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At the end of Wei Wuxian’s fourth winter at the Cloud Recesses, the nannies at the Baoshi announce that baby A-Lan is finally old enough to be weaned.
“She’ll cut her first tooth in a week or two,” Lan Hulian tells him, as she transfers a grizzling Lan-bao into Wei Wuxian’s arms. “Has she begun grabbing at your chopsticks at mealtimes?”
“She’s been grabbing at chopsticks since she first came to us,” Wei Wuxian laughs, bouncing A-Lan on his hip. “But we’ve never weaned a baby before. What should we feed her?”
“You should begin with flavored porridge,” Lan Hulian suggests. “Congee boiled with broth or fruit is more nourishing than porridge made with plain rice, and Lan-bao will like the taste.”
At the sound of her name, Shuilan mashes her little face against Wei Wuxian’s shoulder and bites at it with all her might.
“Bu,” she declares, flapping a plump hand at Lan Hulian: and at that, Wei Wuxian bids Aunt Hulian farewell and bundles his daughter back to the Jingshi, chortling all the way.
“Xingan!” he calls, as he lets himself into the house. “Are you there?”
“In the kitchen, dearheart. The boys and I are making jiaozi.”
Wei Wuxian follows the sound of Lan Zhan’s voice, his heart as light as air; and in the kitchen, he finds his husband and sons half-way through the process of making dumplings. Lan Zhan is mincing a piece of pork shoulder at the table, and A-Yuan is shredding a mountain of spring cabbages: and even six-year-old Xiao-Yu has a task of his own, for Lan Zhan gave him flour and a jug of water to mix into dough for dumpling wrappers.
“More water for the dough will work wonders, my son,” Lan Zhan tells him, before stooping to kiss Wei Wuxian’s cheek and Lan-bao’s downy forehead. “And how did our A-Lan at the Baoshi today?”
Of late, Lan-bao has been going to the Baoshi for a shichen or two every other day, so that Wei Wuxian and Lan Zhan can attend to their work and the keeping of the Jingshi while Xiao-Yu is at school. For one thing, Lan Zhan never likes to sweep the floors when the children are at home, for fear of stirring up dust and making them cough; and for another, Wei Wuxian prefers to attend to his more precarious experiments when A-Lan is well away from the Jingshi, and in no danger of being startled from her naptime by an explosion breaking through his silencing talismans.
“She slept from noon to a shichen past, and drank every last drop of her bottle,” Wei Wuxian reports, with great satisfaction. “And according to the nurses, she’s ready to be weaned.”
“Really?” Sizhui asks, peering at Lan-bao’s mouth. “But she hasn’t got any teeth yet.”
In answer, Wei Wuxian points to the faintest hint of a bump between the baby’s rosebud lips.
“I have been informed that this is going to be a tooth,” he says gravely. “We’ll have to ask Xichen-ge for a bottle of the pain-potion he used on Jueying before it breaks through.”
Lan Zhan peers at the little bump with no small amount of apprehension. “Perhaps we should make it two bottles,” he murmurs. “Ying’er cried for three nights in a row when her first tooth came out.”
Wei Wuxian winces at the memory: for none of them like to think of the horrors of small Lan Jueying’s first year, even now. The commonplace troubles of infancy had taxed Ying’er’s poor little body to the point of exhaustion, so that she and Xichen-ge scarcely made it past her first birthday in one piece; and until then, the whole family had lived in dread during every fever or attack of cold, for fear that it would prove too much for small Ying’er to bear.
“Lan-bao won’t cry,” Xiao-Yu says gloomily, before Wei Wuxian’s mind can drift into darker waters. “But she’ll yell all night when her teeth come. A-Hui didn’t sleep for a week when his didi got his teeth. He came to the Baoshi with his eyes all red and went to sleep there instead.”
Lan Wangji smiles.
“We will have to trust in your bofu’s pain-potion, then,” he says gravely. “And before that, we can distract Lan-bao a little by giving her something good to eat.”
At this, a kind of delighted interest takes hold of the household; and over the next half-hour, the jiaozi are swiftly folded, steamed, and then eaten, so that the family can turn its attention to the matter of Lan-bao’s first food.
“What about a dumpling?” Xiao-Yu suggests, over the last of his: and for good reason, since his dumpling skins turned out to be just as tender as Lan Zhan’s. “Dumplings are soft, so A-Lan doesn’t need teeth to eat them.”
“Not yet, Yu’er,” Sizhui says, pulling Xiao-Yu into his lap. “She’ll need a few teeth to eat jiaozi on her own, so she shouldn’t have anything but congee and steamed vegetables.”
