Where did the time go? My bubba is 1 year old! (Rusty the Robot birthday cake)

I seriously can’t believe it but my little Master Q is 1 year old! Is it just me or does time following your second child seem to just fly by even faster than the first? It feels like yesterday that I was wondering how I was ever going to get through another year of breastfeeding and here I am weaning him! It sounds so cliché but time really does seem to be sucked into some kind of vortex after the arrival of children. Some days eight hours at work would really drag on and although there are certainly days with the kids that can go on forever (!) there never seems to be enough time for anything now. Which is ironic since it’s precisely at this moment that you need more of it. More time to sleep, more time to get the housework done, more time to play with the kids and more time to just to sit back and absorb every moment of these little creatures’ lives.

The year following the birth of our first, Miss M did go quickly…eventually. To be honest I felt every minute of the first three months of her life, the adjustment was just so taxing that I really felt every hour of those difficult few months. Then before I knew it I was pregnant again and counting down till the birth of Master Q. I do often feel sad that I didn’t pay more attention during Miss M’s first year so this time around I really tried to take in more of the little things. Watching Master Q marvel at the wheels on a toy truck, seeing him smile as he felt the wind blow through his hair for the first time and the way he looks at his sister with such love in his eyes. How can he know that feeling already? All times you which you could just hold onto and never let go.

Of course when you have days like I had preceding Master Q’s birthday you really have to work hard to remind yourself of these wonderful moments…

Four days before Master Q’s birthday he woke up grissly and with a temperature. It continued for the next three days, we were up all night trying to get his temperature down and get him back to sleep. At the same time I had started weaning him and was also trying to plan a birthday party and a christening! On his birthday I took a very puppy faced bubba who would not leave my arms to the Doctor, he had tonsillitis. Then he woke on the day of his party with a rash all over him, roseola virus. No wonder the poor little man was not happy! He still managed to make everyone laugh whilst we sung ‘Happy Birthday’ but it was not the 1^st birthday I had hoped for him. Thankfully he won’t remember!

 

So onto the cake. For Miss M’s first birthday it was easy, she loved ‘Giggle and Hoot’ so Hoot the Owl it was. For Master Q it was a little more difficult. When he first started crawling we commented that he looked like a wind-up toy, he would start revving and then just take off like a shot. So this is what inspired the Robot birthday cake. I dubbed him ‘Rusty the Robot’ as I did have a little trouble with some chocolate cake crumb showing this time around. I used my Sugar-Free Chocolate Yoghurt Cake recipe again and also the Cream Cheese icing using dextrose. He was a simple 20cm square cake for his body and I fashioned the head, hands and feet from a 20cm round cake. I used Oreo biscuits for the arms, legs and ears and royal icing for the face and body decoration. Pretty simple but think ‘Rusty’ turned out well in the end!

So birthday celebration over, now onto planning next week’s christening!