A Hungry Caterpillar: Hannah's First Birthday Bash!

So many second siblings get the short end of the pinata stick when it comes to first birthday parties, so I pretty much made a promise to you (even before you were born) after Nathan's party, that yours would be on par with his. 

Your favorite books right now are ones where you can interact with the page: Pat the bunny, touch and feel animals, bedtime peek-a-boo, and the hungry caterpillar. There's something about holes on a page that really attracts little people. 

It wasn't too difficult to decide which book to pick. Hannah LOVES food. Hungry caterpillar theme it is. 

For Nathan's first birthday party, we didn't really have anything in the form of entertainment. All the guests were 1 year olds and were perfectly happy playing with beans in a bottle. But for Hannah's party, we were going to have the toughest crowd to please, after teenagers, toddlers. So I thought back to my favorite birthday party activities and came up with...PINATA! 

My friend asked me if I was going to do a regular or a pull string pinata. I didn't even know there was a difference, so being the hard-core mom that I am, I decided to do both! The little ones would have a pull string and then the big kids could whack the other part. Perfect! 

So after googling, I found a simple and cheap method to make the pinata. For the paste, I used a mixture of water and flour. You basically want to make a paste that is like the consistency of glue. I cut up strips of old newspaper and started to cover a balloon. I did about 2-3 layers and called it quits. I let it dry outside overnight and when I went back to get it the next evening, there was a huge crack down the middle. Apparently, the balloon had expanded during the day, cracking the pinata. I simply used some masking tape and repaired the rip. No biggie. 

Afterwards, I taped 2 more balloons to the already paper mache'd balloon (which was going to be the head and pull string portion). I wanted the head to have its own separate compartment to put baby treats. 

You know you are hard core when even your pinatas are made with whole wheat paste!

 Then I started to paper mache the rest of the caterpillar. This time, I learned my lesson and let the caterpillar dry indoors. Nathan was super curious about this weird thing sitting on the table. He got pretty excited when I told him that he could help paint it.

 After it dried (2 days), Nathan and I painted it with some acrylic paint that I had on hand and stuck a pair of antennae on the head portion.

On the day of the party, we hung it up. Nathan thought it was pretty funny that a giant caterpillar was flying in the air. Hannah didn't know what to think.

  So, I didn't do enough research to find out that only 1 of the strings released the trap door. I basically connected 10 ribbons to the trap door and in the end, it worked out pretty well because it turns out, babies aren't really strong and don't know to pull down.

 After the big brothers and sisters made a mad dash for the baby mum mums and raisin boxes, we convinced most of them to put the treasures in a baggie for their little sibling.

And then it was the "big kids'" turn. The kids ranged from 2-5. I'm glad we didn't put blindfolds on the kids because most of them were missing with their eyes open, but it was cute to watch them.

 And then this cute sweet girl comes and knocks the caterpillar off of the string. Honey was right, I should've reinforced the site of attachment a bit more. Note to self. Reinforce the hanging apparatus.

 With a make-shift noose, we hung the caterpillar back up and the fun continued.

 And then the kids all received a bag and went crazy for stuff. Of course, Nathan pretty much took all of the raisin boxes and only raisin boxes. Surprisingly, no one took the fruit leathers. They were target brand, so there wasn't any cute characters, showing what they were. Haha, suckas! More for me!

 For the food, I decided to serve all the foods (except for cherry pie) that was mentioned in the book.
Since we had a bunch of babies and toddlers at the party, I cut up fruits in different sizes and shapes.

Monday: apple slices and caramel sauce. Tuesday: Pear and brie tartlets. Wednesday: sliced plums. Thursday: strawberries. Friday: cuties oranges and Saturday: bbq smokies sausages. 

 Of course I would serve veggie lollipops. They were actually quite the hit (with the adults at least). I heard one kid exclaim, "Hey, these aren't real lollipops!"

 And what would a birthday party be without ice cream cone quiches! My grocery store has these adorable mini ice cream cones. I just made up my usual quiche batter and poured them into the ice cream cones and baked them in little muffin tins. A few leaked, but the muffin tin caught everything and they were still pretty easy to remove and looked good enough to serve. I tried putting foil on some of them and they turned out to be a mess. I don't recommend foil.

 I used a sandwich slicer that I had and cut bread into butterfly shapes, put out some salami (and turkey), an assortment of cheeses, condiments and a nice big bowl of leaves. Everything pretty much required refilling except for the leaves. Those, only a few people partook of.

On Saturday, the caterpillar also ate through cupcakes and chocolate cake. For the chocolate cake, I made a brownie, topped it with nutella buttercream frosting (with a hint of truffle salt), and then topped that with a chocolate ganache. I had requested that my assistant, Steve, top each piece with a little dried sour cherry, but he made the executive decision to leave them off.

Is that ALL for me?

Why is the cake so far away?

 I loved how the cupcakes turned out. Since Hannah loves peaches, and I had some peaches in the freezer, I decided to make a whole-wheat peach cupcake with peaches and cream cheese frosting. I found mini-trix at the grocery store, which worked out perfectly to make the border. They looked super cute, but got soggy when it was time to eat them.

 The smash cake.

 For the decorations on top, I used marzipan, colored with food coloring. To make the leaf, I made a marzipan cutter with some aluminum foil and punched out some leaves and added the veins with the back of a knife.

Then I rolled up some plain white marzipan to make the little larva and placed one on each leaf. 

 For the caterpillar body, I twisted 2 ropes of light and dark green together and cut them into short 1 inch pieces.

 Attached a little red head...

 Stuck some sprinkles on and voila!

 For the butterfly, I just made a long tube of different colors and smashed the cylinder to make a triangular cross section. I sliced the cross sections to make the individual wings and attached them to a little body.

