The very hungry caterpillar birthday

Bouncing with energy, flaxen hair flying, our three-year-old granddaughter grinned and jumped as she watched impatiently behind the picture window for us to park as her daddy came out to welcome us to his son’s first birthday party.

The little feller studied us with his usual bemused look of astonishment and joy. A year ago, he pulled a fast one on his parents and has enjoyed the joke ever since. The child’s parents had planned a weekend birthday for him. He came four days ahead of schedule with barely enough warning to connect mom with doctor and now time for his daddy time to leave work to capture those first moments on the camera. No birthday suit pictures for this guy. After that trick, he has kept his mom and dad on their toes.

Who knows what this child will do? Right now he won’t walk. Why should he? His quick half scoot/half crawl works for his record breaking sprints across the room. His mom sent invitations for guests to join in celebrating his first year with a “Very Hungry Caterpillar” birthday party. This kid does like to eat. Earlier this year, he chomped into anything and everything I offered him and nipped my finger with his sharp front incisors. Being under medical orders to eat like a one-year old, he could not eat like the critter in the book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” but his guests could and did – simply because his mom insured we had access to all the food in that book.

Beside green-frosted cupcakes arranged to look like a caterpillar built, the tables also held all the kinds of food that the caterpillar ate: a single red apple, two pears, three plums, four strawberries and five oranges … and that was just the critter’s food from Monday to Friday. On Saturday: The caterpillar out did himself and ate his way through chocolate cake, ice-cream, a pickle, Swiss cheese, salami, a lollipop, cherry pie, a sausage, a cupcake and a slice of watermelon.

“I don’t know why the Hungry Caterpillar didn’t eat any more fruits and vegetables,” his mom said as she spread out the rich birthday feast. Before the night ended, guests cleared the table of all that food plus a pile of hot dogs and S’mores. The crowd flowed out of the house to the carport for cake and ice cream. The paparazzi came rushing to snap a shot of the newly minted one-year-old’s face as his mother offered him a little cake with one candle.

He grinned, touched, poked, prodded and tasted until he was almost messy. His mother handed him an ice cream cone and he was messy with sticky vanilla ice cream quickly spread to his cheeks beyond his huge grin of delight. About that time, the long absent rains of summer finally arrived to the delight of the kids. They promptly made it a water party.

Every child under five zeroed in on the large puddle of water near the adults and stomped through it at least once. The birthday boy’s sister added to the fun. She bent over and dunked her fair hair into the water just as she does at bath time – with the opposite effect. Brother and sister had quick baths before they re-appeared for the present opening. The birthday boy’s immediate favorite was a hand knit, stuffed critter. Popping one ear in his mouth the lad carried it across the room with his famous scoot-crawl, grinning all the way across.

Ahh the sheer joy of being a one-year-old boy. Life should always be so good.

(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at jhershberger@eldoradonews.com.)


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