Myles 的 生 日 (Myles' birthday)
Myles is five years old. I am competely flabbergasted at the very idea that I have a five-year-old son. Really.
We started the day with cake and singing Happy Birthday in Chinese with our tutors. Myles absolutely loved the Beijing Opera fork and spoon his teacher, Li Laoshi, gave him.
For this party I made Oatmeal-Yogurt Cake from one of our Moosewood cookbooks. Knowing that Chinese people generally don't like very sweet things, I cut back on the sugar a teeny bit and completely omitted the vanilla.
In the evening, we invited one family over for Myles' idea of a small birthday party, a Taco Party. I just didn't have the energy to invite eight or ten kids over for anything this year, so letting Myles have a dinner party and picking the menu was my way for making up for that. However, between make-your-own tacos, yellow cake with chocolate butter cream icing (I made my own this year!), balloons, and one of Myles' favorite gifts, Silly Putty, the house was an interesting shade of disaster even with only three kids.
So now when Myles is asked, "Ni ji sui le," he pauses a minute to remember that, yes, he is actually five. Or rather, wu sui.
His main cake was baked and decorated to his exact specifications. Yellow cake, chocolate icing, sprinkles, and a big number 5. I am so lucky he hasn't been to too many birthday parties where the cake is a fancy professionally decorated work of commerical art. I am also so lucky this tasted better than it looked.
Randy and I got Myles a few more sets of these Early Learning Centre knights he's been buying after the last few catalog jobs. He's been working a bit, and after each job he can buy himself a toy in the 100-200 RMB range, and we save the rest of his income. Within the last few weeks he bought two knights sets, with his eyes on future purchases he wanted to make with his own money. "Mom," he says at one point, "you need to call Frank and book me more work. I want that catapult."
So for his birthday, Randy and I decided that he didn't need to wait for more work to get the catapult, and a set of bad guys (huai ren) to man the catapult.
Our apartment is a battleground. The good guys shore up their defenses.
The knight in the middle is particularly heroic. Myles says they call him Dragon-Slayer, though the bad guys call him something else, Dragon-Baby.
Needless to say, the catapult does not throw just the little plastic bolders that came with it. Small lincoln logs, bouncy balls, anything that fits in the basket, really.
I just love ELC toys, but I don't think they are available in the US. They are out of the UK, so available in Hong Kong. They are really fantastic.
We started the day with cake and singing Happy Birthday in Chinese with our tutors. Myles absolutely loved the Beijing Opera fork and spoon his teacher, Li Laoshi, gave him.
For this party I made Oatmeal-Yogurt Cake from one of our Moosewood cookbooks. Knowing that Chinese people generally don't like very sweet things, I cut back on the sugar a teeny bit and completely omitted the vanilla.
In the evening, we invited one family over for Myles' idea of a small birthday party, a Taco Party. I just didn't have the energy to invite eight or ten kids over for anything this year, so letting Myles have a dinner party and picking the menu was my way for making up for that. However, between make-your-own tacos, yellow cake with chocolate butter cream icing (I made my own this year!), balloons, and one of Myles' favorite gifts, Silly Putty, the house was an interesting shade of disaster even with only three kids.
So now when Myles is asked, "Ni ji sui le," he pauses a minute to remember that, yes, he is actually five. Or rather, wu sui.
His main cake was baked and decorated to his exact specifications. Yellow cake, chocolate icing, sprinkles, and a big number 5. I am so lucky he hasn't been to too many birthday parties where the cake is a fancy professionally decorated work of commerical art. I am also so lucky this tasted better than it looked.
Randy and I got Myles a few more sets of these Early Learning Centre knights he's been buying after the last few catalog jobs. He's been working a bit, and after each job he can buy himself a toy in the 100-200 RMB range, and we save the rest of his income. Within the last few weeks he bought two knights sets, with his eyes on future purchases he wanted to make with his own money. "Mom," he says at one point, "you need to call Frank and book me more work. I want that catapult."
So for his birthday, Randy and I decided that he didn't need to wait for more work to get the catapult, and a set of bad guys (huai ren) to man the catapult.
Our apartment is a battleground. The good guys shore up their defenses.
The knight in the middle is particularly heroic. Myles says they call him Dragon-Slayer, though the bad guys call him something else, Dragon-Baby.
Needless to say, the catapult does not throw just the little plastic bolders that came with it. Small lincoln logs, bouncy balls, anything that fits in the basket, really.
I just love ELC toys, but I don't think they are available in the US. They are out of the UK, so available in Hong Kong. They are really fantastic.
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