Baby Aeris - 1st Month Celebration

This is baby Aeris. Her name is from the character in a video game thing (Final Fantasy or something) and it means Earth. It has special meaning to her parents :) Aeris is a tiny baby and weighed only 5.5 lbs when she first arrived in this world about a month ago. I like this shot of her, especially the contrast of her hand and her mom's. It just showed how fragile she is, and how reliant she is on her parents to provide for her.

I was invited to a friend's baby 1st month celebration. The way it is done in Canada is so different from Singapore. It is almost like a Chinese wedding dinner format. The dinner was held at a restaurant and they served 13 courses! Yes, 13! It is so stressful to do that. Just 1 month, and baby is brought out of the house and the mom has to be dressed up and up and about too.

I think Singapore's style of having it at home with catered food or sending the cakes are better. Baby gets to rest in familiar setting and the mom can also rest in-between visitors, especially if you do it buffet style and open it for maybe 2-4 hours. Then visitors can stream in and out.

The food is pretty good. The 13 courses include:
1. Appetizer plate of roasted pork, jellyfish, smoked salmon, sliced beef, beancurd roll with mushrooms.
2. prawns, squids, mushrooms and sweet peas
3. deep fried crab claw
4. shark fin soup
5. lobster and crab
6. bok choy with chinese mushrooms and abalone
7. crispy chicken
8. steamed fish
9. Fried rice with sauce minced meat gravy on top (I didn't try this)
10. Ee-fu noodles
11. taro jelly covered with coconut flakes
12. some dessert soup with red dates, longans, black seasame rice ball, etc
13. steamed buns or something with coconut custard

Appetizer plate: i like the smoked salmon

Very generous servings because only 6 of us are eating at this table. 2 are vegetarians.

The lobster and crab. I'm so surprised to see this. It is really nice.

My favorite dish of the night as the lobster meat is surprisingly tender

Dessert soup - love the black seasame rice ball

Not a big fan of this dessert

This is pretty good. The purple is pretty :p

The proud parents and baby Aeris and me

Location:
Kirin Seafood Restaurant
2nd Floor, Three West Centre
7900 Westminster Highway (& No. 3 Road)
Richmond, B.C.
Canada V6X 1A5
Reservation: +1. 604.303.8833