Our First Korean 100 Day Party

Things that make ya go “Awwwwwwwww…”

We recently attended our first ever Korean baby 100 day birthday party, and it was beautiful and very tasteful to be sure, but what I especially wanted to write home about was how guest attendance was “staggered”. In other words, we checked with the hostess throughout the afternoon as to whether it was too crowded in her home, and waited for a quieter time to show up, so the baby wouldn’t be over-stimulated/ over-tired.

At one point, I was even told very nicely that the baby had gone down for a nap and so it would be awhile more. Respect. Because we’ve all heard about the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend’s party where the baby is passed about all through the evening (and then people wonder why the baby is being “naughty,” i.e. crying a lot) – I’ve even read blogs where frustrated parents retrospectively wrote that if you are sick it should be a no-brainer NOT to carry the baby. (One furious dad spelled out the extent to which when baby is sick it’s really tough on the whole household and how he had then gotten so ill he couldn’t go to work – and missed some important meetings.)

This was the most super-respectful-of-the-baby’s-feelings party we’d been to, where that also added to the very tasteful ambience. The place was beautifully decorated, there was lots of specially catered food, expensive imported fresh flowers, new serve ware bought specially for the occasion……….. and a blissfully rested baby who took everything in with keen interest – in a markedly peaceful environment. I mean, you can see the Rockstars horsing about in some of the pictures so it’s not even like the other kids had to be robots – they got to be kids – but well, the baby got to be a baby.

It was, after all, his 100-day party 🙂

This is the Korean rice cake they give out in celebration… And baby will live to 100 years…

Steiff Bear to be handed down someday to baby’s own baby at his/her 100 day party (that’s what Steiff dolls are for, right? 🙂

(It was a lot grander when they started, we were one of the pre-arranged later-arriving guests… That didn’t stop the kids having lotsa fun though – just like all the other kids before them 🙂

(Rockstar got beat at chess by Birthday Baby’s big sis too 😀 after he lost his queen in a momentary lapse of patience – he agreed it was a good learning opportunity for him as well… That’s the best I could hope for – because I prefer kids not to win all the time, at this young age… Things always going their way I believe to not afford that many chances to learn from mistakes, from experiences… There are so many more things we can learn, and so I love not-too-painful failures… (Ok fine, lessons from painful failures might stick even more but I’m of course still a big wuss over my kids :D))