Cake Day

We celebrated William's first birthday party this afternoon. Whee! We still have one more day to go before his official birthday, but today was Cake Day.

Here was my set-up.















I made the cake yesterday from a recipe I found on the Internet. It's called Wacky Cake, and it's basically sugar, flour, cocoa, vanilla, canola oil and water. Unfortunately, it sank in the middle, so I had to really glop on the vanilla frosting to hide that little problem. I also made a batch of white cupcakes and gave them a coating of chocolate or vanilla frosting. The cake says "Happy First Birthday William," and the cupakes have either the letter W or the number 1. That's about as Martha Stewart as I can possibly get. I was just all proud that you can actually read the message on the cake.

It was deceptively simple, I decided. If I'm this tired after having a small party for a one-year-old, what's it going to be like when I try to put on a full-fledged party for an older kid in the future? It seems that I'm always posting about how tired I am, but in this case, I am not just whistling Dixie.

But it was so fun. We just invited a few close friends over for cake and lemonade this afternoon. Here's a picture of William playing with his friend Madison:















He received some terrific presents, too. Madison gave him a dump truck filled with Mega Blocks, and Jadyn's gift was an electronic drum that lights up and plays music. David and I finally gave him the fire engine toy that we originally bought for his Christmas present--and we also gave him a couple of Little People toys, including the Little People garage.

William clowning around with his mom:



















Then it was Cake Time.

I like to call this picture "Before the Mess." You will soon see exactly why I chose that title.



















David lit the candle on the cake. My friend Jennifer and I took photos madly while David presented the (entire) cake to his son.



















At first, William seemed a little confused. "Why are you giving this to me?" he seemed to say. "What exactly is this?" He tentatively dipped his fingers into the gooey vanilla icing, then experimentally licked them. His eyes widened, as the sugar raced through his esophagus, into his tummy, and out into his bloodstream. When David took the cake away to cut a slice for him, William began to fuss. Quickly, David presented him with his very own plate of chocolate cake.

Tingling from the seductive first taste of serious sugar, William got down to the serious business of cramming as much cake into his little mouth as he possibly could.


















In fact, William ate cake like he was in a race. I joked that he must have believed that someone gave it to him by accident and he was eating it as fast as he could before they realized their mistake and took it away from him. This is a young man, after all, who has lived his whole short life, eating foods like rice cereal, bananas, cheese, turkey sticks, green beans and ravioli. A good food day for him includes high fiber foods like sweet potatoes and whole wheat Ritz crackers. But to eat cake at last! I could just see him thinking, "Oh my God, where have they been hiding the good stuff all these months" as he stuffed fist after fist of cake and frosting into his mouth. Sometimes he smashed an entire open palm into his face because it maximized the cake-eating potential. He had cake in his hair. He had cake in his nose.



















If he could write, he might write an Ode to Cake. Cake. Cake. Cakecakecakecakecakecake. CAKE. Know how much he loved eating cake? He said the word "cake." On camera. Twice.















I decided that he ought to have a cupcake, too. If you're going to be decadent, you need to go all out. That's how I see it. He was already so high on sugar, that what was one little white cupcake really going to do? More cake! Bliss.































After the cake extravaganza, David carried off the sugar-stunned little guy and plopped him in the bathtub for a much-needed bath. Madison and Jadyn stuck around and played with his toys and visited with me, and William took a nap. Amazingly enough, he actually wanted to eat dinner when he awoke. And he finally took a ride on his fire engine.















What a day! I turned my child into a Cake Junkie. Mission Accomplished. Cake is one of the simple pleasures in life, as far as I'm concerned, and it was incredibly fun to watch William experience it for the first time. Tomorrow we head to Anaheim to take in an Angels game for William's actual first birthday.