"Happy Birthday to You..."

Today we celebrated Hannah Claire's first birthday with a little party for family. We didn't want to have too many people, as we didn't want to frighten her and derail any progress we'd made with attachment thus far. She was a little "touch me not" with close family at first, but warmed up more and more over the afternoon.





Our fun for the afternoon involved a Chinese custom called Zhua zhou where you lay out several different items in front of your child at the child's first birthday party to find out what they will be when they grow up. The object the child picks up and plays is supposed to be symbolic of the child's future career path. I read about this a nearly two years ago on Kobi's blog where Sherry did this for Kobi's first birthday. Apparently it left quite an impression on me as I remembered it when it was time to plan Hannah Claire's first birthday. The name of the ritual means "The catch of the year." In modern times the ritual is mainly for fun, but not long ago this ritual would effect the training that the parents prepared for their children.

toy dog - animal care

military training manual - military career

pen - writer

book - education

drum stick - music

digital multimeter (the yellow device) - engineering

camera - photography

twenty dollar bill - finance

gavel - law

American flag - politics

oral syringe - health care

spaghetti serving spoon - culinary arts

What did Hannah Claire go after? She fingered the drum stick for some time to the delight of her uncle, but didn't pick it up to play with it. We kept watching. After eyeing the military training manual and the digital multimeter (the yellow device that measures resistance, voltage, amperage, and ohms), she picked up the digital multimeter and put a corner of it into her mouth. That's it! She's interested in engineering, but would like to express her self with music as her hobby. I'm sure Kyle would love to go to Rose-Hulman and show you around 16 years from now. We can't have you going to Purdue, sweetheart! Hahaha! Interestingly, I'm checking out our digital multimeter... and it was made in Taiwan. How about that!






Let me put a disclaimer out there that we did this just for fun, and that our little bug can grow up to do anything she wants. There aren't a lot of party games one can play at a first birthday party. We'll have to save "the grand prize game" for a few years from now. I always liked playing that at parties with empty plastic Schwan's ice cream tubs, just like we were on The Bozo Show.




So... everyone wants to know if I let her have cake and ice cream. I didn't want to let her have it because we're not there yet with our eating skills for a preemie with an adjusted age of nine months. We just started working this week with Gerber's puffs and a little diced vegetables and fruits, so there's no way she's ready to have something like cake. She doesn't like cold things in her mouth yet, so ice cream isn't a good idea. After we sang "Happy Birthday" and I cut the cake, I let myself put the first piece of cake on her high chair tray. She had not had anything to eat or drink for two hours, so hopefully she wouldn't gag and puke in front of the party goers. She touched the cake, put a little bit of icing in her mouth, and started to cry. She didn't like the icing, most likely the texture. I got rid of the cake, cleaned her up and reassured her, and broke out something she knows... good old Baby Mum Mum rice crackers. That's still Hannah's favorite snack. She calmed down with a rice cracker, but only managed to land a third of the sweet potato puffs into her mouth. Sedona enjoyed the puffs later during clean up time.




Thanks to family members that traveled a couple of hours to come. We had a great time sharing Hannah's grins, laughs, clapping, high-fives, and a few cries with you. Hannah's relatives indulged her in all sorts of toys that require batteries and make very LOUD and repetitive sounds and a toy storage basket to contain/conceal toys in the living room.

Speaking of toys, Fisher Price has some sets of Little People that are Asian. If you can't find enough small sets that contain Asian Little People, you can purchase individual replacement Little People on eBay. Like... if you just want a Little People Asian Daddy, do a search for "fisher price little people Asian" and you'll find all sorts of singles for sale.

To the Happy Hippy, Rest assured... the baby safety foam is installed on the fireplace hearth and doing it's job at preventing our silly monkey from getting scrapes and goose eggs. :)