Developmental update at 4 years old

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that Tristan is 4 years old. When it comes to small children, every year that goes by is astronomical! Tristan is so different and so much bigger now. As adults we may age but we are pretty much no different than we were a year ago. For kids, it really is astronomical. Throwing kids huge birthday parties may seem excessive but it's such a huge milestone that I really love doing it. Tristan's construction party was his biggest party yet! It will be hard to top that one. Parents tell me that kids grow out of the parties as well and they don't get excited about them much as they get older. Right now all the kids are so young and excited and that makes me even more excited to throw a birthday party! One day, we can all look back on all these special occasions with fond memories. The experiences are priceless :)

Speech

Showing his white teeth after a dentist cleanup.

Tristan is a little person who you can have clear conversations with. His pronunciation of letters is improving all the time. Anyone can understand him most of the time. He used to have problems saying the sound of "f" but now it's fine.

He is developing his own personality but a lot of Jean-Louis and I are in him as well. He copies us and often says "aw, man!" "that is so cool!" and "what the hell?" It's not the best thing but we don't swear (or at least I never) so you will never hear him say anything worst than "hell."

He can seriously listen to you and understand what you tell him, if you have his full attention. I had a conversation with him about how bad it is to eat things that are burned such as burned toast. I told him it tastes awful and it can also lead to cancer and cancer could lead to death. The first time I told him that it just stuck with him. He knows that I yell every time his dad eats burned toast and so when Tristan sees this, Tristan tells his dad not to eat it because he will die.

When I explain something to Tristan, he repeats what he learns to his dad. He explained to Jean-Louis how some of the African's have no money and no food to eat and that is why they have no meat on their bodies. We do not want to waste food here because we are lucky to be eating so well. That was the lesson there :)

Tristan sucks at keeping secrets. I have told him plenty to test him and so far he has only kept one or two. He blabs to his dad all the time!

Tristan's signature.

He can write his name and copy his phone number. He remembers his phone number from memory as well. He can read numbers well but he gets a few letters mixed up. He also gets French and English pronunciation of letters mixed up some times.

Tristan likes to talk. Some times there is no shutting him up. He's your typical little 4 year old! Blah, blah, blah. But it's so entertaining and he has such a sweet and innocent voice :)

Eating

Dining with him has been great lately. He is eating a bit more now but I think he is still under eating for his age. He eats everything we give him. If he doesn't like it much, he still eats it because he knows he has too. For instance, he doesn't really like bittermelon so we don't give him much but he will still eat what we give him. I love bittermelon :)

Being goofy with a funny looking carrot.

He just left his highchair this week! I know we took forever doing this but it was only because he was making such a huge mess. We don't feed him at all and he had to prove to us that he could sit at the table on a regular chair and not make a mess. This week, we had plenty of water spills on the table and on the floor :( One time it was milk too. He still wears a bib to protect his clothes. We may lose the bib soon, depending on how it goes. Then again, even Jean-Louis still wears something on his body to protect his clothes. Ahem.

Sleep

Tristan sleeps from 9 or 9:30PM to 7:30 or 8AM. That is about the same as usual. He went from not napping at daycare to going back to naps. When he is home with me, he doesn't nap at all. We put him down earlier around 8:30PM or so.

Physical Development

Tristan is 37 pounds. We are looking forward to when he is 40 pounds so we can put him in a booster seat in the car. That should make things a lot easier.

Tristan is around 40 inches (or 102 cm) tall. He is finally tall enough to reach the bathroom sink to wash his hands if he tippy toes. We still have to carry him for the kitchen sink. He is also tall enough to turn on any light switch in the house. I believe at 40 inches tall, he is now tall enough to go on Disneyland rides! Assuming he is brave enough to go on them.

Tristan is wearing anything from 3 to 5 year old clothes. The 5 year old clothes need folding in the sleeves and pants but they don't look overly huge. For clothes that are 3 years old, we just let him wear them as undershirts under bigger shirts. It's cold right now so the smaller shirts are coming in handy! Since he is short, 3 year old pants are just the right length.

Potty Training

Tristan still pees in his pull up at night. At one point he went almost 2 weeks dry at night. We thought that was the end of pull ups but we were wrong. He just went 4 nights dry and then peed again. Since he is our only child, we haven't felt the urgency to push him much. Now that he is 4, we are having more conversations with him about this because he can understand more. Hopefully he will decide to stop all pull ups soon.

