Akiva's One Year Old Birthday Party

Akiva’s one year old birthday is on Wednesday, 25th of January. We had his birthday party today on Saturday 21st. Today was supposed to be a good day according to Chinese calendar. We heard wedding fire crackers from out side (Chinese and Japanese prefer to have wedding on good day). On the other hand, weather was miserable. It was raining and cold (it was 40F but felt like 30F). All our friends in Shanghai decided to cancel their RSVP. However we had a lot of friends and families in Suzhou to come over to celebrate Akiva’s birthday.

Akiva got shoes from dady.

We had our baby sitter Gu, my Japanese mom friend Hatsushiba-san, her husband and their 13 months old son, Suzuki-san and 14 months old daughter, our apartment neighbor’s mom friend Zhu, her grandma and 11 months old son, our good friend Jack, Any and their 3 years old son, Jesse’s bar friend Jim, his wife and two years old daughter, and Laurence who is a good looking bachelor.

Hatsushiba-san, thank you for giving Akiva a nice wood rocker.

One of good thing about having babies at party is we don’t need entertain the guest much. Having baby is already entertaining. Plus most the time our guests are too busy to supervise their own baby.

Akiva loves banging. Thank you, Suzuki-san.

We made a lot of appetizers, deviled eggs, sliced turkey rolls, Jesse’s spicy tuna in cucumber (Martha Stewart inspired), chicken sausages, salsa and chips. I made deviled eggs. When I had a potluck at work, someone always brought it. I thought it is simple and a good party food. Jesse said deviled egg is only for ghetto party at white neighborhood in California. Chinese people and Jim from New Mexico loved my deviled eggs.

I was always afraid to have my own birthday party when I was growing up. I didn’t want to find out neither I don’t have friends nor I got only dorky friends. Akiva is a lucky boy despite we live in foreign country he has many friends to celebrate his birthday.