My baby turned 4

I can't believe Morgan turned 4 yesterday. He's growing up so fast and insists that I don't call him baby. What he doesn't know won't hurt him. He will always be my baby. For that matter, so will 7-year-old Gabriel.

When it comes to birthdays, I usually pull out all the stops for the kids. I've been a little lax with Morgan, though, since he isn't in preschool, doesn't really know that many kids and his birthday is so close to Thanksgiving that it actually falls on the date once in awhile. So, for the past three years, it's been quiet celebrations at the house with a few family friends (usually adults), a homemade cake and a small fanfare.

Well, this year the growing young man insisted we throw him a party. A Shark party, no less. In my doting wisdom and thinking a shark party should be easy to find decorations and favors for, I agreed.

Boy was I a fool! For a town on the beach, there really isn't much out there for sharks. I guess a few years ago when "Shark Tale" came out there was stuff, but now that MY kid wants a shark party, there's nothing.

Morgan and I looked everywhere, we went to all the party stores in Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo, we spent a day at Ventura Harbor Village and looked at the shops there. We went to the taco place near the hat shop and actually ate shark and chips. He thought this was pretty cool, and we both enjoyed the amazing pictures of Great White Sharks on the walls.

Finally, we went to Sea Things on Santa Clara in Ventura and found a few items for guests' gift bags.

We couldn't find invitations, so I ended up making them. We settled for plain, blue plates. I found two shark posters at Party Pleasers in Camarillo and put one of those on the hot tub and one on the garage wall above the food table. I made use of some drift wood from the beach and raided my bathroom for shells to use as table decorations. That would have to do.

There are no shark Jolly Jumpers, either. We settled for one with palm trees.

The cake was the big problem. Morgan wanted a shark cake. They don't make shark cakes, either. So, I was going to have to make that, too. After fretting for a month about how to make it and looking online at what others had done , I still had no idea how I was going to make a cake picturing a side view of the entire length of a shark because, of course, that's what my baby wanted.

The problem was that by the time I cut the shape of the shark out, there wasn't much cake left to serve the party guests.

Lucky for me, Mr. Morgan changed his mind and wanted to do a shark head with an open mouth full of teeth, like the original "Jaws" poster - now we're talking doable.

So, at 8 p.m. the night before the party, I started on the cake. Procrastination is my middle name, but somehow I always meet my deadline. Eric, of course, was laughing at me and taking pictures as I worked on the cake.

Putting the cake together wasn't so much the problem as frosting it without getting the colors mixed. I would have used a decorator and those funky little star pattern dots, except for the fact that I loathe them. They take forever and I'm not a very patient person.

Along about midnight, the red velvet cake (think shark blood) was done an frosted along with a whole bunch of cupcakes that I'm hoping the family will clean up before I eat too many.

However, this was a toothless shark and I wasn't sure what to do about the teeth. Those other shark cake makers used fondant, marshmallows, gum, vanilla Tootsie Rolls, nuts and candy apple candy corn. None of these things, save for the marshmallows, gum and nuts were readily available. I wanted to stay clear of nuts since I wasn't sure if any of our guests were allergic. Gum and marshmallows just didn't seem right.

So, a few hours before the party, I ran down to World Market to see what I could find. I found star-shaped Peeps that I thought I could cut the tips off, I found chocolate-coated almonds (at least the nuts were covered), Lindt white chocolate bars and a couple other things I decided wouldn't work. So, $14 in candy later, I'm back at the house trying to figure this out.

The star points on the Peeps were too wide, I was still having issues with the almonds, so I tried the white chocolate bars. I was worried they wouldn't cut properly, but it worked perfect, and we had a shark with a mouth full of teeth.

And, thanks to our friends the Snyders, I had a wine stopper in the shape of a swimmer that I was able to stick in the mouth so it looked like the shark ate someone. OK, perhaps not politically correct for a 4-year-old, but I've always said my family was a little twisted.

Oh, and Eric talked me out of writing Bite Me on the cake board. So instead, I made sure Morgan was wearing the shirt that said "Bite Me" with the picture of shark's teeth on it. It made me feel a little better.

The lessons I've learned: Don't commit on birthdays until I've checked out the party goods situation. I'm getting more confident at cake decorating with each birthday. Four-year-olds don't care if the decorations are perfect. They just want to have fun, candy, friends and presents until they're so pooped out that they fall asleep on the floor playing with their new toys.