Lessons in Motherhood

Last Thursday I did something completely radical…I let Sophia sleep in her own room with her sister. What was even crazier was that I turned off the monitor, and not surprisingly, she slept through the night. It’s been 4 nights now! 4 nights of full sleep! Granted I wake up with boobs like giant boulders, but it’s better than waking up two or three times a night. I feel like a new woman. Plus, it’s just nice to have the girls in the same room. Hailey loves her sister and seems to really enjoy that they sleep near each other. It’s so sweet.

The birthday party was a wild success, and by wild, I mean picture 10 three-year-olds running around, screaming, and jumping on all sorts of inflatable moonwalk rides in a giant carpeted warehouse. It was that kind of wild.

The party began a little bit shaky because I had misinterpreted the usage of the “party room.” Not having thrown or attended a party at this facility before, I understood that the party room was just for the 30 minutes at the end of the party when we would be having cake and ice cream…WRONG! Silly Mommy! Adults and children have free access to said party room throughout the entire 2 hours we are there. So, not having snacks in there would have been a fatal mistake, since hungry three-year-olds are akin to rabid hyenas. No problem…Mommy made a quick run to the grocery. By 15 minutes into the party, we were equipped with veggie and fruit trays galore.

By the time I returned from the grocery store, another crisis had broken out. Someone had a little peepee accident on one of the inflatables. Oh boy. This was a bit of a problem because said child’s Mommy was not prepared with an extra set of underwear, and said child refused to wear Pull-Ups. Now, the not wanting to wear Pull-Ups thing is understandable, but the not having extra undies packed is inexcusable. What a horrible mother.

Now comes the best part of the story…said Mother’s dear friend (who I won’t mention by name) kindly offered to run to the store to purchase additional undies. Unfortunately, the only types of stores in the vicinity were grocery or drug stores. Thus, she returned with giant, adult-sized Grandma-style undies (no offense to Grandmas) AND a role of masking tape. Do you see where this is going now? Several minutes later, said child was the proud owner of what we lovingly dubbed toga undies. Picture tiny child, picture giant undies, now picture how much tape would be required to get giant undies to stay up on tiny child. We’re talking serious McGiver action here. The whole thing would have been side-splittingly hysterical if it weren’t for said child’s adorably sad face. Ugh…those puppy dog eyes get me every time!

In the end, the sun and another friend saved the day by drying out the undies that her Mommy had washed out in the sink. There was much playing and fun left to be had. The store-bought cake was a wild success. We retained 5 of the 6 princesses (the other one mysteriously disappeared!) A good time was had by all and by 3pm it was all over. She certainly had a wonderful time.

More pics on the Flickr site.

Well, I have to say that the cake was quite delicious except for the store bought fondant. If only our caped cake crusader would have made his own fondant (as he originally planned), I might not have had to peel it off. However, the story doesn’t end with the cake from the previous blog. Nope, the stubborn mother-in-law still insisted on making her own cake, and now her own fondant, from scratch. So, while Luke and I toiled away at our respective offices on Thursday, Grandma set about to make her own marshmallow fondant. When we got home from work, this is what we found. It’s a white cake with strawberry filling, oh and some of the pieces of red velvet cake that we had shaved off stuck in for good measure. It was pretty funny to have all of these cakes floating around, but the child is 3 so I suppose 3 cakes is appropriate?

Hailey received a little princess song player for her birthday.  It allowed her to play DJ this afternoon.  Like any good DJ, she took requests, but only when they suited her tastes:

When we last left our caped-cake crusader and his very stubborn mother-in-law, the gauntlet of cake challenge had been thrown down in the middle of my kitchen. Date of the challenge – Wednesday night., one night before Hailey’s birthday on Thursday. Wednesday during the day, Grandma baked four cakes. She had great success baking the cakes, but she did “cheat” by using boxed mixes. Four cakes there were…now if only we had a design by which to decorate them. Oh wait, our caped-cake crusader to the rescue, if he ever got out of work. It was 8pm before Luke got home and began, yes began, looking for the design for the cake. One hour and 50 Google searches later, he had selected a total of 25 “possible” cake options, from designs that looked like an iPhone to ones that were full scale castles. Ok, seriously? It was now 9pm, and we still had 4 naked cakes. Finally, we all agreed to scale the cake back a bit, going with a simple square cake design with a carved 3 on the top.

