Adelyn's Birthday Dol

We celebrated Adelyn's Birthday on Sunday in the Korean tradition by having a dol for her.

A dol is a Korean tradition that celebrates the first birthday of a child. Along with the 60th birthday, it is one of the most significant and important birthdays celebrated. In the past, death rates for infants were high so when a child reached his or her first birthday, this was an important milestone for the baby and parents. Often whole villages would come out to celebrate with the family, sharing food and wishing for long life and fortune for the child.

Today, the modern dol is often celebrated in banquet halls or restaurants. It can be as elaborate and as expensive as a wedding reception! It is still rich in traditions which date back hundreds of years.

We invited friends and family and had a large celebration at our house. We ended up having 31 adults and 22 children join in the fun! It was great! We had beef BBQ, salads, jello, veggies/dip, watermelon, chips, cupcakes, birthday cake, candy, and thanks to my sister-in-law who lives near a Korean market, we even had traditional Korean tteok which are sweet rice cakes served at most dols. The weather held up so we were able to have tables both inside and outside for people to sit at. We cleared out our sunroom to have room for the dol table, the doljabi table and the photos and blessings tables. These are all Korean traditions that are at every dol.

Of course Adelyn wore her beautiful hanbok that her foster mother gave her. She looked absolutely beautiful! She wore it for the beginning of the dol and when she did the doljabi, but she changed into a little birthday outfit when she ate her cake and opened her presents. It was fun to have her wear both her Korean and American outfits to blend the two cultures.

Here are pictures from her big event! Happy Birthday sweet pea!











































DOL TABLE
The dol table is the centerpiece of the party. It is often decorated with stacked fruits and candies which symbolizes prosperity for the child.












We had pineapples, oranges and bananas stacked. We also had cupcake towers, tteok Korean rice cakes and candy in tall glasses. My mother-in-law made a beautiful birthday cake and individual sugar cookies wrapped as birthday favors for guests to take home. The cookies even had edible pictures of Adelyn on them!!



























































































































Another part of the dol table are decorated cylinders called "dol go im." These towers are covered with beans or candies to create beautiful decorations. We used oatmeal tubes and hundreds of beans to create ours. We also used red and blue Skittles for the center heart on the Korean flag. It took about 7 hours, but I love how they turned out! The Korean symbols on the one spell "Daum"- Adelyn's given name and middle name. The back side of this tower also has her English name Adelyn on it.

















BLESSINGS FOR BABY

One aspect of the dol is to bless the child and wish the child a prosperous future. Many parents create blessing trees where guests can write down thoughts, notes or blessings on tags and hang them on the tree. Some more modern dols have photo frames or piggy banks for guests to sign. We decided to do both a blessing tree and a photo frame for Adelyn's dol. This way, people could sign their name to her frame, but have a little more room on a tag to write Adelyn a prayer or message for the tree. This was really cool and we got some beautiful messages on her tags. We will put these in a book for her or put a small tree in her room to hang them on. We plan to get a professional picture taken of her in her hanbok that we will replace the photo in the frame with. These will make some great keepsakes for her someday! We also had the Korean dolls her foster mother gave us and her hanbok shoes displayed on this table.
















































































PHOTO TABLE
Next to this table, we had a small table set up with pictures and also our laptop that played a slideshow. Sharing photos of the babies first year is a very important part of the Korean dol. The slideshow had about 90 pictures of her and was a very nice way to share her first year with our guests.


















DOLJABI
The highlight of a dol is a game called the Doljabi. According to Korean tradition, this is where the baby is placed in front of various objects and the first object she touches will foretell her future. Guests will guess ahead of time which object they think the baby will touch. We had 8 buckets set out with the objects labeled on each. Our guests put their guess into the bucket and after the doljabi, we awarded gifts to the winners. Here were the objects that we chose:

Apple = Teacher
Baseball = Athlete
Thread = Longevity
Money = Wealth
Bowl of Rice = Abundant Life
Microphone = Entertainer/Musician
Book = Scholar
Wooden Spoon = Chef










































So what did Adelyn choose?

Well... the MUSICIAN of course!! She was a little hesitant with everyone cheering and staring at her, and at one point she started crying a little, but grandma of course rescued her! That was right before she touched the microphone though!!!




























After her doljabi, we changed her and put her into her high chair with Grandma B's baby birthday cake she had made for her! We sang her Happy Birthday and blew out her candle. She LOVED her cake!!











































































Adelyn didn't get to open her presents until many people had already left, but when she did she sure did have fun ripping up the paper and pulling out the tissue paper! She got so many wonderful, thoughtful gifts. Thank you so much to everyone who made this day so special for her!






























































Happy Birthday sweetie!