Happy Birthday Miya!

Miya turned four on Friday.

This is the first time she has had a birthday at home, and she was very excited.  For her first and second birthdays we were on holiday in Beijing, and for her third birthday we were on holiday in London.  So, for the first time, she got to have a real birthday!  On Thursday night, after Miya went to bed, we blew up balloons and stuck them up all around the lounge.

Mulan had given herself the duty of wrapping all the presents, so during the week presents had been slowly piling up in the lounge.  On Friday morning, Miya opened them all.  Mulan gave Miya one of her old, first chapter books, some coloured pencils and a drawing.  Mama gave Miya pencils, a rubber, a pencil-sharpener and a T-shirt that she had bought in Taiwan.  I gave Miya the books I bought the other day [blog entry lost] and some jigsaw puzzles.  A letter had arrived from New Zealand earlier, with lots of little things from the cousins, including a “4” badge.  Miya was very happy.

Yesterday, we had the traditional birthday party.  We invited a few friends to come in the afternoon.  I made a cheesecake (it seems to be our family tradition that I make a cheesecake for the birthday cake), Mama made fairy bread (homemade bread with hundreds and thousands on), and we all jointly made homemade pizzas.

We had planned to have some traditional party games (pass the parcel and pin the tail on the donkey), but just before the party started Miya was sick and had a slight temperature.  We are still not sure whether it was excitement and nerves that caused it, or whether it was a bug, and we were strongly considering postponing the party until next week.  But we couldn’t get hold of people and the friends started arriving, and Miya seemed okay, so we continued.  However, we decided to keep things simple, and just let them have a free play time rather than organising the party games.

Miya crashed into bed last night, one very happy big four-year-old.