The nurse from the Baoshi had said as much, so it was decided that Lan-bao should have fruit porridge for her first meal.
"But what fruits can we give her?" Sizhui asks, as a contented Lan-bao tries to eat the ends of his mo'e. "Nothing is in season now except for oranges."
There are no orange trees in the Cloud Recesses: an oversight that Wei Wuxian vows to correct that very year, so that they can have fresh fruit in the coming winter. In the meantime, Xiao-Yu proposes a trip to his favorite orange-stall in the Caiyi market; but oranges are unsuitable for milk-porridge, due to their sourness, so Lan Zhan makes A-Lan’s congee with a summer peach from the icebox in the Cloud Recesses' main kitchen.
“What are you doing?” he laughs, when he returns to the receiving room to find A-Lan rolling about on her mat in nothing but a pair of short trousers. “Where are Lan-bao’s clothes?”
“Spoon-feeding babies is a messy business, my Lan Zhan. And washing Lan-bao will be easy enough, but I don’t want to wash clothes today,” Wei Wuxian says wisely.
He hands A-Lan to Lan Zhan and gets to his feet; and then, with Xiao-Yu and the Jingshi’s family of kittens trailing behind them, they make their way to the kitchen. Lan Zhan begins by settling Lan-bao into the infants’ chair Lan Xichen had lent them; but the baby bursts into tears as soon as he steps away from her, distraught at finding herself so far from the safety of the floor.
Lan Zhan picks her up again almost at once, but Lan-bao is inconsolable; and over half an hour later—after A-Lan has been properly soothed and returned to Wei Wuxian’s arms—Wei Wuxian sinks into a chair with Lan-bao on his lap, and waits for Lan Zhan to bring him the porridge.
“Do you think she will know what to do with the spoon?” Lan Zhan asks anxiously, when the little bowl and spoon are ready. “What if she tries to eat it?”
Wei Wuxian stares at the spoon and wonders if they ought to fetch a bigger one. He spoon-fed plenty of his youngest shidimei while he was at Lotus Pier; but none of the nurses there had ever told him what to do if a baby picked up a spoon and tried to swallow it.
“...Keep hold of the spoon, and she won’t be able to,” he says at last, bouncing Lan-bao on his knee. “There, my A-Lan! Can you smell the peaches?”
The fascinated look on Lan-bao’s tiny face is proof that she can smell the simmered peaches in the congee; and when Lan Zhan puts the first spoonful to her lips, she licks the spoon clean and opens her mouth for more.
“Bu,” she says insistently, kicking at Wei Wuxian’s legs.
Lan Zhan placates her with another bite of porridge, and another: and within the next ke, the bowl is empty. Shuilan shrieks and points towards the pot as he feeds her the last spoonful; but Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren had both warned them not to give her too much to eat, so Lan Zhan puts the porridge away and bundles Lan-bao off for a bath.
“Lan-bao’s getting heavy, isn’t she?” Wei Wuxian sighs, as the baby begins to doze in her tiny bathtub. “She’ll be taking her first steps before we know it.”
There is a soft, wistful note in his voice: and it melts Lan Zhan on the spot, for the light in his eyes grows so hopelessly smitten that Wei Wuxian blushes and ducks his head.
“My mother used to tell me and Xiongzhang that children are like poplars,” Lan Zhan says softly. “They seem to grow slowly, in the beginning; but then they put out leaves, and spread their branches—and in the end, they attain their full height in no time at all.”
He lifts A-Lan out of the tub and wraps her up in a towel; and as they stand gazing at her drowsy little face, the corners of Wei Wuxian’s eyes begin to sting.
“She’s just a little poplar shoot, for now,” he whispers, laying his cheek on Lan Zhan’s shoulder. “I hope the time won’t go so fast as all that.”
He thinks of A-Yuan—A-Yuan who was just beginning to toddle when they came to the Burial Mounds, and who grew from infancy to manhood in what seemed like the blink of an eye to Wei Wuxian; and of Xiao-Yu, who had already given up his baby primers and picture books and taken up qin and arithmetic lessons instead.
Lan Zhan wraps his arm around Wei Wuxian’s waist. “It will go as it goes,” he smiles. “And much that we love will be left behind; but there will be joy in the changing, too. Has it not been so, thus far?”
Between them, Lan-bao yawns in her sleep and grasps Wei Wuxian’s finger in her tiny palm.
Wei Wuxian’s eyes fill with tears. “It has,” he nods, as he holds on to his husband and daughter for dear life.
“It has, my Lan Zhan.”