20 December 2010

I held Emily's birthday party a couple of days early due to our trip, ,and was thankful that the four friends I asked were all available. Given the season, it will always be hard to pick a date when guests don't have holiday or alternative party plans. As I had decided to have the party at home I couldn't ask any more or we would have been too cramped, especially as all the other mums have a second child now. It went a lot better than expected and with very few flare-ups on the kids' part, though naturally as they got tired after lunch it did become a little fraught now and again. Mia and Charlize didn't know the other two so I was glad to see them interacting most of the time.


I put out the childrens' food first and they did it justice. I went for finger food: sausages, potato wedges, carrot sticks, animal-shaped omlette slices, star-shaped mini-pizzas and chocolate crispy cakes with fresh fruit. I was glad I had been able to make it all myself, even down to the pizza dough.


We settled the kids in front of a DVD so that we could have a bit of peace to eat our food. I was worried that I would have a lot of food left over since we would be off to Taipei first thing, but the mums did a good job of demolishing the humus and crudites, smoked salmon wraps and mozzarella and cherry tomato sticks.



Finally, I brought out the cake and Emily seemed suitably pleased and surprised. She didn't quite manage to blow out all the candles before the others 'helped' her but there weren't any tears. I had fretted about the small size of the finished article, once all the off-cuts were taken away, but actually it was the perfect size for the number to feed. There was a lot of sticky, red icing smeared on faces and fingers, of course!