The Pokemon Party

I've watched lots of kids go through phases of intense interests. At mother's group the boys seemed to go through a 'Thomas the Tank Engine'-dinosaur-pirate cycle. My niece has been through a Dora the Explorer obsession. And one of nephews has always had some particular collectible on the go. But my girls haven't really ever had a particular 'thing' they were into - until now. Lily has discovered pokemon and something about them just totally speaks to her.  Kim brought over a tub of pokemon characters she had for her boys when they were little and they have been endless playmates for Lil since.

For those unfamiliar with the pokemon thing, they are creatures with various powers that pokemon trainers (humans) have to catch and tame.  The pokemon live in litle pokeballs and come out to assume their real size, which can be tiny or giant.  Trainers engage in battles using their pokemon and have to chose the characters according to their stengths and abilities.  Pokemon can evole into new beings - the most famous, Pikachu, is the middle evolution of itself, the first being Pichu and the third being Rachu (I think I've got this right.  I'm learning a lot from Lily).  I think we've all embraced it at least in part because it is Lily's own thing, and it is so sweet to see her being thrilled by havig her own thing that she can tell us about as it is so often the other way around.

A few weeks ago Lily was thrilled by coming up with the idea of having a pokemon birthday party.  I knew that in all likelihood no one in her kinder would be at all familiar with pokemon.  They were popular with kids about 15 years ago and now are really a gaming thing, much beyond four and five year olds.  But who cares?

Grace drew a pikachu for the invitations, Nina made pokeball decorations, and all my kids dressed up as characters and did a fanatstic job of running the party.  I don't know how we ever did kids parties without their help, especially at kinder age when the parents mostly stay for the party so Craig was busy playing host.  We played the usual games, I made a terrible hash at decorating cakes to look like pokemon (they are laughably hilarious) and the children were adorable.  Have little kids got nicer or am I more tolerant (unlikely)?  No tantrums, everyone was polite as could be and sweet as pie.  I didn't get a decent photo of the cake but to be honest there wasn't a photo that could be taken to make that cake look decent.  Picture a round icecream cake, covered half in red jelly frogs, half in white marshmallows and with a mint pattie in the middle.  A dentist's dream.

FIVE

Lily turned five. It's a big deal, five and takes us well out of the world of very early childhood. There will soon be no more kinder, no more Fridays just the two of us. Before long she'll be reading and making her own bed and expanding her world outside the family. Everything about how I feel about this has already been written - probably throughout the recorded history of humanity -in more eloquent and appropriate words than I could hope to find so I won't indulge my own somewhat divided emotions. Instead I'll record the gorgeous gifts her sisters made for her: Nina a little stuffed bunny that Lily named 'Bunette'; Ruby, who loudly declares that she 'does NOT like sewing' made a little penguin wheat pack, which Lily named 'Penguana'; Grace spent ages constructing a box, with lid, to contain her 'make your own Pikachu necklace' gift. She exhorted Lily several times to 'respect the box'.

I stole the idea for the cake from here and succumbed to Lily's penchent for pokemon with a Pikachu onesie. The big girls made up a treasure hunt for Lily to find their presents - they spent ages coming up with the rhyming clues and the collaboration was not always harmonious, but it paid off in cheap thrills for Lil. It was a kindergarten day so Lily handed out party invitations to her class and we brought in special fruit skewers (cheap thrills for the kinder kids - so easy to please at that age) and she had her little chest puffed out with pleasure and pride. It was a lovely lovely day.

Back to the 50's

Kinda hard to recreate the 50's in a Federation house.

Cuties

The Chocolate Game

This is what they're all hoping to get a bit of....

The Cake.  Yes, I know. But it tasted fantatsic and every singles skerrick was eaten.  That's mango swirl icecream there.

Disaster

Averted

When Ruby and Nina were little I thought I was pretty clever to have had children born two years and one day apart. One party, all the friends and family catered for in a single event, easy peasy. Of course the parties weren't actually that easy peasy, and by the time Nina was in kindergarten the sorts of games and activites that were suitable for 4 year olds didn't really cut it for 6 year olds. And thus ended joint birthday parties.

But now, doing parties on back to back weekends is, I admit, pretty tiring. However low key I think it'll be, it always involves at least a major tidying the house (and clean up of my sewing room whihc is also our dining room - not a small task), a fair bit of thinking and planning for games and such and quite a bit of cooking.

Because Nina was born the day after Ruby I always feel a bit guilty that her birthday comes in the wake of the previous days excitement and treats and cake and goodies. So I do try pretty hard to make sure that Nina's party doesn't feel second best, or like an after thought (even though one year we did delay it by six whole months.....).

