"Come on, everyone, raise your glasses and let's clink them together. May we all have many more happy returns of the day and a Happy New Year!"
Wang Ziwen, seeing that everyone had arrived, picked up her wine glass and said.
That's the advantage of eating hot pot; everyone can sit here and eat together. If it were stir-fry, there would definitely be someone busy in the kitchen.
"Happy New Year!"
"Jiadong and Wenxuan, you two hurry up and set off a firecracker at the front gate."
Upon hearing this, Li Wenxuan downed the wine in his glass in one gulp and immediately stood up to leave.
"Give me the child!" Wang Yueyue hurriedly grabbed him.
"You're trying to scare my son by carrying him out of here?"
"Hehe, I forgot all about it."
"You're really something."
Ding Qiunan took two small cotton balls out of her pocket and handed them to Wang Yueyue.
"Here, plug the child's ears. The firecrackers will be going to be more and more loud later, so don't scare the child."
Sure enough, even with his ears plugged, the sound of cannons coming from the gate still made the child tremble. However, he didn't cry. Instead, he turned his little head around with great interest, as if trying to find out where the sound was coming from.
She was lying in Yueyue's arms, but now she couldn't stay still and insisted on being held upright, while constantly making "ooh ooh" noises.
She pointed outside with her little finger, and her body moved slightly, as if she had found the source of the sound and wanted to go out and see.
This made it impossible for Wang Yueyue to eat.
Li Chu stuffed a piece of meat into his mouth, then got up and took the child from him.
"Come here, my little darling, let Grandpa hold you, and tell Mommy to eat first."
"Dad Chu, you eat first, I'll hold you."
"It's alright, you go ahead and eat."
Strangely enough, as soon as the child was in Li Chu's arms, he immediately became well-behaved and stopped fussing about going out. Instead, he raised his hand to touch the stubble on Li Chu's chin.
"Why are these children so well-behaved as soon as Xiao Chu holds them?" Li Qin patted the head of her grandson sitting next to her.
"Does Hao Hao remember being held by his uncle?"
Hao Hao, who was happily eating slices of mutton, nodded: "I remember, my uncle smelled nice."
On the other side, Ding Jianguo's son chimed in, "That's right, Uncle smells so good."
None of them had ever explored this question in depth before. Today, Li Qin asked it by chance, and the two children's answers stunned everyone present.
Wang Yueyue kept eating with her head down, but in her heart she kept thinking: she used to like the smell of her father when she was little, but when she grew up she was too embarrassed to let him hug her anymore. But now her brother Xuan seems to have a little bit of that smell too.
bidige.
Let alone them, Li Chu was still a bit confused at the moment, and he couldn't figure out what smelled on him either.
"Oh dear, he does have a faint herbal scent on him, which is quite pleasant. Children are more sensitive to it, so they can smell it. Now that he's grown up, he can hardly smell it anymore."
When Wenxuan and Wenhui were little, they loved being held by him to sleep; they would often fall asleep on him.
Ding Qiunan's explanation was plausible; she herself was like that, and particularly enjoyed the scent of her man.
Li Wenxuan and Wang Jiadong set off two long strings of firecrackers and walked in, reeking of gunpowder. The atmosphere at the dinner table became lively again, and no one cared about the smell on Li Chu anymore.
The meal lasted until almost eight o'clock before everyone moved into the living room.
Ding Qiunan also brought the kneaded dough and mixed dumpling filling to the living room, and everyone started making dumplings while watching TV.
Wang Jiadong and Ding Jianguo's two sons, with disassembled firecrackers in their pockets, ran out to find other children in the alley to set off firecrackers together.
Li Chu stood alone in the yard, holding the child, watching the occasional firecrackers, sky rockets, and flashbangs flying up outside.
The child was quite brave; the sound of the cannons didn't scare him. Instead, he cheered and shouted with joy.
After standing in the yard for a while, he carried the child out of the gate and stood at the entrance.
The happiest people during the Chinese New Year are probably these teenagers. They wear new clothes, with firecrackers in one pocket and a lot of candy in the other. Their noses are so cold that snot is hanging from their mouths, but they just slurp it up and continue playing.
There has been little snow this winter. It's already February, and we've only had two snowfalls so far. As a result, the weather is dry and cold, and the wind feels like knives cutting your face.
The children seemed oblivious to the cold wind and continued running around.
Life has been much better these past two years than before.
In his memory, during the Spring Festival in the past, a large group of people would gather around to watch as one family set off firecrackers. Before the firecrackers had even stopped, the group of boys couldn't help but rush over to see if they could still find any unlit firecrackers.
In the past two years, almost every household has bought one or two firecrackers. The only difference is that other families set off more firecrackers while we set off fewer.
I don't know when the city of Beijing banned the setting off of firecrackers. When that happens, we probably won't see the lively scene we see now.
At first, it was only banned in a few districts of the city. If you really wanted to fly fireworks, you could drive out of the city. But after twenty or thirty years, there really was nowhere to fly them. You couldn't just go to the grasslands, could you?
After standing at the gate for a while, he carried the child out of the alley and onto the main street.
There were even more people setting off firecrackers by the roadside, and Chou Bao couldn't keep up with them all. He kept looking this way and that way, shaking his head like a rattle drum.
Li Chu didn't dare bring the dog with him when he came out. He was worried that some mischievous kid might throw a firecracker at the dog, which would provoke it and cause trouble if it ran over and bit the firecracker.
A couple of years ago, a kid did this. Luckily, he noticed and looked over. The kid was so scared by his gaze that he didn't dare to throw the firecracker. It exploded in his hand. Fortunately, the firecrackers at that time weren't very powerful, and many people dared to hold them in their hands to light them. At most, it would just shake their hands and not hurt them. Even so, the kid ran home crying.
Since that incident, he usually doesn't let his dog go out during the Chinese New Year to avoid causing any trouble.
So he stood by the roadside with his child in his arms for a long time, until the little one started rubbing his eyes, before he turned back.
He commanded the dogs not to go outside, which made them very anxious. They stood inside the door circling around incessantly, and when they saw him return, they barked at him twice in dissatisfaction.
When he entered the living room, the people inside were discussing the skit "Lamb Skewers" that Chen Xiaoer had just performed.
He couldn't remember the specifics of whether the content was funny or not, but Wang Yueyue was definitely funny. Even after the performance was over, she was still rolling around on the sofa laughing, making Chou Bao forget to yawn.
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