Happy Birthdays!

Lucia and Magdalena both celebrated birthdays in the past week - our "7-11" girls, as my dad calls them. Lucia turned three on October 7, and Magdalena celebrated her first year with us on October 11! Since I am so delinquent in my post, this will be another long one to describe the three parties we held.

We are finally almost recovered from the events that I planned last week. Lucia's actual birthday was a Thursday, and the first day back at school after the long autumn national holiday. We baked cupcakes and took them to her pre-school class. The teachers there also bought her a cake, and brought one of the huge flaming candles in for her! She did a game where she carried a blow-up globe around a circle with the months stemming out from a picture of a planet. In the center was a candle, and she had to circle the earth three times to symbolize her three years of life. I wish I could have been there, but we had friends in town (a whole other blog post to come later on that wonderful visit!) - so I had to content myself with the pictures the teachers took with my camera.
Here are the photos of Lucia's school birthday:




The cupcakes I made for Lucia to take - she got the pink L (we only needed 19, so missing one "U"):

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Walking around the world:

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Blowing out the center candle:

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Eating the cupcake from Mama:

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Birthday cake with the great candle - it is a little disturbing (these are NOT allowed to be sold in the US that I have seen):
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Here is what it looks like all opened up:

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Lucia and her pengyou Jin Gang:

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Enjoying her school party:

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Next up, we held a birthday party at home on Saturday the 9th for several kids in Lucia's class. We also invited siblings (if they wanted to come), so including Lucia and Magdalena, we had 11 kids at the house, and 6 moms. I was slightly unprepared for my first kiddie party. We invited them for 10 am, and by 10:15 we were all at the little park at our living community. I thought they'd play for an hour, but they were crying and hungry by 11, so it was back to the house for homemade cheese pizza (thanks, Alex!). Since Alex expected 15 more minutes to prep, only one pizza was ready when we got back, so the eating was more of a two-tiered thing, and some kids were done when others were still eating. Thus, I busted out the cake immediately so as to prevent pandemonium from breaking out and we sang and lit another huge crazy candle.

The cake eating also deteriorated once the kids had their fill, so we quickly moved on to presents. This was the most hectic time, as all the kids wanted to "help" Lucia open her presents. Lucia was so flustered, that after opening one present (including a book), she took off to the living room to read the book by herself rather than deal with the horde pressing in on her.

Finally, I took over and made sure that she got to open her own presents, and kept the other kids at bay. Once the gifts were opened, all the kids pounced and started playing with them, so no one noticed as one little boy dumped half the canister of fish food into our recently acquired fish tank (still need to do a post on this!). Fortunately the boy's mother offered to take the tank home with her, and they cleaned it, bought some new fish and a sucker fish, and now it looks better than ever and we don't have to worry about what will happen to the fish when we're all out of town next month!
Here are the highlights from Lucia's home party:




Lucia and her cake (Alex made this one - yellow with chocolate frosting, and very yummy!)

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Thanks to our neighbors for loaning us the extra folding table and chairs - without which we would have had a nightmare trying to seat the kids!

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On the swings with her friend Bria:

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On the slide with her friend Sarah:

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Lucia eating pizza with Dylan and Bria flanking her:

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Mama and Lucia - this is what the candle looks like prior to being lit:

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Can you blame her? (I did not notice she did this at the time):

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Here it is opened nicely:

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Blowing out the candles:

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Kids eating cake:

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Enjoying her presents:

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Even Magdalena got some pizza, but no cake till the next day...:

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So despite the fact that Alex and I were EXHAUSTED after this party, we still had another one to go the next day! (Segue - Magdalena took her FIRST STEPS after the party when Lucia went to take an unsuccessful nap. In the 10 minutes that Lucia stayed upstairs, Magdalena walked to me several times - two or three steps each, and since then has really taken off with her practicing! She still mostly crawls, but first steps two days before her first birthday is pretty good, especially considering that she didn't crawl till 10.5 months!). Anyway, I digress.

We decided several weeks ago to do a joint "Chinese" birthday for Lucia and Magdalena, though mostly for Magdalena. When I thought about who she sees the most here in China, after us it is our ayi Juanzi, and our driver Chen! Also, she sees my Chinese teacher (first Yanny, now Cathy), and I couldn't very well invite my teachers without inviting Alex's (another Cathy), so we had a Chinese "Shengri" for both girls on Sunday, October 10. I was pretty nervous about what to serve, since most Chinese people don't really like cheese or other western appetizers. In the end we did homemade meatballs - success! Also homemade bread, carrot and cucumber slices, fruit slices, nuts, chocolate chip cookies, and a delicious carrot cake (made with mashed bananas that you could not taste and carrots) with a lemon zest buttercream frosting (again, thank you Alex!). Our guests brought gifts for the girls, which was nice, and our ayi also brought her daughter who is just a few months younger than Lucia, so that was pretty fun for the girls. All in all, it was a successful few days, though left us completely exhausted and not wanting to cook or bake for a while!



The party gang: Alex's teacher on far left, then my current teacher, my previous teacher (switched due to a busy schedule for her), Chen our driver, Juanzi our ayi, Juanzi's daughter, and us on the other side of the table:

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Here we four are! The cake says "Shengri L 3 + M 1" - Shengri in Chinese characters, which means birthday. I did not have enough decorative frosting left from the tubes I bought in the US to write "Kuaile" which is like Congratulations. You say "Shengri Kuaile" here for Happy Birthday:

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Here we are singing Happy Birthday (ju-ni shengri kuai-le!)

Happy Birthdays Sisters!

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We saved a piece of Lucia's cake for Magdalena too, and started her out on that one:

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Not too sure about it, but I think she liked it:

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Magdalena also got into the carrot cake (or more likely, the lemon zest frosting!):

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Way to go, sweetie!

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There is a game the Chinese play where you put a bunch of objects in a circle on the child's first birthday, then set the kid free in the center to go for whatever they like best. We put out a doctor's toy, a purse with 8 RMB (good luck amount!), a baby doll, a can of beer (!), some plastic kitchen toys, a toy airplane, a U of O plush duck, and a soccer ball. Magdalena made a BEELINE for the soccer ball! It was pretty funny - I guess some kids take their time, some choose several things, and some don't move at all! But Magdalena really loved that ball!

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Video of the choice:

More presents! Both girls really liked this giraffe from our ayi:

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Lucia loves the plastic food / kitchen stuff - here is a set I got her for 35 RMB, or about $5:

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Magdalena was more into the ripping of the paper than the gift:

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Gifts, gifts, and more gifts!

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All the kids enjoyed a dip in the ball pool too!

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