, sophia and yours truly, and on top eugenia, spencerino and amy. 

honesteeee is such a lonely word

today i threw out my back toting around my enormous baby.  so we're up at 1 am, blogging and waiting for him to start the "hungry siren", so i can turn my stiff neck to calvin and ask for help to get the little man latched onto the milk bar.  while we were hanging out, calvin suggested dowloading "desparate housewives" or "6 feet under", and i pondered whether we'd gone from having "sex in the city" to "death in stepford."  let's just say with spencer sleeping in between us, footsy is now considered 2nd base.

there is a scene in "sex in the city" where carrie replaces the diamond necklace that her russian lover, a famous artist she's run away to paris with, and put the old, cheap yet priceless carrie necklace she donned in nyc back on her neck.  it's at this moment in the plot that you are so happy for her that 1)she's found something special she thought she'd lost forever, but had just fallen through the silk lining in her chanel vintage purse and 2) she's remembered herself beyond the tinsel trappings of her fancy-shmancy, patronizing boyfriend. 

i'm not exactly sure why, but remembering this scene and just finished reading a hilarious blog about being single, trusting in yourself, and looking for mr. right, has inspired me to write more honestly and frankly about the everyday cracks and fissures in marriage, and not just parenthood.  it makes for a more interesting story at the least.  and good therapy. 

audrey, chelsea and seas apart

at first, i was just watching it for the scenes of new york, but somehow i found that i've just blazed through the final season of "sex in the city". and YES, i cried at the end.  and YES, that's why i haven't blogged.  so - in the literary style of the the protagonist, "i couldn't help but wonder ...does everything that goes around, come around?  and did i leave my heart in new york city?"  even with all the changes you know must happen, it can feel that way.

it wasn't so much a place, a city, but a time. when we all had 30k annual salaries, tiny apartments, ate ramen, worked to much, drank too much, loved too much, and felt right in the center of life and on the side of some kind of rightness you feel in your gut.  maybe it's called, being 10 years younger.  whatever it was, what made it really special was having friends to blab to about our walks of shame, our career dreams, what we wanted from our boyfriends and ourselves.  everything was imbued with a different meaning when you knew someone else would really enjoy hearing about your date or day from hell over a latte in a (then) smoky cafe.

all this reflecting was brought on after i got an amazing present from audrey today - the original chelsea girl. but no, it wasn't a very dirty martini at cafeteria or a yummy tocca candle, but monet, dali, kahlo and van gogh as finger puppets to teach my baby about painting.  suitably apt since she's a well-read art history major, now working at the getty in los angeles.  yet, incredibly surreal, to think how much has changed since those snowy new york walks around the west village, and hot fiip-floppy days strolling among drag queens and tranny whores along christopher street after popping into gourmet garage for feta and 5 types of olives.  audrey isn't even in new york anymore, joyce is opening up a bakery in brooklyn, kim has moved to london, friends are having babies, getting married, and i live in china for crying out loud. 

when you look back at your youth, could you ever have imagined you'd be where you are?  and maybe that surprise is a good thing, that we, and life, aren't predictable.  unless, of course, you had imagined your baby would one day have claude monet in a headlock.

911

see here.