Last night we hosted an "East Coast Time" New Year's Eve party--ring in the new year at 9:00 Pacific so kids (and their parents too) could get to bed at a decent hour.
We invited as many local people as we had contact information for, and had two wonderful families attend. Ben and Lindsay with their nearly-two-year-old daughter Caroline, and Jeff and Belinda with their nine-year-old daughter Audrey (a name that is special to me) and their six-year-old son Reece.
Charlotte and I know Lindsay and Caroline through La Leche League. Ben pastors a local Baptist church after a previous career in insurance. Jeff is another Farmers reserve agent with Adam in the Visalia office, so the guys all had insurance in common.
I was on my feet almost all day getting the house and food ready for the party: broccoli salad, deviled eggs, pumpkin cake, and coconut macaroons drizzled with coconut-chocolate ganache. There was leftover ganache that I put out to drizzle over Cutie tangerines or any other food our guests felt might be improved by chocolate.
Charlotte was my little helper in the kitchen, dumping and stirring ingredients. As a special treat, I let her help me mix and shape the macaroons with our clean hands. It's a very simple recipe calling for just sugar, egg whites, coconut and vanilla. She was so proud that she made cookies.
To round out the fruits of our labor, Adam brought home summer sausage, cheese, crackers, chips, salsa, frozen pizza and drinks to round out our offerings. Lindsay brought a unique and wonderful Chex mix made with honey, cashews, sesame seeds and dried cranberries, and chocolate cookies with bits of candy cane in them. Jeff brought Martinellis sparkling cider and a bottle of Asti Spumante (that we didn't open).
Ben, Lindsay and Caroline arrived first. I had been coaching and role-playing with Charlotte all day about how to behave to her guest, about letting Caroline have a turn with the toys, about how to ask for her turn instead of grabbing, about how she could ask me for help if she just got overwhelmingly mad and frustrated with Caroline. I told her if there was a special toy (or toys) she didn't want to share that we could put it away until after the party. We decided to leave her new dollies in her room.
I set up our little office area with toys to share -- a small card table with chairs, a talking "kitchen" for babies borrowed from Beppe, a doll house, a musical Dora scooter, a baby handheld music player (kind of like Fisher Prices version of an "iPod" that plays nursery rhymes). I also had books and puzzles and stuffed animals in the living room.
Overall, the coaching paid off and Charlotte did really well playing with her friend. Kids their age generally engage in what is called parallel play where they are side by side but don't really interact much, but Charlotte and Caroline even played together a few times. More than once, Caroline got on the Dora scooter, and Charlotte got behind the handle and gave her a ride. They had a few editions of chase around our kitchen bar and down the hallway, and they tossed a ball around together with some encouragement from us parents.
Charlotte did show some ordinary toddler possessiveness. For example, after getting along rather well for a while, she heard Caroline start the baby handheld music player. She ran from the other room yelling, "No, Caroline, mine! I don't like that!" and grabbed it from her friend's little hand. I decided maybe that the music player was a special toy that should be put away. She had to be reminded to find something for Caroline to play with a few other times, but there wasn't any major fighting.
Even though she is almost five months younger, Caroline is quite the advanced little talker and mimic. It was funny because she would repeat the last thing her parents said, even from the other room.
We adults enjoyed the spread of goodies and an easy camraderie while watching the kids' antics. Reece performed a Michael Jackson moonwalk for us, and he and Audrey demonstrated their ability to do pushups and situps, which Caroline adorably tried to imitate. We discussed churches and The Muppets and New Years' traditions. Time flew by and before we knew it, the clock read quarter till nine.
I found a live stream online of the scene in Times Square so we could watch the ball drop. Jeff hurried to pour everyone some Martinellis in our red plastic cups, and we had our countdown and toasted the new year.
After enjoying some dessert, we decided to play some Farkle, a six-dice game where you can keep rolling as long as you score, and only 1s and 5s or scoring patterns (three of a kind, runs, full house, three pair, etc.), count. If you ever roll and don't have anything to score, you "Farkle" and lose all the points you had accumulated that round.
Reece and Audrey joined the Farkle game, and Charlotte and Caroline kept busy with colored pencils and paper at the table. Ben showed Charlotte how he could trace her hand, and she got so excited by the idea that she wanted to trace his hand and also have him trace her foot. In the middle of the game, Charlotte yelled out, "3, 2, 1, Happy New Year!"
Ben won the game with a series of amazing rolls. Twice he rolled two triples, worth 2500 points, and the second time he added three pairs on his next roll, bringing his score on that round to 4000 and his total for the game over the 10000 needed to win.
Our guests all headed home by 10:30, and we had most everything cleaned up and were all in bed by 11:45 (Charlotte before 11).
Happy New Year!
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