Thanks to a big hockey tournament, my son had only female guests this weekend – although he was perfectly happy with his party, it did reinforce a certain forgotten birthday party rule: ALWAYS CHECK BEFOREHAND THAT KIDS CAN COME ON THE DATE YOU’VE PICKED. Learn from my mistakes, people!
But he had a lot of fun, and it was a great little party. Look at the fantastic cake his dad made:
It was a big hit, although the kids really favoured certain colours over others – the red and white pieces were eaten up quickly, while we had quite a lot of blue left over and the yellow was absolutely untouched. There’s probably some interesting psychological reasons behind all of that, but the cake itself was unvaryingly chocolate AND made from a mix, since kids rarely eat more then the icing and frankly, my feelings get hurt when my homemade chocolate cake is uneaten.
My husband makes all fancy birthday cakes in our household – I’m in charge of mixing together the cake mix, since apparently that’s REALLY HARD, and then my husband cheerfully puts together something remarkable. He’s made trains, Legos, a monkey, a fairytale castle – all of which astonishes some people, which in turn surprises me. My husband is an artist – why would he also not be good at decorating cakes? He’s also the one who decorates for birthday parties, for the same reasons. Birthday parties, apparently, are Women’s Work, and even though my husband is vastly more talented at creating them then me, it still startles people to hear that it wasn’t yours truly who stayed up until midnight making the cake.
We had the grandparents in for cake last night and I went into the kitchen with the cheerful intention of making a buttercream meringue icing, which then FAILED UTTERLY. I served bare cake to our parents – luckily, angelfood – with the grim feeling that I’d ruined The Boy’s birthday, who sat there happily eating his favorite kind of cake, cheerfully unaware of my angst. Sitting here now, though, I can tell that he had a good, happy birthday, with friends and phonecalls from far-away family and lots of presents and several cakes and he settled down to bed last night contented and pleased.
Our living room is still awash in red, yellow and blue streamers and swags of red, yellow and blue balloons – we’ll leave them up until next weekend, and then let the house be bare for a week until the start of February. The kids have big plans for decorating for valentine’s day after that, and then it’s Easter and then it’s only a hop skip and a jump until my daughters’ birthdays, time fleeting past us unnoticed and my children waking up bigger every morning.