Asian in a Strange Land

Party time

Sofia turned 4, and we threw her her first honest-to-goodness birthday party.  Actually mostly Denise threw the party, and I was basically along for the ride.  We didn’t do anything big–inflatable pools, beach balls, sprinklers, party favors, cake and sherbert, lemonade, and a few of Sofia’s friends from church and the neighborhood.  Even so, Sofia was a bit overwhelmed and kept mostly to herself while the party was still raucous.  Oh, she had fun.  It’s just that she mostly had fun by herself.  We’ll have to work on that.

Enjoying birthday treats

Nothing like cake and rainbow sherbert to ease the antisocial jitters.

Rainbow cake

Speaking of cake, check out the awesome cake Denise baked.  It’s a rainbow!  I’ll leave the making-of details of this cake for Denise when she ramps up her blog (coming soon!), but suffice it to say that it was a ton of work.  Sofia seemed appropriately appreciative of the effort.

Laughing it up

As the crowd trickled away from the party, Sofia loosened up.  When she was left with one guest she really started cracking up.  It also helped that this boy was entertaining her.  Thanks again, [boy who's name I won't mention because I haven't checked with his parents and some people are really sensitive about being identified online].

Horn tooting

She was also a big fan of the party horns, which isn’t surprising since she loves her cheap plastic recorder so much.

Into it

After the party, Sofia put in some quality time with Flower–a Playstation 3 game we bought her for her birthday.  You play from a first person perspective, tilting the controller this way and that to turn and change directions, and any button press makes you go forward.  This is Sofia’s first real videogame (she’s played with us before, but only in the role of button-masher as I controlled the character on screen in Super Monkey Ball–hey, we won that game though), and it’s astounding how quickly she’s gotten the hang of it.  The first few times playing she had trouble differentiating turning the controller vs. tilting, wouldn’t stop tilting once she started so she’d go round and round in a never-ending circle, etc., but now she can really fly and steer through the virtual world, although she still overcompensates and makes me nauseous after I’ve watched her play for a while.  I’d better keep my skills sharp.  I don’t want her to beat me at a game until she’s well into her 20s.  Or 30s.  Maybe 40s.  Ok, never.

Crazy face

This was Sofia’s favorite crazy face for the day.  She would try to talk with her upper lip stuck out like that.  Not sure where she picked it up or why she thought it was funny, but she stuck to it for the better part of the day.  Crazy kid.

Monkey feet

As good as she is at Flower already, she’s also 4, which means she kept trying to control the game with her feet.  I snapped this shot right before I told her to stop.  We don’t need smelly feet on controllers, thanks.

Pop-up book

May I briefly draw your attention to the t-shirt Sofia is wearing?  That’s the “Loch Ness Imposter” shirt by threadless.com.  Sofia is cool.

We tried to make this a no-presents party–guests bring no presents and leave with no party presents (Who started the whole birthday-person-gives-guests-presents anyway?  It’s nuts.)–but of course somebody had to bring presents.  Thanks, S & A!  Actually, thank you for real.  I know we said no presents, but we (and particularly Sofia) appreciate the books you brought.  Sofia loves Beatrix Potter, so the Beatrix Potter pop-up book was perfect.  Very cute book.  The Shoemaker and the Elves book was very nice too, but of course the pop-up gets top billing from Sofia.

Speaking of presents, we also got her A Bug’s Life and Ponyo on Blu-ray.  Ponyo is Hayao Miyazaki’s latest movie, and although it’s cute and fun it’s definitely geared very much toward kids, small kids even.  Give it a look if you’ve enjoyed any of Miyazaki’s other movies or if you have kids, or both.

Happy day

It was a great birthday, thanks to Denise and our lovely guests.  Fun was had by all with a minimum of stress for the hosts.  Let’s keep all of Sofia’s birthdays this low key, and we’ll all be just fine.

Edit, 9/6/2010:
Since Beth gave me the go-ahead, the previously-unnamed boy pictured is Jackson.  And here’s another picture of the two of them goofing off.  Jackson was trying to blow his party horn out of his mouth into his party hat.  This picture was right after he succeeded:

Great success!