During the day, we can trust him to go potty by himself. He pees and washes his hands by himself. When he has to poo, we normally go assist him.

Behavior

Tristan is a fun and imaginative child. He likes to pretend play and he tells crazy stories or sings funny tunes all the time. We sort of do that ourselves so he definitely gets some of it from us.

When he does something bad and we yell at him, he gets mad and tells us that he will hide under the table and never come out again. We need to control our yelling some times but he is going through a time where it is some times really hard to get him to listen and do what we tell him to do. He likes to stall things he doesn't want to do right away such as go to bed.

Tristan is a very fortunate child. We shower him with nice toys and great food all the time and I'm not sure if he is spoiled or not but some times he forgets how lucky he is. When we go to the store, he some times asks us to buy him things. I tell him that I don't like it when he asks for things and that really nice and good boys don't ask. Good boys just get things some times. I tell him it's okay to tell us what he likes and show us but don't ask us to buy it. Now when we are at the store, he grabs toys and brings it to me and says "this is really cool." See? He's learning!

Lately, we have found that he has been over opinionated and stubborn a lot. For instance, when he doesn't want to put on his coat himself and wants us to, we could be standing there arguing for 10 minutes. Sometimes we are able to convince him to do it but other times, he will throw a tantrum. Yes, a tantrum! We haven't seen these sorts of tantrums since the terrible twos. Luckily, these don't occur as often and don't last as long as the terrible two tantrums. It's still pretty awful though :(

Tantrums aside, I think Tristan is at the age where he can be a lot of fun to be with. He is mature enough to have conversations with and smart enough to rely on for help some times. He corrects us many times when we talk to him and we don't even realize we made a mistake. He likes to be useful so he helps where he can with things around the house. For instance, he helps set the dining table and this past weekend he helped put up decorations on the Christmas tree. He did break an ornament along the way though. It was the first one we ever broke:( Oh well. It could have been worst.

Tristan is very affectionate. We shower him with kisses and hugs and tell him we love him all the time and he does the same to us. His grandparents in France noticed how affectionate he was when we were in France this past Spring as well. I hear that kids grow out of this affectionate phase so I want to enjoy it as long as I can :)

Happy 4th Birthday Tristan!

Exactly four years ago, my life changed. I became a mom. Jean-Louis' life changed. He was a father. We were parents. Today, our baby turns four. FOUR!!! Hard to believe.

Today is the first day of Tristan's 4 year old adventure in life. We already threw him a big party but since today is his actual birthday, I couldn't help but make him something little. For the birthday picture, you know? :) Since we had plenty of chocolate cake lately, I decided to make my favorite nutella cake and use vanilla bean swiss meringue buttercream on it. I took the opportunity to get rid of more Halloween candy as well. I crushed up some Halloween candy and used it as topping for the cake. Then I added a few more sprinkles. It turned into this big candy covered cake!

We upgraded him to the dinner table & used the new mat.

Upon opening this...

Um, I think he liked his gift :) Star Wars Lego with Darth Maul. We couldn't help but film his reaction. Priceless.

Construction Party for a 4 year old

This weekend we threw Tristan a construction party for his upcoming 4th birthday. It was sort of a full time job this past week planning and implementing his party. Seriously. It was also a last minute scramble to accommodate twice as many guests. We anticipated half the number of guests but then to our surprise everyone but one child accepted their invitation. Last year we had trouble getting enough kids so we invited a lot this year. I was very impressed that everyone RSVP-ed back on time as well:) You can never predict these things but you need to be ready at all times to do whatever you can! The last 24 hours before the party was a grind.

The Preparation

I spent the last few weeks here and there thinking about the party and slowly coming up with ideas. Every time we went shopping, I would browse for things that we could use for the party. I even picked up a couple of things during Halloween because black and orange were good "construction" colors. I wish I had gotten more stuff though because once Halloween came, everything was gone:( You know how hard it is to get orange and black decorations? Hard! Yellow, on the other hand, is available everywhere.

