Ben loves animals, which is good since he's surrounded by them at home. His best friend is Junie B., our pug. She likes to lick Ben's face, trying to find left over food. She's gotten a little over zealous lately, spending most of her awake time sniffing the floor for ANYTHING that can be digested. She's also gotten in trouble for chewing up Ben's blocks and bottle caps.
This is Achilles. He's got a nub foot, as you can see in this picture. He doesn't have any toes, it kind of stopped at his ankle, hence the name Achilles. It's his birth defect. He likes Ben the least. Achy wants nothing to do with the fur pulling, face slapping fun that Ben wants to have. None of the cats have attacked Ben yet, but Achy has come the closest. If he did attack Ben, it would be in self-defense. I almost wish Ben would get swatted and learn his lesson, but I can't bring myself to let it happen. Plus, I don't think Ben would learn. And I don't want to have to explain why Ben's face was mauled by a cat to his teachers at school.
This is Baloo. He was my baby boy before I had my baby boy. He puts up with Ben a little more than Achy, but prefers to avoid him all together. He's very sweet and gentle with Ben when he HAS TO BE. He's very cow-like. Very calm, just kind of...there. Don't mention the words "fancy feast" around him because he'll go NUTS. We have to call it F.F. to prevent his hopes from getting up.
This is Chewie. She's my oldest cat. I've had her for about 16 years. She sleeps ALL day. She also avoids Ben, but if he manages to get ahold of her long fur and PULL as hard as he can, she just lays there and takes it. It's like she knows he doesn't know better. Her eye isn't all cloudy in real life, the camera flash messed it up. She's very sweet and loving.
This is Yellow. He's Ben's giraffe scooter thing he got for Christmas from MiMi. He's learning to push himself on it, but most of the time his butt ends up sliding off the back. It'll work better once his legs are longer.
This is Pepperoni Penguin. It's filled with air, like a punching bag for kids, and has some plastic balls inside that bounds around when he's pushed over. It also makes noises like "woah, woah!" and "woohoo hoo hoo!" when it's hit. Ben wrestles this thing every day. He loves it!
I'd show pictures of Ben's hermit crabs, but I honestly think they're dead. I'm waiting for Chris to get home to check on them. They creep me out. I don't like to stick my hand in their cage in case they move at all. All I can see is their shells because they're curled up inside of them. Gross.
Start with cake. Troy used a pan of brownie, and two pans of devils food cake. Then he cut the pieces to make this shape. He might go buy a dome shaped cake pan for the actual cake, but this worked, too.
We used fondant icing, which needs to be kneaded and eventually rolled out.
Green! Food coloring was added.
Putting the fondant over the cake pieces. Troy had put chocolate icing between the pieces and over them to get them to stick together and be even more delicious (and healthy).
Little dinosaur legs.
Kind of looks like the Loch Ness monster.
The pretty much finished product! I think he did very well. We're going to have cupcakes surrounding him that are going to have Ben's named spelled out in orange icing. These were practice cupcakes. The dinosaur is all shiny because Troy used water to get the spots to stick and to get the powdered sugar off. We decided that the dinosaur is a little overweight. He was recently divorced and ate his feelings. He also lost his job and has to work at Denny's. The next cake is going to be a little smaller. We realized all the little mistakes, so next time it's going to be even better. I think it's cute and I'm very happy that Ben's first birthday cake is going to be shaped like something instead of just a cake with a picture on it. Thank you Troy!
We've put child locks on all of our bathroom cabinets so Ben can't get my hairspray or hair dryer anymore, but sometimes we forget to shut the bathroom door to prevent this from happening. He always lets us know when he's crawling on his way to something 'exciting', though. He starts crawling really fast and makes little breathy panting noises (I don't know how to describe it) on his way to trouble. He makes those noises when he sees that the gate blocking off the kitchen was accidentally left open, and when the bathroom door was left open. He's gotten stealthier about getting to my laptop, though. No noises, just open handed keyboard slaps. The only time we worry about him is when he's quiet. That usually means he's eating something he found on the floor.
The floor still has some spots that need work, but for floor that had 80's carpeting on it, it's not bad! I was a little worried, but really anything would have been better. I'm going to be mopping and scrubbing the floor this coming weekend.
