Suddenly Six

After a very busy week of birthday dinners, parent-accompanied field trips, late night cake decorating sessions and car accidents, I'm still in a bit of a fog, but slowly emerging.

Like Graham, Cael's birthday fell on a weekday, so with his party scheduled on the weekend to accommodate schedules and a dinner of his choice on his actual birthday, his celebration was drawn out over several days.  I thought he might spontaneously combust from the pain of waiting two extra days to open presents and see his cake, but aside from shouting "I'm ZASE!" at everyone within earshot after learning that "seis" is "six" in Spanish, he was surprisingly patient.

I have to admit to feeling seriously lackluster about creating Cael's cake.  It feels like Graham's birthday was about a minute ago, and despite the fact that I just barely caught up on my sleep, I was not overly enthusiastic about pulling a guaranteed all-nighter to get the dessert done.

But the show must go on, and with the theme of Cardinals baseball decided, a vast improvement on Cael's original choices of a cake that looked like poop or a giant booger, I got started crafting the scoreboard and the Cardinals' logo.

I actually got quite a bit accomplished in the middle of the night, and although I move much slower with my eyelids half open, the lack of constant interruptions from my boys meant that I could see each task through to completion before delusionally putting my tools away in the shoe closet and the leftover fondant in the dishwasher.

My biggest point of pride with this cake was that the fondant (admittedly still store-bought as I ran out of time to make it from scratch) was properly stretched and not only were there no seams, but the top and sides were smooth and not lumpy.

 Really, they were.

When the entire thing was completed, I stuck the flags in to fill some empty spaces that I had no clue how to fill, and went to move the entire thing to the table to take some photos.  But instead of the cardboard cake base sliding on the countertop, it got stuck and the entire cake itself slid across the board and warped out of shape.

Hooray!  Zase cheers for Cael's lumpy cake!
But Cael didn't notice those mistakes.  He saw a baseball, the St. Louis logo, and came running with a smile on his face, straight past me and over to his pile of presents.  Because, after all, he is just a kid and a big stack of gifts will always outrank some eggs, flour and butter, no matter how long it took to assemble.

But later, just a few hours after it was finished, I used a sharp knife to hack away at my latest effort as Cael watched on, saying, "This was the best cake ever, Mom.  You're great at making cakes."

And that's good enough for me.  Happy Birthday, big boy.

(Yes, eventually I will explain the car accident reference.  But for now, I'm too embarrassed...)