Last year was our first theme party for Tristan. When he turned 3 years old, we had a "monkey" party. It was also the first time I baked a cake for his birthday. I didn't really have the skills to do it before. Since then I had a bit more practice and now I have the confidence to bake more theme cakes and will probably never buy another one again. Lol. For this year's theme, I chose to throw a "construction" party because it is something I've always wanted to throw for him and I thought 4 years would be a good age for it. He already has a lot of construction toys, which made it perfect for using as decoration at the party :) Thanks to Pinterest and the popularity of theme parties from a lot of creative parents, there are tons of ideas out there. Construction parties are indeed very popular, but not popular enough to find supplies for at the Dollar store yet. Luckily, we were in Seattle recently and were able to grab some cool construction party supplies at one of the big stores down there :)

We had store bought decorations and I made some on my own as well. I customized them to read "Tristan 4", "Kids At Play," "Kids At Work," and "Party Zone" etc. The signs were easy to photoshop and I just used yellow and orange construction paper to print them on. They turned out better than I thought. I initially created them with a black marker but the computer printed ones were faster to create and they looked so much better! Then I went a bit crazy with photoshop and decided to photoshop the food labels, food picks, and thank-you tags as well. It was pretty straight forward and all the computer printed stuff just made everything look a bit more professional. You know how I like to pretend to be professional, right? :) Lol.

We had ton of game ideas but when we found out we had so many guests, we had to change our games at the last minute. We had three prizes for three games. We had other activities planned as well, like coloring the dump truck and building paper construction vehicles, but there wouldn't be prizes for those. It was so cool that I found so much stuff on the Internet for our construction party :)

The week leading up to the party was kind of crazy. When we realized the challenge we were up against, I just laughed so hard. I absolutely love planning parties but even I freaked out at the thought of having to plan, host, and cook for more than 30 people. Could I really do all that by myself? I ended up delegating some party tasks to Jean-Louis. I just couldn't handle doing EVERYTHING. Jean-Louis had no choice but to help me with the games. He also helped with putting up the decorations, putting up signs to direct guests to our party site, and of course driving me to the store to fetch things. For a couple of nights, Jean-Louis and I both lost sleep over the stress. Lol. The day of the party, I had to ask my parents to come by 1 1/2 hours earlier to help out. They helped with the tuna sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, veggies and fruit and they helped carry everything over to the party site. We used a bigger room in our building, which was a minute walk away.

Signs/clues to lead guests to party site.

Party Day

There were around 12 kids, including Tristan, and many more adults. There were well over 30 people at the party. My family was there too but there were only a few of them. I have never hosted such a big party or fed that many people before. Ever! We were maybe 30 minutes late, which is always embarrassing, and I realized the next day that I forgot to serve some food. Doh! Even without that missing food, I was still able to fill pretty much the entire pool table with food and that didn't include the dessert either. I guess I really do cook too much food! Haha.

Two words come to mind when I think back to our construction party: epic and chaos. It was the biggest party we have ever thrown! So much work and detail went into bringing it to life. Some times I wonder if anyone notices all the details, besides me :) The whole place was transformed into a construction site using signs, caution tape, and colors yellow, black, and orange. We went all out to create a wonderful construction party for our little boy. He loved it and so did we! I hope our guests loved it too. I overheard that one mom called me a "supermom" for cooking, baking, and doing so much by myself. Someone asked if I was a professional cook or baker so that was a nice compliment too :) I am none of those things but it's always nice that some people think I am.

The party was chaotic with kids going a little wild with balloon fights because the "entertainment department" kind of broke down for a bit. I wasn't there to conduct games and control was lost for a bit. We actually used the cowbell from our marathon to get people's attention. Lol. I had to dash off for 15-20 minutes to deal with camera and camcorder problems. If I didn't, we wouldn't have been able to film anything for the party and that would have been devastating. All that work and we can't even document it? Unthinkable. I also had to find something to blindfold the kids for the pinning game since Jean-Louis couldn't find anything and kind of tore the house apart looking. Chaos. Everyone was waiting for me! Luckily, I was at my computer and was able to check my email because one of the moms had emailed me because she lost our address. I called her right away and they came. Phew :)

We played 3 games, which we implemented in the few nights leading up to the party. We had other games in mind but they were only suitable for half the children. When we found out there were going to be so many kids, we had to change everything. Jean-Louis ended up conducting all the games during the party and did a good job :) I love team work!

Game 1 was "pin the wheels on the dump truck." This one was Jean-Louis' idea. Easy enough. He also created the dump truck. Only 3 kids were interested in playing. I think we had a lot of shy 3 and 4 year olds.

