It IS The Baby’s birthday today, and I baked her a grand total of zero cakes.
Late April and early May are SERIOUSLY birthday packed months for us – all of our living grandmothers, my parents, two of the kids’ uncles, most of our aunts and uncles, tons of cousins by the score and both of my daughters all saw fit to jam themselves into a three week period that I like to refer to as Cakemas. Or I would refer to it as that if I wasn’t so busy eating birthday cake every five minutes and having permanent elastic marks under my chin from wearing one of those pointy birthday hats for three solid weeks. And yet I managed to not make my own CHILD a birthday cake today. I was busy.
Today was yet another in a series of just TERRIFIC medical tests due to last week’s troubles, and living where I do, I have to go out of town to have my apparently-fascinating clockwork peered at, which meant I’ve been gone from my home since 6:30 this morning and didn’t get home until 7 p.m., birthday girl in tow. My mom, bless her, stepped in and made The Baby her requested supper – spaghetti – and The Girl made her a gluten-free chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and it was great. I don’t have to make everything myself, even though I feel like I should.
My older kids slept at my parent’s house last night – we had too early a morning planned to get them off to school, so it made sense – but I woke up in the middle of the night and just felt bereft without them, two of my kids sleeping away from me and the other quietly turning a year older in the dark room beside me and we left home in the misty quiet morning, The Baby clutching her new Barbie to her chest and weeping with exhaustion. And she was such a trooper during a very long day, waiting in hospital waiting rooms and being astonishingly patient for a just-now three year old, and I think that we will make cupcakes again tomorrow, even though the rest of this week – and several weeks to come – are rather ripe with birthday cakes, because she’s a good girl and three years ago today I held her in my arms and thought "Oh, I KNOW you." No matter how lovely tonight was, I still want her to have part of her birthday from my hands. So tomorrow, we’re going to blend our gluten free flours and our butter and eggs and sugar and make lemon cupcakes, for how sweet and sad life is, for my Baby, my tough, tired-out little kid who is THREE already.