The twins turned 100 days old last week! Or wait, was that the week before? No, it was last week. Yeah. Last week. The past few months all sort of blend together in one long, endless day of feeding, changing, and putting to bed. Plus, it’s about 3 am right now. I’m going with last week.
Let’s try this again.
We celebrated the twins’ 100th day, or Baek-il (백일) last week!
(Also, can you believe I posted 2x in the same week? I can’t.)
There are two major baby milestones here in Korea — 100th day birthday and the first birthday. The first birthday is the bigger of the two celebrations and can become quite the mini production with elaborate cakes and rented out hotel ballrooms. If you know anything about Korean birthdays, then it’s the first birthday where the baby chooses from a table of items such as a pencil, rice cakes, money, book, etc. It is said that whatever the child picks will determine his/her future. For example, if a baby picks the book, they will become a scholar.
The 100th day, or baek-il (백일), is celebrated as the end of the most difficult period for baby and mother. In earlier days, when the infant mortality rate was rather high, making it to the 100th day was seen as a significant and critical milestone. It was said that a child that made it past 100 days would live to be a year. And if the baby lived a year, s/he would live past infancy. Thus, once a baby reached 100 days old (and one year old), it was a cause for celebration.
Tteok (떡) – traditional Korean rice cakes
We celebrated the twins’ 100 days with a small party at home with just us and the kitties. Sly bought a small American-style cake as well as some traditional Korean rice cakes while I scrambled around the night before and all during the day inbetween feedings and naps to make crummy decorations (seriously, don’t look too closely at the photos) for a party the twins will never remember.
Oh well, at least I got to eat the cake(s)!
The day after, we took the twins to a Korean photo studio to have their 100 days portraits taken. It’s a pretty common thing to have baby portraits taken on the two major milestone birthdays — 100 days and one year. Originally, we wanted to have the twins dressed in traditional Korean attire, but the staff convinced us that was more commonly done for the one-year photos. And since we probably didn’t want two sets of photos with the same style of clothes and setting, we opted for a different approach.
Since we’re in Korea and all, we decided to go full-on Korean baby photo! You know how in the States a corny baby photo shoot involves babies dangling in cloth sacks, curled up in a basket, or sleeping on their hands? I absolutely loathe those types of photos, yet, somehow, the Korean version of a cliche baby photo is somehow…cute?
Or maybe it’s just because they are photos of my babies?
I keep asking my sister if our babies are cute because they’re our babies or cute because they are actually cute. I’ve never been much of a baby person, so whenever people have shoved their babies into my face and said stuff like, “Isn’t s/he the cutest?” I have had to pretend to agree. Over time, I learned how to fake the correct response. “SO cute,” I often replied, whether I believed it or not.
Now I’m the person shoving my kids into other peoples’ faces. I HAVE BECOME THAT PERSON!
Anyway, I’m going on record as saying that these are two cute babies. Puffball hats! And they match! Because they’re twins! And M is wearing pink! Because she’s a girl! And stuffed teddy bears and bunny rabbits forever!
Aren’t they the cutest?
Who am I anymore? Next thing you know I’ll be bragging about how smart my kids are!
Our Korean friend recommended this photo studio to us. (Note: only one person speaks English there. It’s easy enough to figure out when you’re having photos taken, but you’ll likely need to speak Korean/find someone who speaks Korean to make reservations.) We had some family portraits taken at this same studio about a month ago when my mom was still in Korea and we liked the way they turned out. More than that though, I loved that it was full-service. They had all kinds of clothes, they curled my frizzy hair and dotted my face with powder highlighter (what the heck is highlighter?) and best of all, they had baby handlers, or as we like to call them, “baby fluffers.” It made for a very stress-free experience. I just wish I had known beforehand so that I didn’t waste my time running around town trying to find G a simple white shirt to go with his pants or fret over finding something in my own wardrobe that looked decent and actually fit my post-partum body!
This time though, we were old pros. We arrived with two disheveled twins and knew the baby fluffers would do their job.
We chose the twins’ outfits from the studios extensive wardrobe and asked if we could have some hats. Baby bonnets are pretty popular in Korea, and at the studio, they literally had drawers full of bonnets in every color you could imagine. The staff tried to steer us towards the more sedate bonnets, but we kept asking, “Do you have something a little…weirder?”
They got the hint. Although I don’t think they thought it was that weird?
M&G each had their own portrait session and then we changed hats, put the twins in a rope swing and bam! Our twins looked like they escaped from the circus!
G looks super serious in all these photos, but he’s actually just very camera shy. In real life, he’s so chatty and loves sticking out his tongue when he smiles! M, on the other hand, is a total ham. She loves the camera. She loves people. She smiles at everyone and giggles at everything.
We’re not really photo studio type of people, but we really loved how these turned out. What better way to celebrate the twins’ first 100 days in Korea than with a slightly bizarre Korean-style photo session?
Twins, you can thank your weird mama later.
And now for some behind the scenes photos. Because who doesn’t like behind the scenes photos?
Happy 100 days, G Bear and M Buns! I know you won’t remember any of this — or much of your first few years at all — but that’s okay. We’ll make sure to take an excessive amount of (weird) photos so that we can tell you all about it when you get older. And I’ll try my very best to keep up with this blog so that Mama can remember all these special moments, big and small, too.
