red egg party with friends

Rain Dragon is one month old! (I have to admit, it feel a lot longer...perhaps it's the sleep deprivation). And she is a doubly lucky baby because she had not one, but two red egg parties. The first one was thrown by good friends Luke & Ranida (who wanted to return the favor).

It was a lovely party with friends,

babies,

dogs:

 and food!

The pièce de résistance was the incredible dragon cake made by Luke:

who had meticulously planed it, first by making paper patterns:

Then cutting the cake accordingly:

He claims he had problems with the frosting:

But I think it turned out amazing! Don't you?

Unfortunately, little Rain Dragon thought sleeping was more interesting:

Though, big girl Maia thought the sleeping baby was so interesting that she wanted her own:

It was a wonderful welcome for Rain Dragon!

Customarily, the first big festivity in a Chinese baby’s life is the Red Egg and Ginger Party. This party is given in honor of a baby’s first month or first moon birthday, signifying it welcome to the family. Until a baby had lived a full month it was not considered part of the family. Consequently, the Red Egg and Ginger Party was an especially joyous occasion.

Eggs represent new life and, because of their roundness, harmony while red is, of course, the Chinese color of luck and happiness. So Red Eggs signify a happy and lucky new life, the perfect symbol to welcome a new baby.

New mothers “sit a month” after giving birth. It is only on the first moon birthday that the new mother is allowed to leave her home and rejoin the world. On this occasion, she is given much ginger, thought to contain special nutrients needed to give the mother strength.

look how she's grown

It has been less than a year since I finished that mural for my friends Luke and Ranida, but already the tree growth chart is getting a lot of use. Little Maia may be getting less little, but she is definitely getting more cute. And she seems to like the mural. That will probably change in about 12 years, but for now I'll bask in my customer satisfaction.

family

So we finished off our thanksgiving holiday with a Lin-Mckneally get-together. After all that has happened, I feel as if Luke and Ranida have become kind of part of my family. I have gotten to know Luke's family fairly well and he & Ranida have gotten to know mine so we thought it was time that our families met each other. And I admit I really wanted to go over so I could show off the mural to my parents. I think I am a bit too proud of it...I really must get over it.

But that's hard to do when the families stroke my mural-ego. While there, the Mckneally clan insisted that I get the honor of marking Maia's first height on the growth chart tree. Maia was not that happy about it.


But everyone else was. I particularly was glad that she was in this picture because then officially I am not the shortest one.


So altogether the Lin-Mckneally get-together was quite a success. Hey, and you know what? Kappy, my 4-month year old nephew is pretty cute too. Maybe in 20 years or so Kappy and Maia can get together and then we can really be family.

the many days of mural, part II

So, despite some doggie help, I have finally finished work on the mural. I can't believe it's done!


The painted Chinese characters is a proverb written by the upcoming baby's grandfather. Roughly translated it says,“In the pureness and innocence of childhood, true joy and happiness.”

This is my favorite part of the mural. The tree will be used as a growth chart, which is why the banner says, "Oh, how you've grown!" Originally it was going to include the baby's name but since that keeps changing, we decided to leave it out.


All in all the mural took about ten days to do. It may have been ten, ten-hour days, mind you. I think I might have lost some weight in the process. I definitely lost sleep as you can tell from my haggard appearance. Haggard, but happy!

the many days of mural

My good friends Luke and Ranida are about to have a baby. So as a baby gift, I offered to paint a mural for their nursery. Of course, I have never painted a mural before but I thought, "Hey, I'm a professional illustrator, right? How hard can it be?" With my confidence in overabundance, I assured them that I could get the wall done in a few days, maybe a week.

So I drew up some sketches and got the okay for this one:



And calmly began painting in the background.


Then the snags began. My oh-so-smart idea of projecting the image onto the wall failed miserably. The room was too shallow for the image to project accurately and I spent the day wrestling with it.



Finally, I just gave up and drew everything freehand. Which was quite time-consuming.


And of course my pencil marks were so messy, I had to outline in paint just to see what I had drawn.


It was quite a relief to actually start painting color. But to get to this stage took about twice the amount of time anticipated.


And at this point, I just hope I get the mural done before the baby gets here!



to be continued...

surprise success

On the morning of my exhibit opening, both Robert and I had a difficult time getting out of bed. Robert, because of his treatment and me, because of my dread of a tumbleweed opening. But, up we got, though a bit later than planned, and on we went (and arrived late-sorry!).

But what had been giving me cold chills turned out to be one of my most heartwarming experiences. People came. A lot of them. The word had gotten out through the school, libraries and newspaper and had alerted some of my core fans, who came out in packs. The museum (obviously surprised) ran out of books immediately. Good friends, Luke & Ranida, drove from Arlington and brought "Year of the Dog" cookies to take the place of the ones I din't have time to make.

And Robert was disgusted with me. "If you ever put down one of your events ahead of time like you did this one," he said, "I'm going to shake you. You disrespect your venue, your fans, and your work when you do that."

It's true, of course. Confidence in your failure is an insult to those who believe in you. Yet, self-assurance is hard to achieve simply out of good manners.