Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

Sparrow's first birthday party, Saturday 8 May, 2010

It's the last day of Sparrow's first year. Birthday party time! We decided not to have the party on her actual day because that was Mothers Day, and most of her friends would be off with their mums -grin-. (The next time Mothers Day lands on the same date maybe they'll all be an age where their mums are delighted to get rid of them and have some peace and quiet for a couple of hours.) So here's some pictures of the event.

In her party clothes, waiting for everyone to arrive. It turned out to be a reasonably nice day and not too cold - I was expecting rain and chill! But it was warm enough not to need jumpers. Sparrow is wearing just the new legwarmers (an attempt by me to find ways to keep her legs warm that don't hinder her crawling or standing) and her new Level 1 Human onesuit. We ordered it online - it's got roleplaying stats on it. Experience points are zero. Strength, wisdom, dexterity are all 3 (the lowest), constitution is 4, intelligence is 6 and charisma is 18 (the highest score possible). Kind of sums up babies, really. The only thing it's missing is the "Summon Mummy" spell, and possibly "Find Mischief".

Seasonal fruit platter. I think people were a little startled by the pomegranate and persimmon, not regular inclusions here. But Sparrow loves pomegranate, and I love the Fuyu non-astringent persimmons, and the whole mix made for a very pretty autumnal fruit platter (on a bed of snow pea sprouts - yum!). The only things I was missing were lillipillis, which are currently one of her favourite fruit, and feijoas which she and I also quite like. We pick these for her every time we go out walking if we pass a tree. It's hard to think what to serve for a first birthday party when most children are still limited in what they can eat. My main restriction was no egg or nuts in anything. But fruit and vegetable platters are always good, there were crackers and cheese and dips, and I had a pot of soy chai simmering on the stovetop for people to help themselves to.

And after a bit of a wait, everyone arrived! There are several babies here from mothers' group, plus people I know from science communication (Kath, Murphy, Melissa, Kristen). Jack and Jacob were the youngest, at five months and (I think) five weeks respectively (though Murphy is expecting so technically hers is the youngest :-). Only one other dad though. James coped. The room filled up pretty well. Thankfully there was more space in the other rooms for people to spread out into or find quiet space if they wanted. I'd been expecting people to sit mostly on the cushioned rug space and use this open area for more dancing and active playing - Sparrow even had all her favourite dancing songs on a CD that was running - but in the end this is how it went. I had lots of her toys out too, mainly the wooden ones, but also a few odd items like James' torch. It was already in the loungeroom and I just didn't remove it when I was opening up the space for use. He didn't really know why, I think, but the kids loved playing with it. Here it's spotlighting Sparrow.

The cake! I decided not to do a fancy cake given the age of all guests (though I have secret hopes for next year). Instead I did chocolate cupcakes in the microwave, using a packet mix. That meant that everyone got warm cakes, and every two and a half minutes I could put out another six cakes. So after the tray had first gone around people could keep helping themselves. I was motivated partly by not wanting to use the oven because you can't keep kids in the kitchen away from it and it does get warm, and also by not having got the cake sorted out well in advance due to a few poor-sleep nights. They came out very nicely. The three little figurines are cake decorations of girls playing different sports - hockey, bowls and tennis. Not chosen for any particular reason - that was just what the cake store had when I went past. So they have gone into Sparrow's figurine collection now. Next year she may have more definitely-expressed interests that I can do something with.

Sparrow liked the cakes. She wolfed the first one down almost in one bite, managing to get her mouth right around it to take in as much as possible. She's so my daughter. She is definitely keen on chocolate. (Which is why I'd originally planned to serve frozen fruit icecream for her birthday, and had chocolate-banana and peach-maple ready and waiting in the freezer - but it wasn't really warm enough for such cold food.) I had trouble taking photos during the party as there just wasn't a lot of light, so they all came out blurred. This one at least you can see Sparrow looking at the cake and reaching for it with both hands.

Maggie and Gordon had started out in the main room, but drifted into the book room to have their cup of tea where it was a little quieter. Then Melissa's girls Poppy Cinderella and Ella came in and got Maggie to read them some fairy stories, and some more children came in and looked at books, and mums followed, and eventually half the party ended up in here. I think every little girl must have tried out Gordon's lap (that's Ahlia on there at the moment, while Willow talks to Ahlia's mum Rochelle and Sparrow has a bouncy conversation with Willow's mum Ruth). The mothers' group offered to make him an honorary group grandad.

More fun and games. That's Clara in the middle, happily climbing on things with her mum Kaths. She has grown so much since we went to her first birthday party almost a year ago. Speaking of games, I had originally thought that it would be good to build a small model cardboard city and have our toddlers all go charging through Godzilla-style and film it. I would still love to do that, but I forgot that that had been my plan until the night before the party. So it didn't happen. I'd also thought of sticking bubble wrap to cardboard and putting it down as a surface to dance or crawl on, and had even set the bubble wrap aside, but that didn't happen either. Maybe another time. As it was the bouncy mattress on the floor in the bedroom didn't get found by most kids, so I think we had enough stuff around to play with. I don't have a photo of the present unwrapping, which added lots more books to the pile too. Sparrow isn't really up to ceremonial present unwrapping yet so I was going to leave it aside completely, but there were a couple of people who it was nice to hear about their gifts so we just did it quietly near the end of the party. We'd said on the invites 1-3pm, people arrived between 1:30 and 2pm, and most people left around 4. The last few left at 5, and I was very tired! Sparrow was very excited, and stayed wired for the rest of the night right up til the point where she passed out exhausted. It was a pretty good day for us all.