Welcome to Your First Party

On Sunday we took Olivia to her first party. Here she is in her finest party dress. Actually, this is a post party pic, hence she looks a bit knackered and blootered...

Admittedly the guests were all the same babies that she sees whenever she goes out with Mummy to meet up with the NCT girls, but nevertheless, this was a full on 'par-tay'. There was booze and nibbles and a buffet and \m/ RAWK \m/ (although it wasn't very loud, so it was more '...rock...').

It also marked the first time the dads had seen each others' kids. There were a few comments about what'd happen if we got a child-parent relationship wrong, followed by nervous laughter, but it was okay. No major faux pas. It was fun to play 'Whose Baby Is It Anyway?' Some of them really do look exactly like Mini-Me versions of one of their parents and it's very easy, but some less so. I expect we all left thinking how nice the other babies were, but 'ours is the cutest'. Only we were right, obviously.

Also present was R___, the tutor from the NCT classes and it was a bit odd. There were two other couples who had attended the classes but didn't want to sign up to the YahooGroup we set up to keep in touch. One couple, we subsequently learned, had several magazine deals sorted out, and emailed us to ask to be removed from the group so we're guessing they were so flush with the wonga from whoring their child out that they didn't want to associate with oiks like us any longer. Oooh - special! As for the other pair, we have no idea. They simply never responded to any emails. Regardless of magazine deals or whatever, everyone was invited to come along to the do but, with the exception of R___, it was those of us who are already meeting up anyway.

This meant R___ was a bit of a spare part. No one was being rude or anything; we all made the effort and took our babies over to be admired and the like but that was the problem. We were 'making an effort'. She didn't fit in. I know it was her suggestion that prompted us to set up the YahooGroup and to keep in touch and we're very ungrateful people, I suppose. It wasn't like any of us had any major questions to ask her though and it just seemed odd. It didn't help that she'd brought her eight-year old(ish) daughter with her and made the poor girl come around with a piece of paper and get us to fill in our baby's name, DOB and birthweight. 'I'll send everyone a copy of this,' she said. But we already knew... Did I mention it was a bit odd?

I'm in danger of making this seem like a much bigger thing than it was. It wasn't bad, just... odd.

It was a splendid do though, even if I think we've all become a bit crap at drinking. We brought a couple of bottles of white wine with us. Drank one between three; hardly dipsomaniacs. There were a few beers doing the rounds, but not many. It was all very sedate really. One of the dads wasn't drinking at all, but this was due to the fact that he was recovering from the previous night, so perhaps we've not all become quite so sensible.

Here's the bairns all lined up. It looks like the starting grid for a baby version of the Wacky Races or something. Olivia is nearest the camera.

I've just notice that she appears to be attempting to perfect a 'brain-claw' or maybe she's manipulating a very small puppet on a string and it's about to go a bit 'Being John Malkovich' on us...

This probably makes her the 'Dick Dastardly' of the gang.