This year I reckon we put on a very good show. Despite what I said in the previous post about not focusing much on the decorations, Nina wanted a 50's theme (we've been watching 'Grease', that's the only explanation I can come up with) and decorations seemed the only way to make that theme actually resonate. I couldn't think of much about 50's culture itself that I really wanted to replicate in party form. So we played Elvis and decorated with polka dots and bunting and the kids got decked out in skirts and bobby socks and that sufficed.

We played old fashioned party games, most I remembered from my own childhood - the chocolate game, passing the life savers toothpick to toothpick, musical statues, hot potato (our reverse sort of pass the parcel which avoids the need for a billion layers of wrapping paper) and various team games. I'm always pleasantly surprised by how much kids, even sophisticated kids with lots of technology and entertainment at their fingertips, still love party games. Warms my heart. The cake was, of course, the standard ice cream cake with lollies thrown on it. I swear these are getting worse with each party. Pretty soon they'll just be a carton of icecream and the guests can add their own lollies. I'm not sure that anyone will care much.

Cafe De Paris

Ruby turned eleven last month, but her birthday was during the school holidays and we didn't get ourselves organised until this past weekend to have a party.  Unwittingly I organised it on Mother's Day, but I like to think that I gave the other mothers the gift of a few hours alone while their off-spring pretended to be in Paris for the afternoon.

Ruby has long had a fascination for Paris.  I rashly promised to take her when she is sixteen and that won't be a terribly painful promise to keep.  I turned 18 in Paris and that is the last time I was there, sitting on the steps of Sacre Coeur, trying to smoke, trying to be cool, with my glamourous friend Susan who had moved there to study, and feeling like anything was possible.  Hard to believe that was 25 years ago.

Anyway, her party was 'afternoon tea at the Cafe de Paris'.  We had macarons and eclairs and 'champagne' and petit fours, as well as party pies and cocktail franks and entirely un-French party games, such as the new-to-me 'chubby bunny' (look it up, it is most decidedly not sophisticated), pin the mouth on the Mona Lisa and a blindfolded makeover which produced some hilarious results.  There is nothing quite like the excitement generated by a group of ten and eleven year old girls. 

The cake was the now traditional ice-cream number, hastily decorated with curly wurly bars, maltesers and strawberry and cream 'flowers' at the base.  It didn't look all that flash but it tasted delicious.  And the really lovely thing about kids this age is that they are old enough to appreciate the effort involved and young enough to still be thrilled by the lollies.

I was especially pleased at the costumes we managed to rustle up out of existing clothes and a bit of ribbon I already had.  We only had one beret which went to Ruby, but an old bowler hat, french braids and a moustache gave a frenchish air to the others.   Lily went as a mime.  Perhaps it was the mask of face paint, perhaps it was because she was meant to be silent, but she was suprisingly chatty and confident, playing all the games and even holding hands with some of the guests - very unusual for our Lil, master of the baleful stare, the dirty look and the pouty lip.

I'm getting these birthday parties down pat now.  I'm learning where it pays to expend energy (orgnise the games and activities, have yummy fod that will get eaten) and where it doesn't (decorations, fancily decorated cakes).  Even given that Ruby and Nina shared a party for the first 7 years, I've still hosted 25 birthday parties, with another one this weekend.  I guess I should have figured a few things out.

Fantastic Mister Fox

I saw a pattern for Felix Fox, by Cynthia Treen Studio at my local fabric stop in Jamaica Plain last year.  How far away and long ago that already seems.  I bought the pattern, meaning to make it for Nina for Christmas but there were visits to New York and Washington and things to do that meant sewing took a back seat.  Also the pattern called for pipe cleaners to be inserted in the arms and legs for positioning and I couldn't for the life of me figure out where to buy pipe cleaners in Boston.

Instead I sewed him up for her birthday - I would have liked him to be a bit more orangey, but the only orange felt available at the time was a bit bright, so he is brown instead.  And for some reason his smart red suit looks rather like pyjamas, but that's okay.

I added the satchel, felt envelop with letter from Mousie Brown, and folder with tiny presonalised pencil and miniature note pad.  This is so very up Nina's alley (and also so very up mine).  I did try to make a cat (but without a pattern) for Ruby, but that is still a work in progress.  My first attempt came out as a possum/rat/bilby cross.  Definitely not feline.

