Monkey In The Dog Cart

We celebrated Avery's second birthday this afternoon! Curious George has been a favorite character lately, so the theme of the day was MONKEYS!

Jen made this great MONKEY cake. She'd made the cake at home, and brought it to our house to frost & decorate. Avery LOVES chocolate, so you can just imagine his little index finger reaching up onto the counter to swipe a little taste every time he went by... it's amazing how far a two year old can stretch when he wants something that's supposedly up high and out of reach!
One of our contributions to the party was creating these coconut palms out of materials around the house. The tree trunks are assorted sized leftover PVC pipe, wrapped with brown crepe paper. Newspaper was cut and fringed, then spray painted to make the leaves. I taped sections of craft wire to the undersides of the leaves to help position them, and then tied brown balloons (coconuts) as a final touch. Richard secured dowels onto a small platform of scrap lumber, and we set the PVC pipe onto that... the trees stood up well without tying them off to anything.

Avery had fun opening his gifts. He especially likes books, and he got a good assortment of them today. He spent some time 'reading' the stories, entertaining us all with his sometimes understandable ramblings and interesting intonations. As he unwrapped his presents, he was frequently heard saying "I LIKE this!" with great enthusiasm. It was a wonderful afternoon, having family gathered here to celebrate and share this little one's birthday.

Monkey in the Dog Cart is a tune from the Phillips Collection.