Luke immediately set out to carve the 3, but wait!!!! We have no cake carving knife…what kind of a house do we live in with no cake carving knife???? How can he go on? Well, perhaps a regular knife could cut it just this one time. While the 3 was being carved, my mother and I began making icing options. Oh so many icing options. First, we made cream cheese icing for the red velvet cake, but of course the cream cheese frosting couldn’t adhere the fondant. Why not, you ask? I have no Earthly idea. So, on to the buttercream frosting. Wait, this recipe calls for boiling milk. If you boil milk, doesn’t it scald and taste like crap? Ok, new recipe please. Uh oh, we don’t have a cake frosting utensil. Ugh…this house is so not supplied for cake decorating. Perhaps we’ll have to just go with a spatula or a butter knife. Can we wrestle one of those up? Yes, chef! (Probably a mistake to watch Hells Kitchen during this process)

After the cakes were stacked, carved, and frosted, it was time for the most exciting part….rolling the fondant. Luke set about coloring the fondant pink, but only after complaining that we didn’t have the proper gloves to protect his delicate fingers from the food coloring. Oh, and also, I didn’t buy enough fondant. Although I’ll remind you that I wasn’t supposed to buy any fondant at all because the Ace of Cakes was going to make his from scratch. I only really bought it on a whim as a back up. So, really I bought too much fondant if you ask me, but I digress. Back to the fondant rolling. Well, the fondant rolling was a bit anticlimactic. It just rolled out like sticky cookie dough. Unfortunately, the first time he rolled it, it was the wrong shape for the cakes – round, not square. So, back to the rolling pin he went (oh, I forgot to mention that it was a metal rolling pin and not the long wooden ones like they have on tv. I think that’s item number 65 to add to our list of things we need to buy if we ever bake another cake. Sorry Hailey, there goes your college fund). Right, back to the fondant. Rolling it a second time, which was of course my fault for not buying enough, caused the fondant to crack a bit in the corners. Luckily, the expert cake-crusader gently molded the fondant back together. Well, tried to anyway. The corners were, let’s just say, a bit rough. However, by midnight we had a cake that I think we were all proud of…how it tasted, well that was to be determined Thursday and will be told in the final episode of the cake controversy.

Sorry to disappoint those of you who are anxiously awaiting installment three of the cake controversy. I promise to make the cake reveal soon. However, today it’s important that we take time to celebrate Hailey’s birthday. I can’t believe that our little munchkin is 3! There’s so much that I want to say, but honestly, I was up until midnight last night helping with (and documenting) the cake creation so I am exhausted. All I can do tonight is to say that I love my Hailey so very very much. I’m so proud of her and the little girl she’s becoming, and I can’t wait to see what the next year brings.

If you haven’t read Part 1 of the Cake Controversy, you have to read that first or this won’t make any sense…

Let me begin episode 2 by saying that I love my husband very much, and he is honestly one of the most artistically talented people I have ever met, but baking and decorating cakes are skills that have to be honed over the course of more than a week. Thus, I continued to resist his grand scheme to bake and decorate Hailey’s birthday cake from scratch. Plus, as this plan was taking shape in his brain, I was watching my $40 cake savings turn into a $200-$250 deficit by the time you add up the new equipment we’ll need, the multiple batches of cake supplies he’ll burn through, etc.

My protests aside, Luke went to Kroger Saturday night and spent his $20 budget on supplies for a pound cake (you need dense cake like pound cake to withhold the weight of fondant). Sunday morning he starts the bake-a-thon. A few hours later my mother and I came home to what appear to be two beautiful cakes baking in the oven. I prepared to eat my words, but wait. When we removed the cakes from the oven, we found that what was a beautiful golden brown exterior was really just about a quarter of an inch of the dough which had hardened to a peanut brittle consistency about two inches above the subterranean level of half-caramelized cake batter that resembled molten lava. Immediately, I picked up the phone to call my savior – Publix. Now, why I didn’t take pictures of these botched cakes is beyond me. Probably because I was too busy looking up the number for Publix and praying I was not to late to order the cake that I had picked out in the beginning.