Disco Seven

Ruby and Nina collaborated on Grace's present, making her a stone hedgehog and a special book to hide treasures in.  They asked me for a really dull book title that no one would to read and I gave them a few ideas, but they landed on the 'History of Taxation in Australia' by B.Oring (get it?).  It reminds me of a job interview I went to as a final year law student.  I knew where I wanted to work but wasn't sure I'd get offered 'articles', as they were then known, at the law firm of my choice, so I applied for various other firms, including one that specialised in taxation law.  The interview went along these lines: 'So I see that you haven't done tax law yet?' 'Uh, no.' 'You know that we are a taxation law specialist firm?' 'Uh yes'. 'Do you intend to do tax law?' 'Um no.' 'Well I strongly recommend you do tax law.'  Silence. We looked at each other, the interviewer and I.  We'd only been in the interview for about 5 minutes and he clearly didn't know what to do, so he gave me a tour of the library - a library in which, it was abundantly apparent to us both, I would never have the opportunity to work. When a respectable amount of time had passed, he hastily made his escape, leaving me to find my own way out.   

Grace was delighted, which was good because it was a lot of work ruling all those straight lines to look like the pages of a book.  Lily did a colourful drawing of eyes? peacock feathers? a tree with leaves? None of us know, and she changes her mind frequently.

Grace had settled on a disco party, so I did my now traditional 5 minute icecream cake (gotta work fast before the icecream melts).  I have learned that hours labouring over amazing cakes is not time well spent.  Chuck some lollies and sprinkles on it and watch it get wolfed down in minutes.

Grace had a sparkly skirt and a tinsel wig which she abandoned after a few dances as it was making her head hot.  Her friends danced shyly at first and then with increasing abandon until it couldn't really be called dancing - more leaping on each other in a display reminiscent of a 'stacks on'.  We did the limbo and played muscial chairs and danced like our favourite animals and then had honey joys and lemon slice and cocktail franks and all the traditional party food (but not chocolate crackles which I cannot abide).  Grace opened her presents, we danced some more, had the cake and the party was over.

Grace at seven is such a pleasure.  She remains enthusiastic, generally happy, sweet and just the slightest bit vague.

What Does a Horse Say on Your Birthday?

Craig turned 47 last weekend. Nina explained that the horse decorations and riddle was appropriate because 1 August is the horse's birthday (in the southern hemisphere). I don't know how or why she knows that.

Lily drew a picture of our old dog Pablo.

Grace drew a picture of Daddy.

Nina made a teeny tiny mouse and a teeny tiny surfboard (it's the third surfboard she's made for Craig now), packaged in the handmade horse box.

And Ruby made her famous ooey gooey brownies. They are very very good.

We went to the footy and sat in the cheer squad and waved flags and pom poms (Thanks Terrence and Bede) and I discovered that Bulldog supporters have a strong sense that the world, most especially embodied by the umpires, is against them and their kind. I was quizzed about my affiliations by the man sitting next to me who must have sensed that I was not 'born a bulldog' like our eldest, who has the certificate to prove it. We provided Lily with the unique (amongst our girls) experience of watching her team win and we had a crazy late dinner with friends in Chinatown which the kids survived fuelled by lemonade and spring rolls.

Sewing Party

For Nina's eighth birthday she had a little sewing party. Four friends came over and we made bags. A few days before the party she was suddenly struck by doubts - what if her friends thought sewing was boring? As it transpired they all did really well. We didn't get to sew buttons on as everyone was getting hungry but we sent them home with little sewing kits in their party bags so they could do it themselves. How adorable is that fabric with the children and deer? A spontaneous purchase from Spotlight that I couldn't go past. The Miffy fabric I bought in Japan, and that Owl and Pussycat is an old Heather Ross which I have always adored.

For birthday cake Nina requested a pavlova with raspberries and blueberries. As it is past berry season it was the most expensive birthday cake topping I've ever encountered.

The bags themselves turned out reasonably well. Inevitably they don't look perfect and that was not the aim. I think the guests were pretty thrilled with themselves and I hope they had fun. It was quite a lot of work during the party itself, but the preparation was minimal - just cutting strips of fabric and setting up the room to accommodate seven sewers.

I've been thinking of offering to run a children's sewing party as an item in our blind auction at the school fete so this was sort of a dry run. My feeling is that I wouldn't want to do any more than 5 kids by myself, and wouldn't recommend it for children under eight. And maybe I'm not actually that altruistic to volunteer a whole precious day to entertain other people's children. Maybe it isn't the sort of thing that anyone would be interested in bidding on anyway. What do you think? If you weren't a crafty type who could do it yourself, would you want a sewing party for your child? I'll need to think about it some more.