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Shen Yihuan was discharged from the hospital after she had recovered.
She didn’t want to go to a maternity center, so the Commander’s wife had found two professional confinement nannies for her in advance.
However, the baby just ate and slept. Sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night to feed, which kept Shen Yihuan from getting a good night’s sleep. The initial joy and curiosity of being a new mother were wearing off.
“How can a baby this small be such a handful?”
One night, Shen Yihuan was woken up again by the baby’s cries.
“You go back to sleep. I’ll go make her some formula,” Lu Zhou said, sitting up.
He hadn’t had enough sleep either, but thanks to his previous training at the border, he was wide awake as soon as he woke up. He didn’t have any morning grumpiness and moved quickly to get the bottle.
“Never mind. I’ll feed her,” Shen Yihuan said, stopping him. She sighed. “I can’t go back to sleep anyway.”
Lu Zhou turned the bedside lamp to its lowest setting and sat on the side, watching Shen Yihuan feed the baby.
He paused for a moment and said, “How about I sleep in the guest room with the baby from now on?”
Shen Yihuan, who was dozing off while feeding the baby, laughed. “I’ve only heard of the mother and baby staying together during the confinement period. Why are you and the baby sleeping in the guest room?”
Lu Zhou got up and put a jacket over Shen Yihuan’s shoulders. “She always wakes you up.”
“And Mr. Lu, where are you going to get milk when she wakes up?”
“I’ll make her some formula.”
Shen Yihuan pouted and patted the baby’s back. “Your daughter is picky. She won’t drink formula unless she’s extremely hungry.”
But aside from often waking up at night crying for milk, the baby was very well-behaved.
Later on, Qiu Ruru came to visit several times and couldn’t wait to be called “godmother.” The only problem was that the baby couldn’t talk yet, so she couldn’t hear her call her godmother.
The baby’s name was finally decided after she turned one month old.
Lu Ying.
The “Ying” from “Yingtao.”
With Shen Yihuan’s and Lu Zhou’s genes, little Lu Ying was already a little beauty as she grew. Her features were almost identical to Shen Yihuan’s when she was a child.
When they took her out, everyone praised her for her beauty.
Little Lu Ying was very mischievous by the time she was one year old.
She couldn’t walk steadily yet, so she crawled everywhere.
One time, Shen Yihuan wasn’t paying attention, and she crawled into the room where Shen Yihuan kept her cameras and work. One of her SLR cameras was on a chair.
Little Lu Ying reached out curiously and pulled the strap, causing the camera to fall to the floor.
Shen Yihuan was startled by the sound and was afraid Lu Ying might have gotten hurt. She ran over quickly and saw Lu Ying blinking her innocent eyes. The camera was on the floor next to her feet, and the lens was broken.
“How did you crawl in here all by yourself!”
Shen Yihuan picked her up and handed her to the nanny.
When Lu Zhou came home from work that night, Shen Yihuan pointed at Lu Ying and complained.
She handed the broken camera to Lu Zhou. “Look what your daughter did. She’s only one year old and she’s already breaking things that cost tens of thousands of yuan.”
Shen Yihuan had noticed that everyone else’s hearts would melt when they saw little Lu Ying. Even Commander Lu couldn’t keep a straight face around her. Lu Zhou, however, was the exception.
Perhaps because from pregnancy to birth, little Lu Ying had been constantly “tormenting” Shen Yihuan, Lu Zhou hadn’t had much time to bond with her in the short year they had together.
He had the makings of a very strict father.
Although Shen Yihuan herself was undisciplined in the past, she had grown up in a “crooked” way. She wanted to raise Lu Ying properly, so she handed the baby and the camera to Lu Zhou and told him to give her some loving education. Then, she went to work on her photography pieces that were due in a few days.
Even though little Lu Ying couldn’t understand what people were saying yet.
But rules had to be established early on.
________________________________________
In the bedroom, the man and the baby sat face to face.
Lu Ying blinked at Lu Zhou, looking innocent and pitiful.
But it didn’t work on Lu Zhou.
“Were you a bad girl today?” Lu Zhou put the broken camera in front of Lu Ying and pointed to it. “This is Mommy’s work stuff. You can’t touch it.”
Lu Ying continued to blink at him.
She patted the camera with her soft hand and pulled the strap to move the camera to the side.
Lu Zhou watched her.
Lu Ying could already stand and walk, but she had to hold onto things. She struggled to take a few steps forward.
Lu Zhou was afraid she would fall and reached out his hand.
Lu Ying held onto his arm to stand up on the soft bed and took two steps forward to get in front of Lu Zhou.
“Dad, Dad,” she said softly.
“...” Lu Zhou glanced at the broken camera next to them and said with a straight face, “Calling me Dad won’t work.”
Lu Ying took two more steps. Her soft little hand moved from his arm to his shoulder. She crouched down a little and gave him a big, wet kiss on the cheek.
“...”
When Shen Yihuan came back into the bedroom after finishing her work, she saw the father and daughter sitting on the floor playing with building blocks.
And her poor camera was left on the bed, forgotten.
“???”
She closed the door and grabbed a cushion to sit down next to Lu Zhou. “Did you betray me?”
Lu Zhou was focused on watching Lu Ying put a triangular block on top of the tower. He said absentmindedly, “Hmm?”
Shen Yihuan nudged him. “Did you educate her?”
