Happy Birthday!

My little girl turns 2 today but ironically, there'll be no big celebrations or cake cutting for her, just hugs, kisses and well-wishes.

If you're thinking about how sad that is, don't. Alicia had not one but TWO birthday celebrations last weekend. One for friends and the other for the extended family. We couldn't do them today as venues were booked out, my cousin's getting married and god forbid we even contemplate the inauspicious thought of after-the-actual-day celebrations.

Most people wouldn't even have a celebration for a 2 year old's birthday - they're too young to understand, they say. But hey, given we only do this once a year and she'll have photos to look at when she gets older, we went for it.

We held the party at Raffles Town Club in one of their function rooms. The best part of this was that they had birthday party packages which includes decoration, party packs and games which really saved me the trouble of trawling through the Concourse party shops like I did last year to assemble the party packs.

Alicia had a blast even before the guests arrived checking out the balloons and playing with the decorative plastic hats that adorned the room.

As a sign that our parents network is growing, last year we had like 4 kids at Alicia's party, this year we had like 15! The thing with kids' parties is that you have to have something that entertains them, this in turn keeps the parents happy as well as they get to indulge in adult conversation with the other guests. So Ray decided to get a clown.

Not having much experience in clown selection, I simply searched for someone on the web and went on blind faith. The programme included a ventriloquist act, magic show and ballon sculpting for an hour and at the prices they charged, anyone would have been incentivised to put on a silly outfit and entertain children!

First up was his ventriloquist act with "Dodo" the duck. Not that I've seen many a ventriloquist in my time but it was so not what I expected from a pro. He was so unintelligble during his act that our friend's 4 year old son turned around and exclaimed "WHAT IS WRONG WITH THAT DUCK?" Sheesh....

Fortunately, things got better from there (it couldn't have gotten much worse). His magic show was credible and he even pulled out a live bunny rabbit which of course, thrilled the kids to no end. And he ended it off with balloon sculptures for all the kids which was always a perennial favourite.

As all kids' parties experts would say, keep it short and sweet. The duration of the party usually corresponds with the age of the child. So in this case, it was slated for two hours and it was time to bring out the cake. The problem with cakes is that you always have to match or top what you had last year. And Alicia's cake last year looked like this...

So we went back to the same 3D cake makers, e-creative, and ordered another character that Alicia likes. She even had a say in which character she wanted. Here's what we ended up with.

This time around, I didn't hired a pro photographer to take the pictures which is why the cake might look less delectable. On hindsight, this was a mistake. It was so difficult to entertain the guests, watch the kid, keep the party going and try and take good quality pictures at the same time.

In any case, everyone seemed like they had a good time. The rest of Alicia's second birthday pics can be found here.





How quickly time flies....Alicia's already two and will actually be starting nursery class next year. Here's a look at how she looked like a year ago and now: