Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Birthday Cake

I truly can't believe that it is July 6th: where have the days gone?
There are many, many things to catch up on here (will I ever truly be caught up?  Doubtful!)  But for now, there are important matters at hand, like birthdays.  And cake.

For months, Clio has been saying that she wanted a tiered cake with a cupcake on top and an edible dolphin. Not at all specific, right?  To be honest, I wasn't completely phased by this.  The tiers, the cupcake, totally doable.  And disappointment is part of life, isn't it, so I figured I would just toss one of those German figurines of a dolphin on top and say, oh, oops, that Dolphin's not edible.  Silly me.  I know, mother of the year, sitting right here.

Well, this weekend as we prepared to make said cake, we revisited the plans with Clio, and while she had been insisting on that dolphin for ages, she suddenly and inexplicably veered to something easier.  Two layers (not tiers), cupcake, and a cherry on top.  Oh, and hearts on the sides.  It's possible that she has learned another important life lesson here: that reducing expectations also reduced potential dissapointment.  Or maybe she just wanted to let me off the hook.  At an rate, to be SURE we knew exactly what she wanted, we had her draw a picture.  And then through discussion we arrived at that little inset drawing.


And here's the actual cake.




A pretty good likeness, I'll say.
And darn delicious, too.




After sharing some cake with friends and family on the 4th, we enjoyed the cake a second time on Clio's actual birthday, in what is becoming something of a tradition.  (I hope to put a candle in the final quarter on Saturday, for Eleri.  I wonder if there will come a time when this practice bothers the girls, or if it will just be one of those weird things our family does.)


You may notice that the cake says "River."  River is the son of my younger brother's friends, who joined us on the fourth.  The 4th happened to be River's 4th birthday.  When she learned of this, Clio suggested that we include him on the cake, which I thought was awfully sweet of her.


Want to know something weird?  When I took these pictures (above), I got a strange sense of deja vu, and realized that Clio wore the EXACT same outfit on her birthday last year!



What do you think, does she look a whole year older?

Her birthday letter is coming soon.

No comments: