Nelly Turns One

Hard to believe how quickly the last twelve months have flown by. In the last week we celebrated (twice!) our little girl surviving under our care for a whole year, which is a pretty credible milestone I would say.

Mum flew out on the Friday before Nelly's birthday for a short stay with her favourite grand daughter. As mentioned in a previous post, we have been Skyping with AhMah and AhKong pretty much every weekend so Eleanor recognized mum immediately as that energetic lady from the TV. Mum has made a great recovery from her back surgery and was game enough to pick our little girl up for short periods for cuddles and relocating babies from dangerous areas when necessary.

I took the Monday off work for Elenaor's actual birthday on the 16th as we planned to have a small family party. John and Sheena drove down with the great grandparents who were delighted to see how gorgeous Eleanor looked in tartan (a birthday dress from her AhKong in Malaysia). It was the first of several costume changes that day as it's very difficult to crawl and play with toys when one is not accustom to dresses.

A little Chinese tradition is to give the baby a few gifts on her first birthday to help her along in life. New clothes so that she will always have something to wear, new shoes to take her to interesting places in life and best yet a whole chicken drumstick to guarantee wealth and food to eat. It seems like she's going to need it as our little girl absolutely demolished that chicken leg (with a little help from the parents to cut the meat off the bone) along with everything else that was served up for lunch.

Mummy and Daddy woke up early to decorated the cake, which turned out pretty well I think. The Vienna cream was probably a little rich but that didn't stop us from eating most of it. I've also started to develop a hatred for lighting birthday candles on windy days.

The following Saturday we invited a bunch of Eleanor's friends over for another party. They insisted on bringing their parents along too and we obliged, which made it one of the larger parties that we have had at our home. In preparation of the large event we composed a lengthy list of food to feed everyone, including a medium sized boneless ham. I've been keen on baking a glazed ham ever since we watched a special episode on Good Eats years ago so it's an understatement to say that I was a little excited. We ended up selecting an orange and mustard glaze which produced rather scrumptious results I would say.

In the end I think we over catered by a fair amount, which goes to show that our estimates shouldn't be based on how much food I would eat. At least we would have left overs for a week and the kids could feel free to drop half their plates on the grass.

The birthday cake for the Saturday party was decorated by our friend Christina, who is ever so clever, and was adorned with a cute chicken for our little girl. Everyone was thoroughly impressed with her efforts and the cake tasted great.

I tried to take as many photos as I could on the day and have put together a little collage in iPhoto on the iPad to try that feature out. Quite impressed with how easy it was to compose and share something. You can find the link here.

So that's one year down. I mentioned to Alison a while ago that I had never really imagined what it would be like to have a toddler. All my preconceptions about children began with an infant and immediately skipped to a walking, talking child asking about the origin of rainbows. The last six months have been surprising and absolutely delightful so I cannot begin to imagine how I will feel when Eleanor reaches her next verbal and locomotive milestones.