Today was a nice day with the family – mainly running various errands around Hong Kong.  This brought us on the metro and by foot to the busy streets all over the big city.  In the process, we had the little guy in the stroller sitting up, in the stroller lying down, in the Baby Björn facing forward, and in the Baby Björn facing the chest.  While in the Baby Björn, he was carried by me and my wife at different times.

He is a resilient little guy, and was genuinely happy all day long – smiling, laughing, giggling, and he was a ray of sunshine everywhere we went.  The feeling of seeing my son, this little 4-month-old smiling amidst all the “ho-hum” people in the city, brightening people’s day as we briefly touch their lives, is not something I can explain with words.  I could say heartwarming, but it’s not enough – it pulls at a deep emotional string inside of me.  His smile is filled with trust, curiosity, joy, and pure unfiltered and unquestionable happiness.  (To be fair, his cry and frown have just as many contradicting raw emotions)

At the end of our day we had a fantastic family dinner at a Japanese Udon restaurant in Olympic Mall.  It was a fantastic meal in every way – good food, nice atmosphere, etc.  Nothing special about the actual restaurant, but I will always have a fond memory of the dinner, because at one point I was caught back at the experience we were having.  We are a little family, eating dinner in a restaurant, and our little guy was just watching, laughing, and babbling talking with us.  We are a little family.  Wow.

To anyone seeing it from the outside, it was probably no big deal – they do not know that we have not eaten in restaurants with our son unless he is sleeping.  But to me, it was a special moment I will cherish in my memory forever.  He will not stay small forever, and he will most likely not always sit with us happily while we eat in a restaurant – but for this 1 moment in time he did, and the feeling of our little family doing this basic thing was extraordinary.