Game 2 was picture bingo. I came up with the idea of picture bingo and Jean-Louis came up with the idea of using stickers to implement the game. We had little construction stickers and we had a big enough set for each child. All the kids received a 4x4 grid, 16 construction themed stickers, and 16 plain white round stickers. They had to place each sticker on the grid in whatever order they wanted. We photographed all the stickers and then printed them big on a sheet in color. We cut out each sticker from the printed sheet and then placed them in a construction hat to be randomly picked out. Each child had to look on their sheet for the image drawn from the construction hat and then cover that image up with a white sticker. Using the white sticker was my idea :) It was a bit transparent and removable, in case we wanted to check for accuracy. But we didn't - ha! Also the sticker wouldn't shift around, unlike playing chips. All the kids were into this game so that was cool.

Game 3 was "throw the rocks (or balls) into the dump truck." Jean-Louis drew another dump truck and we stuck it to the front of a big box. Each child was given 4 balls to throw in. Whoever could get the most balls inside won a prize. Most of the kids were into this game.

We had coloring sheets and crafts but the kids were not really into sitting quietly for a long time to complete any of those. Some of the kids colored a bit. We just sent each child home with the sheets to do it themselves. We had a little TV in the corner of our party site so we borrowed some Bob the Builder shows from the library and played that during the party. Kids would come watch a bit and then leave. Some watched while they ate their food. It was fine.

Made a runner for the table so the cloth wouldn't move too much.

PARTY FOOD MENU

Appetizers:

• Veggies, specialty chips served with onion dip & dill dip
• Ham sausage, bread crackers
• Pretzel sticks (labeled "logs")
• Veggie chips, kettle chips

Main dish:

• Macaroni and cheese
• Tuna sandwiches
• Samosas (only thing that wasn't homemade)
• Pineapple, mandarin oranges, persimmons

Apple juice, other fruit juices, Orangina pop, ginger ale, Aloe vera juice

(Things I forgot to serve: black grapes, all orange cheddar cheese sticks)

Dessert:

• 10 inch Construction cake (chocolate & white cake with caramel & chocolate buttercream)
• Chocolate cupcakes, with fondant toppers
• Lemon vanilla sugar cookies

People ate but we had so much food leftover still. I always find that the parents are a bit reluctant to eat at parties. I did indicate on some of the emailed invitations that food would be provided for everyone, including parents. The kids seemed to have likes the macaroni and cheese. The macaroni and cheese, tuna sandwiches, and onion dip were new recipes I tried for the first time at the party. They all turned out well I thought.

I was so pleased with our "cake zone." I thought it looked super cool. The hanging decorations were overshadowed by all the sweet treats though. There was too much happening in the room and I think those decorations were lost in the mix. I shouldn't have bought them :( It was one of the few things I did buy. Oh well. The lighting was also bad in the area since one of the wall lights were burnt out. We didn't know. Boo :( It was a rented room and we missed testing that out. All the desserts turned out nicely, both in the way they looked and tasted. I thought the sugar cookies were particularly tasty :) I think it's because I used more vanilla bean seeds this time. The cake was super moist and delicious. I screwed up the cut a bit when I assembled it but hopefully people got the idea :) I'll blog more about the cake on my food blog later for those who want more details. Only 5 people chose to have a cupcake instead of cake. The kids also got to choose whether or not they wanted to eat a construction cone or rock on the cake. My nephew requested the "dirt" on the cake. Lol. In my experience so far, cake usually wins over cupcake.

Messed up the 45 degree cut inside - oops!

Each child got to take home a wooden construction kit and a cookie for their party loot. I found the cement trucks and backhoes at Dollarama and pretty much bought them all. Score!

Loot gift wrapped in tissue & taped with caution tape.

"Thanks for stopping by" cookie.

We kept mess to a minimum. Nothing was damaged and cleanup was fast. The party was a success. Jean-Louis and I were so pleased and relieved after the party concluded. Omg.

Tristan goes to his 1st birthday party

Tristan all ready to go!

This is only the second time Tristan has received a birthday invite from a friend of his. The first time was two years ago but I had to cancel at the last minute because he fell sick:( He has been to little kiddie parties before but they were kids who were either related to him or on a couple of rare occasions, who had parents who were friends with either Jean-Louis or I.

