Happy Birthday Calder!

I cannot believe our little guy turned one last week!  Time has flown!  I will update about his stats later, this post is long enough just about his birthday...

 One year old!

 We kept things fairly lo-key, and just invited our parents and siblings over for dinner and cake and ice-cream. I did, though, make a cake that I am quite proud of.  It is my first "sculpted" cake. I took pictures of part of the process.

This is 3 cake mixes, or 6 9 inch cakes all stuck together.  I used the pieces that I cut off for the tail, legs, and muzzle.

The next layer of frosting was to make sure everything stayed where I wanted it to, and to trap down any crumbs.

And voila!  A little puppy!  I am pretty pleased with myself, I am going to admit.  Calder loved it, too, which made all the work worth it!  

Here is is the first time he saw it.  He was pretty amazed that there was a little dog sitting on our table! And then for the duration of the week that we had cake left over, he kept excitedly pointing to it.  

He liked opening his presents and seemed to get the hang of ripping the paper.  

And we have had such a fun week playing with all of his new things.  He is fascinated with his new toy barn, and plays with it CONSTANTLY!  It is a very nice break for me, I have to say!

And he loves to cruise around with his new walker.  He always is so proud of himself!

He didn't really try the cake at his birthday party, but he loved the ice-cream!  (and he loves trying to use a spoon. It's adorable, and while he can get the spoon to his mouth really well, he has a harder time getting the food on the spoon, and makes a huge mess.)

He learned how delicious frosting and cake are later that week, though.

We had his birthday party on Sunday, and so on his real birthday, Tuesday, I took him to the dollar store and bought him a mylar balloon.  He was so pleased!  He wrestled with it all day.

Happy Birthday Calder!  It has been such a fun year!