However, our caped, cake crusader is not finished yet. More cakes must be attempted, fondant must be rolled, decorations must be made!!!! How does the story end? I’m not quite sure. The cake for Saturday has been ordered from Publix. However, there is a battle of cakes brewing between my mother who stubbornly insists on making, carving, and frosting her own princess castle cake and my husband who wants to make a red velvet cake covered in fondant. A trip to Kroger Monday night resulted in us purchasing no less than 4 boxes of cake mix, 2 cans of frosting, 2 bags of confectionery sugar, and an oven thermometer (so that the oven can not be blamed for any resulting losses of future cakes). In a subsequent trip to Michaels, we came home with white fondant, glycerin to make our own fondant, and food coloring. I’m probably in this thing for about $100 at this point, not counting the actual cake from Publix.

Other than preparing to eat a lot of delicious cake in the future, I’m staying out of the Food Network Challenge that has broken out in my kitchen (3’ cake limit not applying). However, if this keeps up, I’m banning all cake related Food Network shows, donating all cake related ingredients to the homeless shelter, and permanently unplugging my oven. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that!!!

In Episode 3, I will take pictures of the resulting cakes…whatever shape they take.

I am about to tell a story that has kept us in absolute hysterics for the better part of a week now. I hope that I can accurately capture the true absurdity of the entire situation from all angles. Names will not be changed to protect the guilty. So, just sit right back and you’ll read a tale…a tale of a fateful cake.

Let me start by saying that this is the ridiculous cake that I decided to get from Publix for Hailey’s birthday. I know it plays into her princess-obsession which I loathe, but can you imagine the look of sheer joy that will come across her face when she sees it? That look alone was worth the $60 for the cake (what was I just saying about our princess being spoiled?). It was supposed to be a 3-minute call…a 3-minute call!!!!

Now the insanity and the subsequent controversy surrounding the cake began on Saturday (one week from Hailey’s party which is 8/1) when my mother (who is in town now) decided that we could save money if she made the cake instead of buying it from Publix. Her plan was simply to bake, frost, and lightly decorate the square cakes that make up the bulk of it and then purchase the turrets and princess dolls for $15 on Ebay. Not a bad idea considering that she is fairly crafty and has a history of baking all of my cakes when I was little. I tell her that if she can pull of such a feat, I will put the cost difference in Hailey’s college savings account (hey – every little bit counts, man!).

All we have to do is get Luke to buy in to this plan…here’s where it gets a bit complicated. Luke decides that he wants to make the cake himself. As my mother and I begin to resist this plan, his scheme grows ever more complex, like an elaborate spider’s web that pulls you in deeper the more you resist. Suddenly, he not only has to bake the cakes himself, but they must be from scratch – no cake mixes. Also, he has to roll his own fondant (that smooth type of frosting that is used on wedding cakes) – not the fondant you can buy at Michaels but the kind he’s going to make himself, from scratch! Oh, and no buying the turrets, those have to be constructed from cake formed onto wooden dowels. Princesses, of course, will be sculpted and painted by hand from fondant. Before our very eyes, the husband that I know and love transformed into Duff Goldman, the Ace of Cakes himself. I mean, if these people who have gone to engineering and/or pastry chef school, have been making cakes for years, and have professional equipment can build 3′ cakes from scratch on Food Network, then of course Luke can do it right in our very own kitchen.

Stay tuned for the next installment of the Cake Controversy tomorrow…

What’s that saying, “spare the rod, spoil the child”? Well, I’m not going to start beating Hailey with a rod, but our children are spoiled (ok, my children are spoiled). Hailey’s birthday hasn’t even arrived yet, and I am already struck by the kindness and generosity of our family and friends. Of course, with that kindness and generosity comes a big helping of toys and other princess-related stuff. She will love it all. She will play with it all. But really, the kid is getting everything that she asked for for her birthday and everything that she didn’t ask for but we know that she’ll love. That’s a lot of stuff. Did I get everything that I asked for for my birthday? Surely not!!!

Sometimes matching means putting together an outfit with colors that coordinate. Other times matching means wearing a top and socks that both have Mermaids on them, regardless of color.