Why I had an atomic cake at my son's 1st Birthday

I alluded to an atomic cake in my last post. It's true. I gave him a store bought cake. There's a good story to that. I was going to make him a fruit juice sweetened carrot or banana cake with cream cheese frosting for his first birthday (really I was). His birthday was on Friday.

The Sunday before, we would up at urgent care. He had some illness and crud that children often get. Monday, my husband wound up at the hospital with a 104-degree fever for a chest x-ray for suspected pneumonia. At work Monday, I nearly passed out on the couch in the ladies' room. Chuckles was just a year old (duh since his b-day was right around the corner). My monthly cycles were not yet back, but I had weaned him about 3 or 4 weeks earlier. I thought I had the mother of all period cramps (or possibly an ectopic pregnancy) or as I emailed Jenn: "I think I got a hold of some bad clams". Monday night, my MIL came over to help me with Chuckles since he still wasn't all the way better, my cramps were better but still pretty bad, and my husband was doing none-too-well and needed a little TLC from his mommy. The pregnancy test I took came back negative so at least I knew I wasn't at risk of rupturing a Fallopian Tube right there on the living room floor while reading Goodnight Moon.

Tuesday morning, I got up, took Chuckles to day care, called my obstetrician and described the pain, and per her instructions, went straight to the emergency room where I was diagnosed with acute appendicitis and underwent an emergency laparoscopic appendectomy that evening. My husband was forbidden from coming to the hospital as he was so ill he might infect others or pick something else up. My son was retrieved from day care by my FIL and my MIL waited at the hospital with me until I walked up to the operating room myself.

So, I decided not to cancel Chuckles's birthday party. My mom offered to pick up a cake and she called a cleaning lady on my behalf. I contracted with a caterer to supply tacos and I had already purchased the liquor (what you don't serve liquor at your child's parties?). If anything hadn't gone perfectly according to plan or my house wasn't quite clean enough, I had the perfect retort: "I *just* got out of the hospital after having abdominal surgery!".

So much for the bulgar wheat germ cake. Turns out Chuckles is allergic to milk, so the cream cheese frosting would have been a bad idea anyway.