I also wanted to show off the monthly portraits that I took of Hannah. It was cool seeing them all together. 

 This was a good afternoon craft project for Nathan.

 We had a fun food-themed story time for the kiddos. I read the Hungry Caterpillar, Yummy, Yucky, From Head to Toe, and a chinese story, A Rabbit's Birthday Party. In between stories, we sang songs, did finger plays and played a few simple games.

 Feeding the caterpillar was fun.

 I ordered a set of mini-maracas to add to our collection of musical instruments and brought everything out for the party. The kids loved playing their instruments of choice as we sang songs.

At Nathan's party, I set up a little photo booth where people could take photo booth style photos with my kindle. It was a big hit. For some reason, people didn't take pictures at this party, but I had the last guests take one before they left. 

And of course, we had to take a family picture as well!

Well, that was about it. I'd say everything was pretty low key. The cupcakes took a bit more effort, but everything else was super easy and could be prepared ahead of time. With 2 kiddos, 1 teething, I think everything turned out really good. The guests all enjoyed themselves and so did we.

Being Like Big Brother at 53 Weeks

Dear Hannah and Nathan, 

This week has been a fun one, filled with play dates, parties, and pool time. Hannah and Nathan both have gone through some growth spurts lately and as a result have been bottomless pits when it comes to meal time. 

It's really neat to see Hannah really play with Nathan. Nathan, when you were younger, you would play alongside other kids, not really interacting, but with younger siblings, you can totally tell the difference. They always want to go and see what the older sibling is doing and tries to copy or imitate. 

Never did I think that at 1 year old, you would be able to play with the marble-run toy. And now that you are not picking up everything and putting it directly in your mouth, I even feel comfortable with you playing with this (while supervised, just in case one suddenly looks delicious) and you actually love it.  

 Hannah, you are starting to show that you understand that everything has a purpose or function. You knew that these pink sunglasses were for wearing on your face.

 You know that diaper pails are for banging...

 And paint brushes are for drawing, and occasionally, eating.

 One day, I handed you two each a big slice of watermelon to see what you guys would do. Hannah ate the whole thing and asked for more. You love watermelon.

 Nathan, you took a few bites, but you were not as excited about it as Hannah. But then again, you may have been too full from all of the spaghetti that you ate.

 On Saturday, we had Hannah's birthday party. We pretty much invited anyone we knew who had a kid close to the age of 1 or has an older sibling who is friends with Nathan. I plan on making a separate post about the party, but here is the short and sweet version.

We had a pinata for all the littles to pull. After the prizes dropped, the older kids got to whack it with a sawed-off hockey stick.

Since the theme was Hungry Caterpillar, we had a story time activity where I read stories and we played games. I think it was a big hit for both the younger babies and the older toddlers. 

When it was time for the cake smash, Hannah first poked the cake and then she just leaned her head in, with her mouth open and went for it. She stayed there for a good 5 minutes, sucking the frosting off of the cake. 

You were pretty happy afterwards. As the party continued, you quietly ate your cake for about 30 minutes. 

Overall, it was a fun day. You took a nice nap afterwards. Life continues. 

A few days later, we took Nathan in to see the allergist. Nathan was brave and endured the skin scratch test. After 5 minutes, this is what your back looked like. The peanut one (#5 on right) got so large that it actually started to blend in with the spot below it. The doctor had to give you an anti-histimine and a steroid to make sure the reaction didn't get too worse. On a scale from 1-6 for peanut allergies, you are a 4. Other things you are allergic to are cedar (#2), mold (#13), dog (#18), and soybean (#6 on right). You also ended up having a small reaction to wheat and corn, but the allergist did not mention anything about being allergic to those things in particular.

 After starting nasal steroids, your drooling has started to decrease, but it really seems like it gets even better when we don't feed you wheat, but I am glad that you are not allergic to wheat. Gluten-free products are not super delicious.

This week was probably the last time in awhile where I will be going to the grocery store with both of you. I think I'm going to take advantage of Nathan going to school to get shopping done with only 1 kid in the cart. This week, while grocery shopping, Nathan took his doodlePRO along and drew pictures through the whole trip. I was very impressed by this one in particular.

 Can't you tell? It's a picture of Nathan. The boy (on the left) has 2 arms, legs, ears, eyes, nose and mouth. The figure on the left was Hannah, but then Nathan changed it to be me.

Plus, Hannah can now start to help with putting grocery items on the belt. You did all the work while Nathan was drawing. In the end, you got a buddy buck and you tried your hand at the spinning points machine. Needless to say, your mind was blown.

 Today, while I was driving, I heard some giggles coming from the back. I looked back and saw both of you holding hands. I immediately pulled over and took a picture. Proof that both of you like each other. (Even though this week Nathan, you told me that you did not like Hannah and you wanted me to give her away to somebody else. After you saw that I was sad, you said, "I'm just kidding. I love Hannah.") I really hope you were kidding the whole time and just didn't say what I wanted to hear.

Hannah is teething once again as the final incisor is pushing through the gums. Hannah is drooly and more fussy than usual. Separation anxiety is also at its high point, places that used to be ok for you to stay at with someone other than me is now not ok. You cling onto me for dear life when I try to pass you along to someone else.

Nathan's "why" questions are still bearable. I don't think you purposely try to annoy me with those questions; you really want to know why all these things happen in the world around you, although sometimes we catch you asking "why" questions when you already know the answer (because we just explained it to you). I think you are trying to figure out more information, but just don't know how to go about it.

Well, that is about it for now. Next week, Nathan goes back to school and get to meet new teachers. Exciting! In the meantime, play nice together.
Love,
Mommy