My baby is a full on toddler now!  No longer will I be counting the passage of his life in months, but rather YEARS!  How did this even happen?!  Seriously, this is not a rhetorical question.  There is just something about having kids that puts your life in hyper speed.  I feel as though I’ll blink and he’ll be moving out.

We opted out of having a first birthday party for him, but this year, with an impending sibling we decided that we wanted to make a bit of a fuss.  True, he won’t remember it, but he did enjoy it while it took place and that’s what we wanted for him.  We invited 4 other toddlers in his age range and only 3 were able to make it and let me tell you, they were running around having a grand old time.  I honestly, do not know how parents who have massive toddler parties do it!  Our toddler, who has one week of potty training under his belt (more on this soon), wet his pants 3 times with nary a word about it, because he was 1. too distracted to tell us he had to go and 2. having too much fun to care that his pants were soaked.  Oh boy!

I wanted to keep it simple, so I put out a couple of toddler favorite toys, some chalk and chalk board and an aqua doodle and let them run free.  We tried to keep the food all toddler friendly, while also appealing to the adult palate.  We served: cucumber sandwiches, mushroom pâté sandwiches, pb&j sandwiches (cut into dinosaur shapes), vegetable cups with artichoke arugula bean dip (recipe to come), grapes, strawberry banana smoothies, tater tots and vegetable pot stickers.  Everyone but especially the adults, really dug the tater tots!

I made this vegan banana cake (I omitted the rum) with butter cream frosting, and it was pretty good!  It was Asher’s first cake with sugar in it and oddly all he wanted to do was eat the chocolate chips and the cake, which tasted more like banana bread than actual cake but he wasn’t at all interested in the super sweet frosting.  Go figure!

Asher is so lucky to have all these wonderful little friends in his life, and I for one, would lose my mind without their moms!!