Birthday Girl

I had no idea that we would start getting catalogs with nothing but paraphanalia for First Birthdays. Who knew that we needed a theme party complete with a nail polish bottle shaped pinata? Luckily, she wasn't interested in all that commercialism.

Instead, I made her a nice chocolate cake with chocolate frosting so it would show up well in pictures. I decorated with some of the prized blueberries and rasberries from our yard (and the neighbor's). There were bets on how she would approach having an entire cake placed on her tray - the full fisted dive versus dainty picking. I'm not surprised that she used her very precise pincer grasp to pull off the berries, but then she wouldn't eat the ones tarnished with chocolate frosting. Instead, she joyfully went back to the broccoli, chicken, and corn-on-the-cob from dinner. Granted, it was fresh sweet corn. For her second go around at a birthday celebration, she got darn right mad when I tried to feed her a cupcake. Good thing we salvaged the party with a dog book. On our recent vacation, she devoured steamed mussels and canned sardines. Maybe her grandfather is right to be worried...