Traditions gone horrible awry

WILL I SHUT UP ABOUT BIRTHDAYS?! I promised a birthday extravaganza recap, but really, does anyone care I turned 27? Thought so.

Instead, please enjoy our feeble attempts at celebrating beloved Stowell/Nielson birthday traditions with a 1-year-old...you can guess how that turned out.

The night before Peanut's actual birthday, GJ wanted to toilet-paper her bed (Stowell tradition). Since I have a selfish black heart, there was NO WAY I would allow anyone in that child's bedroom and risk waking her up, ruining my evening of watching "Glee" while simultaneously catching-up on perezhilton.com. So instead we TP'd her bed when she was awake the next morning.



She kept going "Ohhh" and pointing at the toilet paper, like these were some sort of beautiful garlands we were streaming across her crib and not a cheap means people use to wipe themselves.

After work that night, we made her an angel food cake. You may remember we let her go at her own half cake at 6 months, so naturally she'd get a full cake at 1 (Stowell tradition). Just don't pay attention in these pictures that there is a big slice taken out of the cake (looks like I'm not the only selfish parent, GJ!).

Too lazy to make or clean up frosting, we went the ghetto route and got some whipped cream to put on top of the cake. We got the aerosol can kind and, after putting the cake in front of Peanut, put the frosting on top of the cake.

SHE FREAKED OUT.

The noise the can made scared her so bad, she wanted nothing to do with the cake. Being the sweet and kind mother I am, I continued pushing the cake towards her and she crawled away, screaming in horror. It was hilarious.





GJ even tried feeding her some (it's CAKE - SUGAR! Two WINS with this girl!) and she acted like he was poisoning her.



We then lit the big birthday candle (Stowell tradition - actually, I guess none of these traditions come from my family. Nielson tradition would be FORGETTING about the birthday dinner you planned for your eldest 27-year-old daughter because you're so distraught that your youngest 19-year-old son does not want to drive home from college on his birthday days later to celebrate - though I'm not pointing fingers). This is a huge candle with a countdown (count up?) from 1 to 21 - you are supposed to light it each birthday year and let the wax burn down until the next year.

I had this great idea of getting a picture of Peanut next to the candle, and taking this same picture every year until her 21st.



Moments after this picture, she grabbed the flame and hot wax. She was terrified of the candle after that and would no longer pose for a picture.



...then I forgot to blow out the candle and, 8 hours later, Peanut turned 6. Opps!