Party: Fun stuff!

This is the last of my posts on the birthday party we organized for Rosabelle last Friday, 23 October. Very fittingly as well, since this will capture the fun on-goings of the day.

Being an anal PR person, I'm into run-downs, into schedules, into predictability, but you can oh so throw all these to the wind when it comes to having a children's party. The only thing certain was I invited the guests to come after 10:30am - RSVPs? Unthinkable. So at one point, I was shuddering to think what if nobody came, and poor Rosabelle was all decked up and looking at only the Ayi, Wayne and I.

And I only knew I had two major things on the agenda (apart from playing and eating, of course) - the cake cutting, and the selection of coming of age item (抓周). What time were these going to take place? I had no idea at all, everything was going to be play by ear. What time was the party going to end? Again, no idea at all - who can predict children's temperaments and sleeping times? (The last batch left at 1 pm.) Only thing I was glad about was there were no major accidents/incidents - i.e. kids pooing/peeing all over, kids falling and hurting themselves, kids fighting and squabbling, food/water knocking over (I purposely chose mineral water only, no messy cups - and chose the finger foods and children's snacks very carefully - nothing messy like seaweed or crumbly biscuits, haha!)...phew!

When I saw that most of the guests had eaten at least one round of food, out came the cake - a cute Hello Kitty face! Rosabelle was quite enchanted with the cake face, and kept pointing at/wanting to touch it.

When we all sang Happy Birthday to her (in Chinese, of course), she waved and even clapped happily, hehe!

It was hard to get a good family shot as there were two cameras and we were not all looking together at the same time - this is as good as it gets! And I helped her to symbolically cut the cake before we brought it aside for cutting up to give to the guests.

Qi Qi was devouring bits of the cream from the cake whilst on the side...

so Wayne quickly cut the fruit cake up to give to everybody.

I threw all caution to the wind (I asked for the bakery to put less sugar though) and let the birthday girl enjoy a slice of her birthday cake as well (didn't let her eat the cream though) - she liked it and finished 1.5 slices!

After the cake cutting, there was more playing and pigging out, and when I saw there was a lull in atmosphere, woo hoo, out came the second program on the agenda - the picking of items! I did my research beforehand and prepared a selection of objects - all of which she must never have seen before - to represent various careers. For example, dictionary - educational, shoes - explorer, golf glove - sports related, thermometer - medical, calculator - financial, ladle - food & beverage, seal - government-related, car/money - possession of car/money, highlighter - art, spool of thread - fashion, comb/lipstick/mirror - beauty related, thumb drive - technology, music DVD - entertainment, measuring tape - engineering, pen - literary...

So Wayne laid out all the items whilst I carried her away, and maybe it was because of the position I placed her in, but she first saw the calculator and immediately grabbed it. We gave her some more time to look around, as she must go away with this item for it to be counted.

She was also rather curious about other items like the ladle...

but quickly laid it down, only for Fei Fei to grab it and put the huge spoon into his mouth, washing it in his saliva, haha!

She also briefly picked up the seal, thumb drive, measuring tape, jigsaw car, and the pen. All this while, it was tough on the other kids (and their guardians) who could not reach out to touch the objects no matter how interesting they looked to them.

In the end, our girl still decided that she liked the calculator best.

It was hilarious how happy she was holding on to it, bouncing up and down and dancing, lifting it up high and screaming, as if announcing to everybody that 'This is it! I got what I wanted!'

She even went down on her knees and started to kiss and 'love' the calculator! It was very obvious that she had chosen the calculator.

So...what does this tell us? It tells us that she's going to be a player in the financial world, maybe? And supposedly that she's a very logical person. Hmm...so long as she does not become a loanshark, haha!

The guests had fun (I hope so?) at the party, and very importantly, it helped mark the special milestone of the coming of age for our darling Rosabelle. It was fun, and tiring, planning and preparing for this simple party with all the various errands, liaison, and self-made decoration etc, and I know she won't really remember this, but at least we have nice photos to remember this by, and hey, it's still the talk of the town for other other mummies in the yard who still thank us for a well-organized and fun party! *beam*