The Official Celebration

Yesterday we held the official Sarah celebration. First on our list of exciting and thrilling things to do to celebrate Sarah's being one year old, was to buy a real carseat and never again have to lug that unwieldy infant seat around with an increasingly heavy human in it. This, coupled with the fact that they're now feeding Sarah finger food and cups of whole milk at daycare, meaning we no longer have to prepare bottles nightly, made this an extra special birthday for us all.

Except Kate. She really didn't care. The giant box from one of the car seats did make Kate's day a fun one. Who doesn't love to play inside a giant cardboard box? I mean, besides homeless people, who doesn't love it?

In honor of the big day, and his brand new grill/smoker combo super-manly machine, Jeremiah smoked a pork butt. We were joined by Eric, Raigan, Steve and Joy. With more than a little help from the birthday girl, we ate nearly the entire hunk of meat. It was fantastic. And of course, there were sides. And then, just as Kate and Sarah were both starting to think this party was totally lame, out came the cake and home made ice cream.

I didn't make some fancy cake concoction for Kate's first birthday, so I decided I was off the hook for Sarah's this go-round, too. We ordered this adorable little doggy cake from The Little European Bakery up near my office. I asked for something cute and they asked "what does she like?" My first thought was "well, she likes to have her dirty diaper changed straight away!" but I opted to go with "she likes dogs." because I think she's too young to have a cake with a nice, clean naked butt on it. If you get the 8" cake, they throw in a free "smash" cake. I only needed a 7" but I figured my co-workers could help me out with the extra so I could have a cute little mini-cake (they were very obliging). So, somewhat unceremoniously, I'm afraid, I presented the smash cake to Sarah as we sang, terribly, Happy Birthday.And the destruction commenced. That poor cake never even knew what hit it. Oh! The humanity!Kate had her own piece (she ate all the icing and the ice cream and left the cake portion) but was still gracious enough to help her sister out.

Once we deemed the smash cake sufficiently humiliated we swept it away while distracting Sarah with a shiny object (that works on every member of my family). Once she noticed she was no longer seated before her own personal cake, though, things got ugly, and she began to scream for my cake. I was forced to share, something I am loathe to do when it comes to cake and ice cream, so you know I must really love this kid.

Sarah consumed so much sugar that evening that before she passed out (without puking, unlike Kate after her first birthday party) she stripped down to her diaper and danced on the table. Not pictured is Kate, who, inspired by her kid sis, also removed every article of clothing and ran around the entire house meowing like the cat...buck naked. Our guests all dourly predicted frightening things for their college years. I had another glass of wine.