Lola's First Birthday - Part II (Zhua Zhou Event)

As I mentioned in my previous post, on Saturday afternoon on Lola's first birthday, we went to an event space where a professional company took videos and pictures of our family and helped Lola with her zhua zhou celebration.  This is clearly a popular activity because there were a lot of other families and babies there as well.

We did not succeed in putting Lola down for a nap despite all of the excitement that she had at her birthday party.  Honestly, the girl is an energizer bunny, or maybe she just power naps more efficiently than anyone I know.  While we waited, all the family members wrote little messages to Lola wishing her well, and the birthday girl amused herself with the ball pit, the slide, and the birthday swing.  On this trip, Lola discovered slides.  She is such a daredevil - she is completely unafraid and loves the feeling of being propelled down quickly.

 

 As you can see from these pictures, Lola is pretty ready to walk - but not quite there on her own yet.  She really likes it when someone holds both of her hands, which allows her to RUN, not walk.  The girl is impatient, to put it mildly.

 

 

When our time was up, we were called into the studio, which was decorated in bright red (a bit garish for my taste, but meant to be very fortuitous).  It was not easy to get Lola to sit still.

The custom is to dress the baby in a tiger outfit, because tigers are thought to protect children.

 Getting it on her took a little effort, I will freely admit.  Michael was tasked with the tiger bib and I was tasked with the slippers.

 Doesn't she just look like a little minx, up to all kinds of mischief?

 

We managed to get the tiger hat on Lola, but barely.  We had to bribe her with crackers.  The camera crew also made us do a few poses, which is just so typical of Asian photo studios, but I grinned and bore it.

 Here we were trying to be tigers... I would say with limited success.

 We also took a few family portraits, which turned out nicely.

 They also made each of us hold objects, which are meant to symbolize various things (whether because of the sound, or because of its role in Chinese culture and history).  For example, Michael is holding green onions because they are pronounced "cong," which is a homonym with the world "smart."

 Then my mom combed Lola's hair, and my dad put a necklace on Lola.

 Finally, we were able to coax some real laughs from Lola.  I love her laughs and chortles - they are so unabashed and full that they seem to come from deep within her throat and belly.

 Then came time for the big event!  Lola had been eyeing this tray of goods ever since we got into the studio, so she was super excited finally to be let loose to grab things.  On your mark, get set...

 Lola picked an abacus, a gavel, and a string of coins, among things such as a book, a calligraphy brush, a pair of scissors, and scales.

 The abacus means an accountant, the gavel means judge or lawyer (Michael and I both groaned), and the coins means banker!  We all cracked up because we could not believe that Lola chose such traditional professions!  My relatives proclaimed, "just like mom and dad!"  Lola was thrilled though.

 

 Then we just let her play around for a bit, and she had a lot of fun with the brush and the stamp.

 Just look at her antics, I love her so!  She is so lively.

 We never really succeeded in getting Lola to wear the tiger hat, so we tried again.  Here, Michael is trying to persuade her to keep it on.

 Success! 

 

 But very short lived.

Triumphant.  Lola 1, adults 0

 With that, we were finally done!

Bye bye!  And yes, that's another word Lola has picked up.  She now says bye bye to everybody.

We also got a footprint of Lola's.  She has some pretty impressively big feet.

 

We wrapped up by posing together outside in front of their fake cherry blossoms and with Lola's footprint.

At this point, Michael and I were exhausted and ready to hightail it back to our hotel!  We left our family members, went back to our comfortable hotel, gave Lola a bath, and called it a (fabulous) day.