Tai turns one

Tai turned one year old last week. Throughout his birthday and the day before, we kept thinking about what we were doing exactly one year before—from Thu staying home but getting bored and going into work, only to feel cramping in the late afternoon, us stopping in at Zachary's pizza to fuel up for what was to be a marathon event, taking a quick nap at night because other parents warned us we wouldn't get much sleep, watching "Chungking Express" (a perfectly surreal movie to watch the night before giving birth), baking brownies after midnight for one last snack, timing every contraction to the minute, packing the car and heading out to Alta Bates Hospital at 3 a.m., being forced to wait in the triage area for hours partly because Thu had a higher tolerance for pain than other mothers, getting a room and hearing a nurse tell us at 8 a.m. that Thu would give birth in five hours, and finally Tai being born right on time at 1 p.m.

Okay, so that's more of the "birth story" that I never wrote when we started this blog. But now seems like an appropriate time to summarize it. In some ways, we were sad that one year had flown by already. Of course, Tai's first birthday was more of a reason to celebrate all the special gifts of this little guy who's brought joy into so many people's lives already.


And celebrate we did, with a great big party Saturday afternoon at a nearby park that included Tai's grandparents from LA and San Jose, his great Auntie Lilian who flew in from Hawaii, and dozens of his (parents') friends and family. The weather was beautiful and the food and red velvet cupcakes plentiful. Tai seemed to enjoy himself and held up well being the center of attention.


We played some fun games. The kids took several whacks at the Winnie the Pooh piñata until they split him in half, a visual that left some Pooh fans disturbed. Another fun game, this one from the Vietnamese tradition, was one where we laid out several objects on a mat, each representing a particular profession, and whatever Tai chose would say something about his future. As you can see, he picked up the stick to the colorful toy xylophone, which means that he may have some music or percussion in his future (which makes sense since he was named in part after a taiko drum).


Tai's birthday weekend was tremendous fun. They say it's as much a celebration for the parents for having made it through their first year as well. Sounds reasonable to us. So here's one last picture: the couple that traveled at light speed to get to this point, preparing for the party. Hey, what just happened?