Day Thirty-One: Character Cake!

Being the mother of a two year-old comes with certain responsibilities.  While last year, my son was blissfully ignorant about the whole birthday party, presents, cake thing, this year he is a well practiced birthday connoisseur!  In fact, the end of January through the end of March is the "birthday season" in our family.  There are a whopping SEVEN birthdays to celebrate within this time frame!  And these aren't the birthdays of random extended family members...  These are the birthdays of all four of his grandparents, his aunt who he  stays with twice a week, and his mother!  So needless to say, Liam has practiced his singing, eaten cake, and ripped wrapping paper like a pro in the weeks leading up to the culminating event of the "season!"  He knows what to expect, and Mum-Mum had better make it GOOD!  

Finding an appropriate birthday cake for Liam has posed somewhat of a challenge.  You see, just days before I was in the hospital adding an eighth birthday and a few weeks onto next year's "birthday season," Liam and I were at the allergist due to an apparent reaction to food dyes that was first discovered when he was eating...  a birthday cake!  So not only was he expecting a tasty, fun cake, but it was going to have to be dye-free.  Yikes!

And, like most two year-olds, Liam has his favorite characters.  There's Bright Red Elmo...  Bright Yellow Big Bird... and Bright Orange Ernie...  Thankfully, there is one other favorite - A lesser known character aimed as much at adults as children.  And that character is BLACK AND WHITE, Shaun the Sheep!  Phew!

So in the days leading up to his party, I scoured the web to get ideas about how a person with absolutely no experience with character cake baking and very little artistic ability might make a decent Shaun the Sheep cake.  In the process, I learned all about gum paste and fondant and cake pan molds and saw some absolute works of art...  Way, way out of my league!  But eventually, after looking at several simpler versions that were out there, I came up with my design and purchased my supplies.  I was ready to create Shaun the Sheep...

With a little help from Betty Crocker, I baked the necessary cakes... and some extra to ward off disaster just in case, and set to work creating my basic shape...

The beginning of Shaun's Head...

And some angel food cupcakes to accommodate the low-fat diets of several of the party goers and allow me to make a "pasture"...

Angel Food "Pasture" Cupcakes

With both white and chocolate butter cream frosting made and ready to go, I started the decoration process.  Amazingly, it went well!  So, with disaster averted, I created a second sheep with the extra cakes.  In a moment of inspiration, my husband turned Shaun's random flock member into the baby sheep, Timmy... 

The Flock

I had fun, gained some knowledge and confidence, and fulfilled my novel experience for the day!  But, most importantly, Liam recognized who his cake was supposed to be and loved it!  He was so excited, in fact, that after identifying who the cake was and blowing out the candles, he immediately plucked Shaun's eye off and ate it!  Oh, life with a two-year old begins!  And I love it!  

Day Twenty-Nine: Stumbling Through the Night...

Thanks to the events of the past few days, I have discovered that there is a good reason interrogators use sleep deprivation as a form of torture!  Now, you may remember from earlier posts that I am no stranger to poor  or interrupted nights of sleep.  However, staying up most of the night to monitor my poor, sick, two month-old daughter for the past several days, while alternately soothing my poor, sick son when he wakes up stuffy, unable to breathe, and crying for his "mum-mum" has led me to an all time low!  It's amazing to me that I am still standing, though even that I am not doing particularly well and have the bruises to prove it!

So, it is in this zombie-like, sleep deprived state, that I have kicked off the birthday celebrations of my now two year-old son!  Two years ago today, at 4:03 a.m., my son was born and I became a mother.  Given the time he decided to arrive in this world, I should have known that I was permanently kissing a good night's sleep goodbye!  However, despite my sleep deprivation, it is clear to me that this is an auspicious occasion that deserves as much enthusiasm as I can muster.  So I sang "Happy Birthday" about a thousand times on request, greeted my extended family for an impromptu dinner out, and helped my son practice saying "I'm two, off the wall!" (a phrase he came up with all by himself!  And, really, truer words have never been spoken!)

All this forced energy came with a price that I am paying for now!  For the second night in a row, finding a novel experience has felt more like a chore than an inspired, fun activity.  All I want to do, (other than sleep), is throw on comfy yoga pants and hang out with my good friends, Ben and Jerry!  This scenario is lovely, familiar and comfortable...  but not novel in the least!  I guess the lesson here is that I become a comfort seeker in times of stress, and my desire to seek novelty vanishes!

But novelty seek I must!  So, the same criteria as last night applied:  no movement, no thought, no stress!  While aimlessly surfing the web, I stumbled upon StumbleUpon!  For those of you who are not familiar with this website, StumbleUpon matches your interests with sites on the web that you might enjoy.  As you "stumble," or look at their suggested websites, you can give each one a thumbs up or a thumbs down and the program refines its suggestions from your feedback.  You can also "discover" new websites others might be interested in and network with like-minded people to see their suggestions.  Honestly, despite my exhaustion, I found this service to be really cool!  In fact, I just might have stayed up a little bit later than I had to because I was so sucked in!  Given my level of exhaustion, that is saying a lot!

So, if you have never tried stumbling, I would recommend checking it out!    I have added the StumbleUpon widget to the sidebar of this blog.  (It's the one with the little blue "SU"!)   Not only will this allow you to try "stumbling," but you could maybe, just maybe recommend my blog, too!  (I'm going to blame this absolutely shameless hucksterism on my severe level of sleep deprivation!)  

In conclusion, despite my resistance, I once again benefited from doing something novel.  And the key was to tailor the novel experience so that it was within limits that I could tolerate and benefit from.  If I had decided to jump out of an airplane tonight, or take on any sort of frustrating task, I think the results would have been very different.  However, the good news is that novel experiences come in all shapes and sizes, and with a little creative thinking I can find one that is just right, no matter the circumstances.  I challenge you, dear reader, to do the same!