Celebrating Remy's Birthday in 2011

Every year since his diagnosis, I've been making Remy a raw vegan cake for this birthday. Every time that we've had a raw cake, he's pushed it away. Last year his sister forced him to eat some of his. This year, I decided at the last minute that it would okay for him to receive a conventional cake: a cake made with sugar, wheat, oil and eggs. It possibly also contained artificial vanilla (I didn't even think about that until now!). In any case, I was very grateful to his Auntie Dee for making it.

The words were made from perfectly cut and arranged dried cranberries.  The "5th" and the stems of the flower were made from watercress stems :)  The clementine segments balance off the colours nicely on my raw cashew cream icing.

DH had the great idea of surprising the little guy by rolling a new bike out right after we would sing "Happy Birthday".  It's always a good idea to see if we could ellicit emotions from the guy :)

Well, it turned out that the little guy was so unwell that he ended up putting himself to bed before supper was ready.  When it came time to eat, everyone ate except him.  He was tucked under his covers shaking to generate a fever.  I made sure that no one would force him to stay up to eat if he felt that he had to lie down.  I'm glad that he was able to rest.

Although, Remy was in bed, the nicely decorated cake was waiting for mouths to bite into it.  I had not had a conventional cake for (I don't even recall how long), but I certainly wanted a piece.  After a bit of thought and hesitation, my sister and I decided to cut the cake in half via a co-operational cake surgery technique.  Since we still wanted to take a picture of Remy eating or looking at his cake, we decided to keep the top part intact  while splitting the bottom half amongst us.  Even DH ate piece!

The next day, Remy was running around and babbling by 6:30 AM.  In the afternoon. we finally decided that we should sing him "Happy Birthday", present him with the cake with the nearly dried up cashew cream icing, and also roll out the bike.

He didn't seem to impressed at first, but as we all put in the enthusiam and excitement, the guy started to show signs of glee.  Just look at the photos:

Now this is what he looked like with the new bike:

Thank you to Everyone for your warm and cheerful birthday wishes for Remy.  And thank you so much for your generous and thoughtful gifts.  Remy sends you his virtual kisses.  Have a magnificent day!