Today was exciting because it was the first time he was going to a birthday party from a friend he made himself through daycare. Weeee! I was probably a bit more excited than he was :) When I was a kid, I never went to any kiddie parties outside of the family. After throwing a few birthday parties for Tristan now I can see why kids LOVE parties. Being invited and attending a birthday party as a kid is somewhat like being invited and attending a wedding as an adult. It's just so nice to be thought of and be invited!

The party was held at Michaels, a craft store I frequently visit for baking supplies. Ahem. It's funny because when Jean-Louis heard about where the party was he was like "oh nooooo!" I go to Michaels way too often I guess :) It's such a cool idea actually. I think a craft party there would lots of fun but maybe when Tristan is much older.

There were probably 12-15 kids and Tristan was one of only two boys there. It was a Tinkerbell party but it was great! Tristan knew pretty much every kid there as well since they all came from his daycare room. I was finally able to attach faces to names I heard about from him. I now sort of know who the "good" kids are. It so happens that some of the kids he talks about and likes are also the well behaved kids in the room:) His best buds from daycare were not there though.

When we arrived, some of the kids were already there. Tristan said happy birthday to the birthday girl and gave her her gifts. Tristan and I made her a personalized card the day before :) Then the kids sat down and drew on the table. The table was lined with craft paper so the kids could draw all over it. After we waited a bit longer, we started the crafts. The kids all got aprons to wear and got to work on decorating their own t-shirts. Tristan enjoyed squeezing the bottles of color on it. It was really just like applying royal icing on a cookie and he had done that many times already. Simply squeezing color on the shirt was boring though so we copied some of the other kids and really got down and dirty using our hands and fingers. It started to get messy fast! Moments after we did that though, Tristan whined and wanted to wash his hands right away. You see Tristan does not like to be so dirty. Lol. After we washed his hands we came back and finished off the t-shirt decoration. This time I brought some paper towels and rolled it into a pen and used that to smear and write on the t-shirt. Much better :) By the way, the staff member who supervised during the craft party stayed in the room during the entire party.

After crafts, the kids kind of monkey-ed around with the helium balloons. Then the food arrived and the kids ate. We were served your typical party food of pizza, fruit platter, veggie platter, tortilla chips, juice, water and then cake. Then it was time to leave:( It was a two hour party. Tristan said happy birthday again and gave the birthday girl a hug. Awe:) He went home with his t-shirt, his loot bag, and a helium balloon. Wow. It's almost like it was his birthday too.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Another year, another birthday. January and February are quite the busy months for us. There was my birthday, Chinese New Year, then Jean-Louis' birthday and Valentines is coming up. Each one of these involve celebrating and me cooking and baking lots.

It's not that usual for Jean-Louis' birthday to be on a day off but when I saw that it was going to be on a Saturday, I just had to invite some people over and have a bigger than usual dinner. And by people, I mean inviting over my sister and her family:) Jean-Louis really didn't want a "party."

This morning I made us some Star War pancakes. I thought it was fitting since Jean-Louis is such a big Star Wars fan! I meant to make kefir pancakes but when I saw that my kefir did not set yet, I opted for a vegan recipe. Why not and it was Jean-Louis' birthday after all. For those who haven't followed, Jean-Louis has this desire to become vegan but we can't seem to agree on what we can and cannot eat since I don't want to go vegan. We had to compromise and part of it was that I would be willing to cook and eat more vegetarian and vegan food. We are basically cutting down on meat across the board, especially red meat like beef and pork. If we do eat meat, it will mainly be chicken or seafood.

Jicama, watercress, avocado salad

According to Jean-Louis, all the food served for dinner was a hit. Hooray! For appetizers, I made tzatziki and spinach and artichoke dip. This was served with assorted veggies, multigrain tortilla chips and multigrain pita. My sister brought a specialty goat cheese and some baked pita chips. The appetizers alone were filling!

For the main course, I finally got around to making pasta with vodka sauce. I decided to add some chicken breasts to it. It was very simple but quite tasty. I also made a new vegan salad. Omg. The preparation took longer than I expected. I used a grater and pretty much everything had to be grated or sliced thinly with a knife. The watercress was wet after washing and had to be spun. The peanuts came from whole nuts. Jean-Louis and Tristan helped crack and crush them. The orange and lemon juice for the dressing had to be squeezed from fresh fruit etc. so you get the picture. It was a pretty loaded salad! Luckily, the hard work paid off:)

Dessert was a lemon meringue cake. I've been meaning to make this one for awhile too and I know that Jean-Louis loves lemony desserts. It was basically a chiffon cake with three layers of lemon syrup, caramel, and lemon cream topped with meringue. If you don't like lemon, you probably won't like this sort of cake! We liked it.

