When Stacy, Matt, and their 2-year-old son Cole came to visit us in May 2007, I just couldn’t get enough of their cute nickname for him: Cole-y! So adorable!

But even I can’t believe that “little” Cole-y is now already 5 years old! Where does the time go, and how do we make it slow down?! He was an only babe when they came to visit, but now he’s got two younger bros even!

For his super-special reptile party, Cole and his guests even visited a reptile farm and had a demonstration! Stacy sent out the cutest little invites to his party, shown here. She wanted some cookies to match, so I set out to do my very best…

Originally, I planned to do some cookies of each of the four animals and the boy. However, the more I thought about it, I decided that when the kids dug into their goodie bags with shouts of, “Yay, I got an alligator!” or, “Wow, I got a turtle!” … there would be some poor kids who said, “I can’t wait to see what I g– … oh, just a regular boy,” with a face of disappointment. But the little boy was cute, and I hated to leave him out entirely. Instead, I chose to make large cookies for each animal, tied up in individual bags with a bite-sized little boy’s face cookie as a tag on the package. They turned out great!

Coordinating Thank-You cookie.

Now, I took some artistic licensing with these cookies, as the boy in the invitation had yellow hair… but that was it. Cole-y, on the other hand, has the blondest yellow hair, but it is also the very curliest hair I’ve seen in person. So I added little curly sprigs poking from underneath the red ball caps to more resemble him.

Stacy said that the cookies were a hit, Matt was very impressed with them once he saw them in person, and Cole remarked that the froggy cookie was his favorite. Win-win-win!