A man only turns 3 once, and when you do it, you want to celebrate in style. Our newly minted 3-year-old, Mr. Kai Despard Ratner, was intimately involved in the planning stages of his dinosaur birthday bash, choosing the frosting color of his stegosaurus cake (“I want blue, Mommy, a blue stegosaurus one, with chocolate!” He knows what he likes.); selecting the appropriate attack weapon for the stegosaurus piñata (an orange Giants wiffle bat); customizing his gift list – you name it, he was in on it. Well, it was actually Mommy and Daddy who made the piñata, and Mommy who made the awesome cake, and Daddy who got the decorations, etcetera – but without Kai to superintend, I’m not sure we could have pulled it off. (Here, for the truly committed, or those on a long conference call with the "mute" button on, is the youtube version of the party.)
My favorite part was the piñata – this thing was quite a project. We had hours of fun boiling the paste and layering newspaper strips onto a balloon that then popped, leaving us with a pile of gooey Shanghai Daily News; we started over again, got the shape, added paper plates for spine plates, and spiky tail, then waited a week or more for the creature to dry in the sauna of summertime Shanghai. In the course of the week Steggy came to look like he’d had botched liposuction surgery as the balloon sagged and died within his once-cavernous depths. We started to cover him with green crepe paper, but this turned out to be more time-consuming than we could deal with after long days of working and parenting – it felt like we were attaching individual blades of grass to make the whole outfield of AT&T Park using a toothpick. So Steggy just got a green landing strip down his back, and some eyes and a mouth. We stuffed him with candy and tiny dinosaur-themed toys we’d somehow managed to track down. When the time came to actually bash him open, though, Steggy proved a far worthier adversary than we expected. His long struggle against the Shanghai heat had toughened his hide to the strength of, well, a genuine stegosaurus. Kid after kid socked the tar out of him to no effect. I stepped up to the plate and managed to draw blood, candy that is, from the great beast, but in the end I was forced into an act of pure savagery, disemboweling him with my bare hands and showering his entrails on the floor in front of the children, much to their delight.
Why did we spend so much time on an event that Kai will certainly not remember by the time he hits 4? Because it was fun, that’s why. Not just for him, but for us. Dinosaur parties for 3-year-olds are a blast, and I recommend you throw one soon. Kai was just over-the-moon happy all day long, reveling in being the star of his show, but actually quite sweet to his brother and to his little friends. I did tear up a little bit when I saw a piñata on sale at a party store for 99 RMB (it was a horse, but we totally could have modified that thing into a stegosaurus in 10 minutes) – still, it was all worth it to see Kai blissed out. Here's our man almost blowing out his candles in front of his adoring fans, and here he is is his Buddy The T-Rex regalia, with a special guest appearance by Keegan.
Both Kai and Keegan are in just full-on adorable mode right now. Keegan calls out requests for his favorite bedtime songs (“Moonshadow, Daddy!”), and then sings along, tossing in every other word. Kai’s imagination is soaring; when we go in to him in the morning, he’ll have prepared an assortment of treats that he serves to us when we unzip the crib tent – things like purple coffee with whipped cream, which is pretty hard to find in China, so we appreciate it.
Our big project right now is packing -- we leave for the Meiguo, AKA The United States of America (perhaps you've heard of it?) in a mere 24 hours. I'd love to rhapsodize further, but I truly can't, I've got to go find my running hat, and my other sunglasses, and pack my shaving kit, and and and... you get the idea.
Here, then, in the obligatory grab-bag paragraph with the links I didn't fit in above. If I had a decent editor, and a staff, and an salary, I'd do it all in higher style, but you get what you pay for.
Our friend Sally Thornton stayed with us for a couple of days on her way to Anhui Province and Beijing; Allison and Sally hit the mean streets on a bike tour of Shanghai, and lived long enough to take a few pictures of it. We also went with Sally to Yu Yuan, and the boys and I were mesmerized by staring into the rocky ponds of the old garden. Come back any time, Sally! It's a great excuse to eat more ice cream. When not wearing a dinosaur suit, Kai can usually be found either watching Yo Gabba Gabba, asking to watch Yo Gabba Gabba, or dressing up as a character from Yo Gabba Gabba; here he is as Plex, the Magic Robot (please don't ask me to explain that). And yes, Keegan loves YGG just as much as Kai, if not more so. They share many passions, including squirting each other with water.
I'll see a few of you in America -- I wish it was ALL of you, more than I can say. Love and best thoughts to you, and I'll be back on the blog in August.
