Los Peterson

I can't believe it's already been one whole year since Gunnar was born! It almost doesn't seem possible, but at the same time - it kinda feels like it's been a whole lot longer. It must be the combination of parental devotion and sleep deprivation. Both distort time.

Either way, this past year has been the most wonderful year of my life. It hasn't been the easiest year and we've had to make lots of changes and adapt in many different ways - but Gunnar has brought so much joy into our lives. Pure love and a complete fullness of joy, from the very first moment he entered the world.



So to celebrate Gunnar's life thus far, I made him his very own Elmo cake . . . to destroy. I've never made an 'Elmo cake' before, so I had to get creative. At the same time I didn't want to put too much effort into it - since it was really only meant to be a sacrificial, edible effigy. Gunnar, like most children, loves Elmo. I, on the other hand, harbor a lot of ambivalence toward the guy.



The eyes are frosted cookies and chocolate rounds and the mouth is chocolate too, but I couldn't find anything edible to make the orange nose out of. So, I just used one of Gunnar's toy balls. I think it worked.



Then we took him up on the deck, lit a little candle and sang happy birthday to him. At first, he didn't really know what to make of the whole thing.



But once he realized mom and dad weren't going to say "no no", he got pretty excited.



He sucked the frosting off of that nose for a good five minutes. Hopefully that'll fatten him up a bit.



When he'd licked Elmo's nose clean, he actually crawled over and put it back.



But he wasn't through yet . . .



We gave him a fork to use in hopes that he might eat some of the cake. No chance.



We gave him another fork and he played cake drums.



Then he shoved his face in it.



So we hosed him down and called it a (happy birth) day.

P.S. Gunnar's present this year was that he got to come with us to the Cayman Islands instead of getting dumped off at grandma's house :) Chris had business meetings out here so we extended our trip. It's pretty amazing. Blog more soon.