In our crazy family of seven we celebrate four birthdays. This past weekend we celebrated one year since we jumped face first from a family of five to a family of seven. I can't believe it's been a year already.
We used for inspiration the ultimate party planning book,
The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This amazing text comes complete with menu and color scheme. Now, lets be honest, the party was really for the party-crazed three-year-olds that inhabit our home. Cami in particular had visions of caterpillars dancing in her head.
For nearly two weeks she kept me up-to-date on various party planning issues and needs. Every time someone came to the house she offered them caterpillar cake that hadn't been made yet while rubbing her palms together in elated anticipation and muttering to herself about the baking, frosting, and general cake joys.
We minimize decorations in this house with the knowledge that mostly they are baby fodder. With the brilliant caterpillar inspiration, we hung butterflies from the ceiling out of everyone's reach. That solved the 'decorations are food' problem and the 'we have no free time' issue as we hung them two weeks before the party. We did overreach our bounds a little trying for a colorful and disposable tablecloth. It died well before its time... Much like the cake left a little too close to the edge.
I think I would feel like a cheat if I bought my kids' birthday cake, like someone else went to the effort to make their day special, but I would probably feel like a cheat with more time to finish everything else and a nicer cake. To construct the caterpillar of Cami's dreams it took four batches of cake from scratch. I should mention that despite my love of desserts, baking cake is far and away my worst subject. Just to help us along my cake decorating tips all decided hide-and-seek would be the best party game... we had to go on without them. I finally began constructing about the time the party was supposed to start and just stopped when I reached the edge of the first pan and decided it was appropriately representative of a hungry caterpillar. Lets be honest, the extra cake layers that would have made the back half of a caterpillar will find their place in this world without difficulty.
We had an impatient little girl... we had lots of impatient little girls, but one in particular that was tall enough to grab the cake by its face and try to pull it down. She made sure it was done before candles and pictures. We live in a world where this is normal. We decided it was going to be a funny memory later and decided to give her a head start and laugh about it now.
It's hard to plan a party with twins. I almost think they enjoy staggering nap times to try and keep one of them asleep at all times. It's a clever ploy to extend their celebration as long as possible.... and it works.
With the party finally underway and forgiving family that know we have no concept of time, we ate our way through the book. Apples, pears, plums, strawberries, oranges, chocolate cake, ice cream cones, swiss cheese, sliced salami, sausages, cherry pie, pickles, and a nice green leaf (roll). My husband did an amazing job making green leaf rolls for the party. Once again Cami had insisted. That girl knows what caterpillars eat and she wasn't going to let us short change this party! We threw some extras in for good measure and had more food than we can possibly eat in a week of caterpillar birthday parties.
Present opening is really much less fun for a one-year-old than one might imagine by examining the remains of the daily mail or weekly ads that may get pulled within reach. With presents wrapped and rewrapped over the course of the morning and lots of sisterly help, we were finally ready for the girls to open the twins' gifts permanently. Then came the lesson on sharing, which sounds much more parental than it is. Ava's pleas to share are always the most insistent, but an actual translation reveals the true meaning: "Relinquish control immediately. All turns are my turn. Surrender fun." Bella settles most often on "She took it," which is in no way a description of who had possession at any given time. Cami's concept is most like actual sharing in the 'two for me, one for you' sense. The toys and children survived the day though, so it will be counted as a victory.
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| Cat gets first lick. |
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Ava and shirt cat
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The babies are, unbelievably, one. The girls are still, almost a week later, going in the basement to pretends to catch butterflies. The new toys have integrated themselves into everyday play and all is well. We survived the first year with our now five under three!
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| Ava and Cami |
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| Cami, Bella, and Evan |
Four years ago this month we had our very first doctor's appointment that would inevitably lead to the little family we have now... maybe I should say the family of littles. We watched the BP oil spill in the waiting room and contemplated, not completely realistically in retrospect, parenthood. By that December we had our first three and now, four years from our initial visit, we have a healthy crop of toddlers. But this beautiful weekend of seventy degrees and sunshine is really our first Easter together doing all the Eastery things we imagined for our children. We had our first egg hunt, our first excited glee over windup chicks that are our new best friends, our first lecture from Cami about Jesus loving us so much he sent a bunny to leave us candy in the yard, and, if all goes well, our first Sunday when our children don't use church to do every awkward or loud thing they imagined all week for that express purpose. 
