Grayson's birthday. Which was in March.

Posting about Jake's birthday party yesterday got me thinking about Grayson's birthday. Which was in March. But there's no time like the present, right?

Nathaniel wanted to bake Grayson a cake all by himself, so I decided to let his shaggy-haired self do it.

Honestly. When I look at my kids right before they got a haircut, I almost break out in hives. It looks like his hair weighed 10 pounds back then.

Heavy hair didn't keep him from mixing up his cake, though.

I can't even remember now where the other kids were while we were doing this. Frankly, I can't believe they weren't totally up in Nathaniel's grille, wanting to help and offering lots of unsolicited advice.

Oh, but then I guess that was back when we had a TV. So they were probably off watching that.

Nathaniel did a great job mixing, and then I popped it in the oven for him. And apparently at some point he went and changed his clothes, because this was only a couple of hours later, when it had cooled off and he started adding toppings.

Yep, toppings. Because I didn't know he wanted to bake a cake of his own, so I didn't have any extra icing.

We improvised. He threw some marshmallows on half of it (I limited it to half because I wasn't sure Grayson would be able to choke a piece down if the marshmallows were over the entire thing), and I stuck it back in the oven on broil to brown the tops.

And then we got out some of our other decorations. Good times!

He made QUITE the colorful cake for Daddy.

Even with all this festivity going on, Nathaniel still felt like it was missing a little je ne sais quoi ... so he pulled out the Smarties.

Meanwhile, I was working on the cake I'd had planned ... a simple yellow sheet cake.

I'd found this "frosting starter" at Wal-Mart and thought I'd try something a little different this year ... typically Grayson likes strawberry cake with strawberry icing, but I was intrigued by the possibilities here.

He's a huge fan of cotton candy ice cream, so I thought I'd give this a whirl.

You take the starter icing and make a hole in it with a knife. Then you dump your flavor packet in it.

Stir it well with the knife, and you get your flavored icing!

I iced the cooled cake with it, and it was a pretty, pale blue.

It looked a LOT like the cotton candy ice cream we all enjoy.

I didn't have 42 candles -- nor am I a big fan of putting that many on a cake -- but I did have six. So I put a grouping of four and a grouping of two on the cake. And thinking I was clever, I used pink ones for me and Amelia, and blue, white and yellow ones for the males of the family. HOW PLEASED WITH MYSELF WAS I?

Grayson tried a piece of each of his cakes and enjoyed them both. I think the verdict on the cotton candy was that the flavor was really mild, so perhaps two packets of flavoring would have been better?

Not sure. If I try it again, I'll let you know.