“I’ll go buy you a new camera tomorrow,” Lu Zhou said.
Shen Yihuan narrowed her eyes. “Tell me, how did your little sweetheart win you over?”
Lu Zhou smiled faintly. “She just kissed me.”
“...”
Lu Zhou had betrayed her.
He had gone from being a strict father to a new-generation “daughter slave.” But what Shen Yihuan didn’t expect was that Lu Ying had the ability to make her own father so obedient.
Under Shen Yihuan’s influence, Lu Ying developed her own sense of aesthetics by the time she was three.
One day, Lu Zhou was in his study on the phone with the person in charge of his military project, discussing the next steps. Halfway through the call, Lu Ying came in.
She was carrying a bunch of things.
She climbed onto Lu Zhou’s lap. Lu Zhou wrapped one arm around her to prevent her from falling, while he held the phone in his other hand and continued to talk about work.
“Please wait a moment. I’ll send you the file.”
Lu Zhou held the mouse in his left hand and had just clicked “send” when the little kid on his lap started prying at his fingers.
He covered the phone with his hand and looked down. “What’s wrong?”
Lu Ying looked up. “Daddy, give me your hand.”
“Sit still on Daddy’s lap and don’t slide off,” Lu Zhou said, pulling her up a little higher, and gave Lu Ying his right hand.
He was swamped with work and couldn’t pay attention to what Lu Ying was doing. His eyes were on the computer screen, and he would occasionally talk to the person on the phone.
Until he heard a little sound coming from Lu Ying.
He finally looked away from the computer and at her.
“...”
There were five or six bottles of different colored nail polish in front of the little kid. She had already painted all ten of her fingers pink, and now she had moved on to Lu Zhou’s hand.
He instinctively curled his fingers.
Lu Ying was stunned and looked at him, displeased.
“What are you doing?” Lu Zhou asked.
The person on the phone was startled. “What’s wrong, Captain Lu?”
“Nothing. I was just talking to my daughter. Please continue.”
Lu Ying waved the nail polish in her hand. “I want to make you pretty.”
Lu Zhou looked at her, a little helpless.
Lu Ying said, “Daddy.”
“...”
Fine.
She really was Shen Yihuan’s daughter.
It was just...
...nail polish.
Lu Zhou gave up and went back to work, letting Lu Ying do whatever she wanted with his right hand.
She painted each of Lu Zhou’s fingers a different color.
The colors were messy and crooked, and the skin around his nails was also stained. But Lu Ying was very happy.
She jumped off Lu Zhou’s lap, ran back to the bedroom to get her pink little fan, and ran back. She held Lu Zhou’s hand and fanned his nails to dry.
After a while, she walked to his other side.
“Daddy, your left hand.”
“...”
Lu Zhou sighed helplessly and gave her his left hand, using his right hand to type.
But then, when he put his right hand on the keyboard, he froze. He had overestimated a three-year-old’s aesthetic sense.
What in the world was this?
From his thumb to his pinky, the colors were red, yellow, green, black, and purple.
He looked at Lu Ying, who was now working on his left hand. “Okay, at least she knows to make them symmetrical.” They were the same red, yellow, green, black, and purple.
________________________________________
When Shen Yihuan got home, she saw Lu Zhou sitting on the couch watching TV, and Lu Ying was kneeling on the floor with her head down, doing something.
“You’re back,” Lu Zhou said, looking a little defeated.
“What’s Yingying doing?” Shen Yihuan asked, walking over.
Lu Ying turned around, sweetly called out “Mommy,” and then turned back to finish her project.
Shen Yihuan walked to the side and saw what was happening. She instantly bent over, laughing uncontrollably with her arms around Lu Ying.
Lu Ying was no longer satisfied with just painting his nails. She was now using crayons to draw on Lu Zhou’s hand, making patterns that were unrecognizable.
“Wow!”
Shen Yihuan genuinely praised her. “Our Yingying is so talented! What is this you’re drawing?”
“A bunny,” she said, pointing to one of the patterns.
“Where are its ears?”
Lu Ying blinked blankly.
Shen Yihuan took a crayon from her small backpack, looked up at Lu Zhou, holding back a laugh, and pulled his hand toward her. “Yingying, watch Mommy draw a little white bunny for you.”
Lu Zhou: “...”
Later that night, after they finally got Lu Ying to sleep, Lu Zhou’s arm was finally free.
Shen Yihuan handed the sleeping Lu Ying to the nanny, quietly closed the bedroom door, and went back to her bedroom with Lu Zhou.
She heard the sound of water running in the bathroom.
Lu Zhou was washing the crayon and nail polish off his hands.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t very effective.
Shen Yihuan leaned against the doorframe, her arms crossed, and watched him with a smile. She teased, “Why are you washing it off? You’re questioning our Yingying’s aesthetics!”
Lu Zhou looked at her through the mirror. “I asked her this afternoon why she didn’t paint yours.”
Shen Yihuan smiled. “Mm?”
“She said you would think it was ugly.”
Shen Yihuan laughed and rummaged through her vanity drawer for nail polish remover. But before she used it, she took a photo of Lu Zhou’s hand and posted it on her social media.
The manicure was truly hideous.
Lu Zhou’s hands were originally very beautiful, long and slender. They were so fair that you could see the veins underneath.
Finally, she used nail polish remover to get rid of the nail polish and makeup remover to wipe away most of the crayons.