5 Months Old

Gemma and Mommy love wearing hats in the winter. Gemma finds this one to be particularly entertaining: she stares at it and grins whenever Mommy puts it on.

Wen and Yiran, two classmates and colleagues from NSSE, recently joined us for dinner. They were familiar with Gemma, due to the photos of her that I've put up at my desk. So they were happy to finally meet her and had fun giving her smiles and laughing at her antics. Over the meal we enjoyed talking about respective courses of study, our hopes for our future careers, about Wen's and Yiran's families in China, and about American desserts (and the fact that eating dessert, an institution in the States, is generally unpracticed in China). To punctuate that final point, Yiran brought along very rich iced brownies from Kroger, and Jul and I shared a bar of Lindt Dark Chocolate with Almonds. Yum.