My daughter's first birthday was over the weekend and I had been planning her cake smash session for months. I was so excited to do it with her and to have these amazing photos of the occasion. My husband and I both have a big sweet tooth. Heck, I even named my personal blog and baby blog after cupcakes. I just assumed that our daughter would also have a love of cake and sweets, it's in her genes after all.
We tried giving her a cupcake on her actual birthday and she wanted nothing to do with it. It had been a long, busy day and she had just eaten dinner, so I figured she was just tired and wanted to get out of her highchair. I set everything up for her cake smash the next afternoon. I originally planned to do it outside against the beautiful brick on our house. We're at the beginning of a long, hot Houston summer and it was super windy and the mosquitos were out in full force so I had to move everything inside. I cleared out our breakfast nook, the only place in the afternoon that gets any decent light, and set everything up. We brought Kaitlin over to the cake and I got into position. She went right for the candle - I thought everything was in the clear and we were going to have a great shoot. And then it went downhill...
She put one finger in the frosting and immediately got up and walked away. We put the candle back in the cake - figuring she would want to play with it again - and brought her back to the cake. By then she started to figure out that we wanted her to touch the cake again and that's when the tears started...
After she walked away for the second time I sent all of our family our of the room - we had four grandparents watching like hawks (love you guys). We figured Kaitlin might calm down a bit with just her dad and I in the room. We also tried to bribe her with a toy. The candle went back in the cake and we hid her new favorite giraffe toy behind the cake. Surely this ought to entice her to play with the cake! But no, she just took the giraffe and ran.
We decided to cut a piece of cake and leave it on the platter, maybe a smaller piece would be more friendly to her rather than a big ol' white cake. I tried giving her a small bite of the cake for her to taste, thinking maybe that would help her dig in. She chewed once and spit the whole thing out. Her dad and I took big, smiley "Mmmm-mmm" bites and she just stared at us and walked away (but for record the cake was actually delicious!).
At this point it was getting close to her snack time, so I thought that a little bit of normal food would tame those hunger pangs and get her to take another look at the cake. I gave her some graham crackers (her favorite) and then decided to hide a piece behind the cake. Surely she would try a piece of cake while she was gobbling up the grahams, right? WRONG! We even tried the same trick with Cheerios. We put down a Cheerio trail leading her to the cake, and even put Cheerios on the top of the cake to try and get her to taste the frosting. She was on to us though and she wasn't having any of it. She didn't care one bit about that cake and wanted it out of her sight as soon as possible!
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| picking Cheerios off of her foot |
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| eating a graham cracker...almost looks like she's eating cake! |
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| "Mom - where are the graham crackers? I don't want this cake!" |
Even though the cake smash was pretty much an epic failure, I am still in love with these photos. It really shows Kaitlin's personality (though in real life she cries a lot less) and they are pretty darn funny. With kids you really do have to expect the unexpected and just roll with the punches. Some days are going to turn out exactly how you planned and others (many, many others) will go the completely opposite direction.
Happy first birthday to my amazing, funny and cake hating daughter!