We ended the day by renting Rise of the Planet of the Apes on iTunes. It was pretty good but it didn't really seem to have an ending. I guess we will have to wait for a Part II. We normally don't make a big deal out of birthdays, except when it is for Tristan, but today actually felt like a birthday celebration. I even gave Jean-Louis a small gift and Tristan made him a card. We had birthday candle on the cake and we all sang happy birthday. What else is missing? That's probably as good as it gets for the older folks:)

Monkey cake and cupcakes for a monkey themed party

I did it. I made my first party cake for my toddler's 3rd birthday. Now that I have started, I won't be buying anymore cakes for future birthdays :) Hooray for being able to DIY (do it yourself)!

The party was all about monkeys. Monkey anything for little boys is adorable. The younger they are, the cuter. Our boy Tristan has tons of clothes with monkeys on it in some form or another. He was dressed as a monkey for two Halloweens straight! Throwing a monkey-themed party was something I just had to do :)

I searched and I searched and found my monkey designs for the cake and cupcakes through the Martha Stewart site and Pinterest. I love Pinterest! If you are a foodie or craft person, you should get on Pinterest stat. No seriously, sign up now! :)

I had leftover marshmallow fondant I made not too long ago that I wanted to use so instead of following exactly what was described, I just used fondant wherever possible. This is the second time I have played with fondant and my first cupcake using it. The only thing I have ever created using fondant were ruffle flowers for the cake I made for my mom's birthday. This time, I really got to play with it. I had both brown and ivory color paste but I discovered that brown and yellow makes sort of a tan or dark ivory color. Neat! The fondant was a bit tricky to work with when it dried up and it kept sticking to the table. I had to clean the table a few times from the build up of fondant. I used a mix of mostly icing sugar and a bit of cornstarch to prevent from sticking too much and I had to work fast before the fondant got dry and hard.

I didn't want to make the cake that was used on the Martha Stewart site since I wanted something just chocolatey. The thing with monkey-themed parties is that people want to incorporate so much banana into everything. Bananas are good but chocolate is way better, don't you agree? :) The only banana thing we had were real bananas. Well, I made banana looking sugar cookies too but they were lemon-vanilla flavored. So the cake I did was chocolate but the design I used was pretty much an exact copy from the Martha Stewart site. I made my favorite icing but this time I made it chocolate. It's actually the swiss meringue buttercream recipe off of Martha Stewart as well. What can I say, Martha has good stuff on her site :)

The cupcakes I chose to do were nutella. I made them once before but I kind of messed up so I wanted to try them again. This time they turned out great. Some were slightly overcooked. I guess I didn't rotate them in time. The fondant design I used was from The Frosted Cake 'n Cookie site. They have a great tutorial with lots of pictures on that site. It really was easy. I used the chocolate buttercream on the cake and cupcakes. The nutella cupcakes were for the more daring guests. In case any of the kids had an allergy to nuts, I wanted a chocolate cake alternative. Both cake and cupcakes turned out delicious. They weren't too sweet since I cut down on the sugar and the buttercream went super well with the marshmallow fondant. I was a bit afraid the fondant would be stiff and hard but the buttercream icing totally softened it up. It was a perfect marriage!

The monkey cake had more success at the party. I think because it looked totally cool. Jean-Louis preferred the taste of the chocolate cake more since he said the nutella cupcakes were not as moist. I thought they were moist enough. The consistency was more like a moist brownie than cake though. If you like nutty fudge stuff, you'll love nutella cupcakes! I personally loved them but I also loved the cake too.

Finally what is a monkey party without monkey and banana sugar cookies? I made these lemon-vanilla flavored ones for party favors. Jean-Louis thought they should have been banana flavored but the idea of that didn't appeal to me. So there you have it! There are tons of monkey designs out there for desserts and they are so much fun to do :) Now, go throw yourself a monkey party! Oo-oo-ee-ee!

Tristan & I decorated together! This is his creation :)