The Cake

Ok, so there's three things I have to tell you before I blog this.

1. I'm a perfectionist. Yep, I openly admit that one and you don't have to know me for long before you realize that one.

2. I'm stubborn. Again, I'll openly admit it and hopefully you need to know me a bit longer before you experience this side of me.

3. I'm an eeensy weeensy little teeny weeny bit of an obsessive compulsive sometimes.... I'll only admit this the one time though.

So, it started months ago when I started to dream about what kind of birthday cake I was going to make Matthew for his very important first birthday. Sure, most of you are reading this at this point and wondering why the heck I was not dreaming of which store I was going to go buy a cake at, but there's point #2 coming in.... I am/was determined that I could make a cake.

Ok, so months ago I found the perfect cake. And how the heck was I going to make it? Who knows? So, I e-mailed the lady who made the cake that I saw a picture of and she happily sent me instructions. Ok, so I had a cake.

About a month ago, I started to obsess over what kind of cake I was going to make. Here's #3 coming in. Oh, and #2 again. I was determined that I would make Matthew a "healthy" cake because god forbid he eat all that sugar!

So, for the past 2 weeks, I've made several "healthy" cakes. Today, I went with the TNT family standard Chocolate cake. Let's just say there's a reason bakeries only make chocolate and vanilla cakes and leave it at that. So, chocolate it is. The kid will probably go into a sugar induced coma, but what the heck, he won't eat that much, right?

Once I stuck with what I knew, the cake was a breeze. Came out of the character pan beautifully!

Now, on to the icing. Here's one more thing you may not know about me. I hate sweet stuff. Put me on a desert island and I'd bring a bag of chips with me. I could seriously live without sugar (well most of the time anyhow).

But when you're making icing, of course you want to take a little taste here and there. and here and there. Blaghh... I may never eat icing again in my life.

Anyhow, so at this point I have successfully made a test cake. (after all, when point #1 comes into action) you need to have a cake to test everything out on... I wouldn't dare wing it!

All seems to be going well now. The real cake should be a snap.

Oh goodness gracious... good thing birthdays are only once a year ;o)

p.s. Do check back next week... I promise I'll show you a picture of the cake. BTW, it will probably look nothing like the one in the picture, but it's the thought that counts you know.!

Dinnertime!

I can walk!

Matthew took his first steps a few weeks back, but in the last week he's been trying to walk on his own more and more. In the last day or so, I've pretty much noticed him walking all the time!

He can get pretty far, like all the way from the living room to the kitchen! Sometimes he'll fall forward and do a downward facing dog pose (gosh, wouldn't it be great to be flexible like that again!).. and sometimes it's flat on his bum, but he is doing better and better each day!

Of course, if he really really needs to get somewhere fast (like to a cat perched in the corner), then crawling is still the optimal mode of transportation!

I can't wait to have grass in the backyard because now he wants to explore everything outside! We have to sit in the gravel at the park for half an hour so that he can pick up each little individual rock and hand them to me (or try eat one or two)....

Summer is going to be a lot of fun!