The Bub in the Belly: Happy 4th birthday Ryan! (Part 1)

Last Sunday evening, we invited some of Ryan's baby friends over for an early birthday celebration. Ryan turns four on the 22nd of this month and we will be celebrating his birthday in Malaysia with his cousins. Still, Ryan has been asking for his baby friends so we held a small gathering for him to catch up with them and, of course, for Richard and I to catch up with all the parents.

By "baby friends", I mean that we have known these little ones since they were born. They were all born in January 2009 so they are all turning four this month!

We got the food from various spots around the east. The stars of the feast were mee siam and laksa from Glory Catering. Then there was roast pork neck, tiny chicken wings and basil fried rice from Two Fat Men. We also picked up some beef rendang, curry chicken, chilli brinjal and ladies' fingers from Glory Catering. Still more - pork and lotus soup and sliced pork with spring onion, just in case the children needed something different.

Here's little Rachel sucking on a piece of pork neck, with bits of cucumber on her cheek. Yumz...

Trevor and Florinda brought their 3.5 month old daughter, Kate Lauren, who is already as tall as Rachel! Ee Fann and Shann also brought their 6.5 month old daughter, Zi Ern, so there were three little dragon girls at the party!

The rest of these photos were shot by Chris.

The cake was from The Patissier. I always order the strawberry shortcake flavour.

Ryan is obsessed with the alphabet so we asked the baker to put the whole alphabet on the cake, with "RYAN" in the centre. We left the design to them although we did think that the letters would be randomly scattered around the cake, instead of neatly arranged in alphabetical order. As it turned out, Ryan was very pleased that everything was in the correct order and kept singing the alphabet song while pointing to each letter!

The letters had soft little sticks in them so the children ate them like lollipops!

Our very-soon-to-be four year old. Love him to bits.

It was a fun night, especially for the four four-year olds! It was also great to sit down with the adults and catch up with them. In particular, we hadn't seen Trevor and Florinda since their new addition came along, so it was wonderful to check in with them and know that they are doing well and enjoying life as parents of two beautiful girls.

Here's a family photo! Little Rachel was fussing about something, but stopped just long enough to open her eyes for the shot!