Whirly Birthdays

So--along with celebrating my convocation and hooding, we also celebrated a bunch of birthdays--namely a nephew, niece, and my mom's!

Now--you have to know something about my youngest niece. I've told you about her food sensory fun...she will eat cupcakes....sometimes. And sometimes she'll eat a couple licks of vanilla ice cream. But otherwise--she's not really a "cake" girl.

So--last year we tried a home-made rice krispie cake. Utter failure. We had to take it away. Seriously--I'm NOT kidding! So--this year we bought her favorite donuts--those little powdered ones. She could eat those for every meal if allowed. So--that is what her cake consisted of--a pile of powdered sugar donuts!!!

Well--now whenever she's playing--or when another one of our family members have had a birthday--she happily sings the birthday song (she requests it sung to to her often as well)--at the end, she pretends to blow out the candles--she says "Yay!!!" And then she gets out her pretend fork--and says "And then eat the DONUTS!!!" For my sister's birthday earlier this week, we didn't get any donuts. My niece was sorely disappointed that there was only cake, and NO DONUTS!!! Oh my!!

So--here are some pictures--of the real cake shared between my nephew and my mom---and the pile of donuts--which my niece DEVOURED after she blew out the candles!!!

I got my niece that little piano--mainly cause I saw it at the store--and remembered that she often bangs on the piano when I talk to the family on the phone. Well, she opened it, we took it out of the box for her, she experimented for a minute with it, and then started busting out a tune. She seemed VERY determined. It took us a minute--listening to her--to figure out what she was singing. Then I caught the tune! She was singing "Elmo's World"!!! She's only seen it a couple times--but she was "La la"ing away! She knew just what that little piano was for! It was so she could become Elmo in Elmo's World!!!