The Baby Humpback Whale Cake

My daughter is going to be 3 tomorrow and all she wants is dinner at McDonald’s, "candy of mine own", party hats and a baby humpback whale cake.

Birthdays are not my strength. I love them. I like to celebrate them with others and am quite happy to honour my own as well, but I don’t have that birthday party gene that is so prevalent on the Gaffer’s party circuit. We have yet to throw her an actual party. We happened to be out of town for birthdays one and two and just had a belated open house for both families each year, which she slept through.

I am a good present and card buyer, but a lousy wrapper and worse house decorator. There are never balloons, streamers or decorations floating around our house at birthday time. 

Our tradition with the older children has always been that they get to pick a fancy restaurant and we all go out to dinner. I love that. I get to eat yummy food, have a nice glass of wine and pat myself on the back that we have such good birthday ideas. We do presents before, after or during dinner and the major gift is always a ticket from Mr. Husband and me to a play, concert or upcoming sporting event that the birthday child gets to attend with just us…usually prompting another yummy dinner and nice glass of wine. With this traditon we’ve been to The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Mousetrap,Famous People Players, Phantom of the Opera, Hair (that was a little shocking with a 15 year old cupcake sitting beside me), Blue Rodeo and the Blue Jays.

The Gaffer has figured out the restaurant part and that she gets to ask for things, but that’s about all. I’m trying to convince her that her third birthday should be all about giving up the soother, but so far she is not having much of that. Because her siblings will not be with us until Tuesday night, we have not even told her that her birthday is tomorrow. We managed to postpone Christmas for a day last year with this method but I’m not sure if it will make it past this year. People have already started to call and wish her happy birthday which will throw our calendar tampering all to hell.

I haven’t mustered the mental energy to do the crazy pre-schooler party and we are never in town on the weekends so for the first birthday of which she is actually cognizant, the little kid is probably getting a bit ripped off.

There’ll be presents of course ( her Disney princess CD player is on hold at Toys R Us) and most likely tears because she is 3. There’ll be chaos with or without a houseful of preschoolers because that is just how our house operates. There’ll be a mess to clean up and an argument over who has to do it. There will also be an argument about who gets to sit beside the birthday girl and a few whiny comments about how hungry everyone is because it will be so late after dance.

Her Grammie, her Auntie Bert, two of her favourite babysitters (and conveniently my cousins), her sisters, her brother and her mommy and daddy are going to sit in her boring old dining room at a table with no decorations and eat MacDonald’s. I may buy some fancy birthday napkins and plates to go with the hats which have been requested. I pray Baskin and Robbins has a cake they can draw a whale on  or mom will be colouring a couple of pictures downloaded from the internet and laying them across the top of a plain blue jamoca almond fudge ice cream cake. Note: there is no reference nor will there be any to the possibility I may be baking that cake. Please don’t send suggestions, it just makes me feel inadequate.

I always wanted a store bought cake. Every birthday I wanted a store bought cake and my mom always made me either an Angel Food cake with chocolate mint icing or a chocolate chip cake. Except for the year she made the money cake and spent the next 11 months trying to scrape chocolate off the ceiling and out of the carpet. They were delicious and I loved them, but they never said, "Happy Birthday Elizabeth."  Of course my mother knew better. I didn’t actually like birthday cake. I don’t like any store bought cakes, just my mom’s homemade ones.  And Baskin and Robbins. So as long as the gaffer doesn’t have any cake demands other than that of an ocean dwelling mammal, she’s going to get her momma’s preference.

At this stage of her life, her third birthday has more meaning, power and significance to me than it does to her, so if I feel like Jamoca Almond Fudge, then that’s just what we are going to have. Of course I have just remembered with the bravado of typing that last line that I am on a cleanse and will not be eating any of it. Darn it!