A Birthday Celebration!

 **I'm cleaning out my "Drafts" box and trying to get some old, already started posts posted. As such, this post, and event, are over a year old!**

A few weeks ago, our Little Pumpkin had her 2nd birthday! The little girl is growing, learning, and maturing at a rapid speed these days. She is a real joy and a lot of fun to have around, even though both she and I are not perfect and sometimes have conflict. These past two years with Little Pumpkin have been a learning experience for both of us, and I am sure the learning will never stop for either of us!

To celebrate her 2nd birthday, we had planned to have Jason's parents, and his sister's family, over for a meal and cake. I wanted to have a meal of Little Pumpkin's favorite foods, but also wanted to keep it simple. Keeping it simple, for me, eliminated having home-made pizza, which is by far her favorite food! I decided to have lots of fresh fruits, which ties as her favorite food, and then make Pig's in a Blanket. That seemed simple and pretty kid-friendly to me, and was food she would enjoy. I was also planning to have Pumpkin help mix up her birthday cake because making things in the kitchen is one of her favorite things; she loves to measure and stir! As it turned out, hardly any of what I had planned actually happened.

A few days before the party, Little Pumpkin and I both woke up feeling a bit crummy. She had a runny nose, and I had some slightly vicious bug that included a horrid sore throat for close to two weeks. As the course of events would have it, we canceled the party, and I did not make the cake with my little helper. I did get a cake made, and ended up decorating it late the night before her birthday. Even though she and I were feeling under the weather, I was determined that she would have a nice (hopefully!) cake and 2nd birthday!

The morning of her birthday, we had the fresh fruit for breakfast. I made her a banana and peanut butter caterpillar, along with mandarin oranges.

When I was a kid, whenever we had bananas, we would sometimes make these caterpillars out of them using peanut butter in between the slices. It was a fun snack, at least in my memory. (I mostly remember making them with my sister, L., but I don't know where we got the idea.)

Since Little Pumpkin really does love fresh fruits, and peanut butter, this was a great breakfast for her. Not to mention all the healthy vitamins we got to help boost our immune system while sick! After breakfast, we gave her her birthday present.

With everything else that happened, getting her present actually in a box and wrapped was the least of my concerns! Hence the stylish blanket wrap.

[caption id="attachment_610" align="aligncenter" width="667"] Special thanks to the little girl who so kindly gave Little Pumpkin one of her baby dolls when we visited several weeks ago! Baby goes everywhere with Pumpkin![/caption]

I do believe this little kitchen set is the most sought after item this year! I had been searching since this summer for a nice, quality toy kitchen that didn't cost an arm and a leg. I searched Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and buy and sell groups on Facebook. Every time I would find one and inquire about it, it was already taken. This fall, I started searching for a small trampoline as my back-up plan. The week before Pumpkin's birthday, I saw this almost like-new kitchen set that was just posted for sale, and I immediately asked the seller if I could pick it up the next day. It was a bit more than I was hoping to spend, but it also came with some toy food and kitchen accessories. Providence was with me, as I managed to be the first of a long line of people that wanted to purchase it!

After getting the little kitchen home, and going through all the accessories that came with it, I do believe I got my money's worth! (Don't tell Little Pumpkin, but she will be getting all of those accessories for Christmas!!) Because we didn't give her the accessories with the kitchen, I pulled all of her current kitchen toys out of my kitchen drawers and arranged them in her kitchen before giving it to her. She has been enjoying her kitchen, and her 'frigerator - she stashes random things in there, along with baking pies and washing her hands with "soap" in the little sink. I have been quite pleased with my second-hand score!

Later in the evening, after having a meal of Pig's in a Blanket (I had purchased the stuff to make them, and I didn't feel like making anything that took much effort!), we finally had Little Pumpkin's birthday cake.

This cake was not what I had originally envisioned but, considering the circumstances, I thought it turned out well. My intention was for it to be a dog that looked like our Gunther. Hence the two-toned "fur."

I think Jason may have told her that it was a dog; I don't think she quite saw the "dog" in the cake when she first saw it. (I don't blame her - it kind of looked like a cross between a bear and maybe a dog!)

There was a bit of confusion when I sent the picture to family. Yes, there are three candles on the cake, but she only turned two. Last year I had decided that one of the ways that I wanted to make birthdays special for Little Pumpkin was to have a special, big candle that we could use every single year. I wasn't able to find a candle last year, but thanks to my sister Jul's great internet searching, I was able to get this cute teddy-bear candle to start using this year. (Jason requested a teddy-bear candle based on his nickname for Little Pumpkin.)

The dog cake was tasty and enjoyed by all three of us, even though we didn't need that much sugar when we were sick! But, it was a special occasion, so exceptions had to be made!

(April 17, 2020)   At this point, I don't remember all of the juicy details that I was going to share about the "after birthday" happenings except this one specific incident.

Though I don't remember exactly how it happened, it was a few days after Little Pumpkin's birthday when Jason and I both heard a crash in the kitchen one morning. When we walked into the kitchen, we couldn't see anything that had caused the noise. Until we walked around to the other side of the table...

This pretty, still sick with a cold, little girl was trying to help herself to her birthday cake! It had been sitting on the table and she somehow got the lid off, had gotten a table knife to cut the cake with, and was ready to dig in when it somehow crashed onto the floor! I believe she was a little unsure of what we were going to do upon our discovering her covert, secret birthday cake mission, but we were more impressed than anything! (She still surpasses my expectations in her abilities, even to this day!) I cannot remember if we salvaged the now pitifully-sad doggy cake at all, but this event still sticks in my mind as the most memorable part of her second birthday! And with that, I will finish this very-past-due post about our birthday celebration for Little Pumpkin's second birthday!