Rippy's First Birthday

Ripken turned one year old on April 21. I now see why people talk about how life keeps getting faster and faster--how he is already 14 months, and Ainsleigh is past the 3 1/2 mark, is beyond me. We had a party for him the Saturday before his official b-day. In keeping with Tracy's high standards for birthday parties, Ripken had the full shebang. The thing nearest and dearest to Ripken's heart is, without exception, food. The boy is amazing. See this post for a little more info on his eating prowess. In his honor, the theme for the party was "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" (who, as those of you with little ones know, "ate, and ate, and ate, but was still hungry").

I tried to do the decorations Eric Carle-style. The front door had the words from the first page of the book (except it said he was born on a Monday): "One Monday morning the warm sun came up and there came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar." When you walked in, the front table had a second picture to match the text, "He started to look for some food." I wrote the rest of the story on the table cloth, next to the corresponding food from the story (which is actually good party food).

(click to enlarge)

In the kitchen, I made each of the first five fruits from the story, but instead of the holes I put a picture of Ripken eating that food, or some other good eating photo.

This next part is what I am most happy about. The caterpillar balloon, with pipe cleaner antennae and googly eyes was pretty cute. And look at the cakes! The one on the top right was Rippy's cake. The little legs and antennae were sprinkles (or pieces of sprinkles). My piece de resistance was the main cake. It was originally a bundt cake, so it had all the little ridges in it. Then I chopped it up and reassembled it, although at this point I thought I was sunk because it was so crumbly and a complete mess. But fortunately after trying to get some frosting to stick to it and putting it in the fridge for a while, I was able to win the battle. The spikes on the back are sprinkles, kisses for legs, fudge sticks for antennae, jelly bean eyes and nose, and the rest is frosting. Bottom right is a balloon that I drew a very hungry caterpillar onto.

Oh, yeah, and then there was the birthday boy. Here he is enjoying the food, especially at the far right where he is walking around while squishing a strawberry. Nice.

Cake time. Rippy was taken with the balloon tied to the back of his chair, which he grabbed, got frosting on, and then smashed it into the cake. By the end, the weight from the frosting out-matched the helium (bottom left and bottom right). Ripken didn't go after the cake with as much gusto as I had expected, and after several minutes it ended up on the floor (bottom right). There is video of this, but we'll see if it ever gets uploaded.

Happy First Birthday, Rippy!