The Birthday Celebration

We started this morning with Cassidy's gifts.

Thank you everyone, for remembering Cassidy's birthday! She enjoyed all of her presents, but most of all ... she enjoyed the wrapping paper.

She focused on each present just long enough to tear off a piece of paper, which she then found much more facinating than the gift itself.

Then we had "cake" for breakfast.

Now this cake .... Why on earth, you might ask, would I dream of making my child's first birthday cake healthy, rather than the fun, sugary, smeared-with-buttercream-frosting experience it should be? Well I'll explain. The recipe, which I first found out about on babycenter.com, came from the "What to Expect: The first year" book ... and it got great comments online! I thought, "Perfect! Something baby friendly so we don't end up with a baby with an upset tummy or cranked up on sugar!" Nor would we have to be concerned about food allergy or anything like that because almost all of the ingredients we had already introduced and had no problem with. I asked Kim to slightly modify it to eliminate the eggs it called for since we haven't introduced eggs yet. As it turns out, the eggs must be EXTREMELY important. While the cake was lovely, 2 layers separated by cream cheese frosting,

complete with candied carrots around the outside (great job with the decorating, Kim ---you can't be held responsible for the rest since I gave you the recipe to use), it wasn't really cake. It had the density and texture of cheesecake, but obviously lacked the flavor as it had no sugar and was sweetened only with apple juice and apple sauce. The carrot-cinnamon flavor was mild and not bad ... just not cake. We gave Cassidy a giant piece to dig in to.

She ended up eating a small amount of it, but then spent the rest of breakfast pointing (she just started pointing at what she wants - apparently everything - this week) at the container of puffs on the kitchen table, which actually contains cheerios much to Cassidy's disappointment. She's recently decided she likes puffs much better than cheerios, no doubt because of their sweet flavor.

After breakfast, we uncovered her other birthday gift ... a little kitchen set (which hopefully will occupy her while I make dinner in the evenings).

She immediately noticed the phone on it, which she was just fascinated with and played with more than anything else.

Overall, it was a good celebration! But our next one will be complete with chocolate cake and/or buttercream frosting!