Fish Cake!

Well, chocolate cake, anyway, shaped to look like a fish.

I'm not sure why this year Quinn settled on "fish" as a dessert theme for his birthday (even took cupcakes to school with Swedish Fish on them), especially since his party was at a roller skating rink, but the fish cake was easier than the peacock cake, so I didn't mind.

Cake Wreck 2013

I'm officially declaring Aden's cake this year a big failure.  (Emphasis on the word "big.")

This is okay for two reasons:  First, for all those people who somehow think I can do anything it's nice to show I can't, and second, disaster tales are way more fun to tell than success stories.  So come see how badly cake making can go!

Aden wanted a Minecraft themed cake, and she decided she wanted it to look like a crafting table from the game.  I didn't know what that was, but found this (unfolded) image online:

Essentially it's just a cube with pixelated images laid out in a 16 X 16 grid on each side.  As far as cake shapes go, a cube didn't sound bad.  But our first mistake was deciding how big to make each side.  Ten inches sounded like a simple number.  (Heh.  Lesson one: Smaller is better.  Smaller may have worked.  In retrospect, eight inches tops would have been the way to go.)

My plan was to make a cube of layer cake, frost it, and stick pages of sugar paper on that I'd paint appropriately with food coloring.  Sounded time-consuming, but doable.  But then the store did not have enough sugar paper.

Theme: Lizard

We are over the birthday season hump having successfully turned Quinn into a six year old and advancing Mona to the significant sounding age of nine.  Just Aden's sleepover this coming weekend and I can take a deep breath and then figure out what we're doing for Christmas.

Quinn's birthday event was low key.   But Mona's party invitations went out with large print stating:

THEME: LIZARD

One mom called sounding slightly worried since last year's theme was fish and everyone got a fishbowl.  I was not cruel enough to actually send live fish home with everyone, but they did get little wind up fish to put in their bowls.  My friend said, however, that the bowl was kind of crying out for a real fish and she ended up having to go out with her son and get him one.  She does not want anything that cries out for a lizard.

Essentially all Mona really wanted was a cake like her dragon cake from a couple of years ago, but as a simple, green lizard instead of something purple with horns.

(The dragon cake remains my favorite, though.  And the aquarium cake was fun because it was such a collaborative effort.) 


The most amazing part about making the lizard cake was that I only had to assemble it.  I had to be at work all day the day before the party, so I asked Aden if she could help.  She baked me two sheet cakes, made butter cream frosting from scratch, and even made me a batch of fondant.  The girl is good, I tell ya.  We had a lovely evening together in the kitchen when I came home and we watched "It's A Wonderful Life" on TV while I spread frosting and rolled out fondant.

Anyway, step by step lizard cake!

Let them eat one last cake (Babble)

Aden’s recent birthday party went really well, but it occurred to me as I was trying to fall asleep that night that it was almost a disaster.  By the skin of our teeth did it work out.
But first of all, this is what Aden looks like at nine.  It is blowing my mind that she is nine already.  I remember her as a tiny thing in the hospital, and my precious baby learning to walk and talk, and then run and dance and play with friends and become a big sister and go to school and oh my god now she’s nine.

For Aden’s cake this year she wanted a marble cake with chocolate ganache and cut strawberries in the middle layer, butter cream frosting, and pink fondant.  I was new at most of that, but it came out okay.  I made my own fondant which tasted pretty good, but my husband and I slipped a bit getting it onto the actual cake after I rolled it out, and I ended up making some pink icing to pipe all over the place to hide the seams and cracks.  Aden was happy with it so that’s all that mattered.  She put on all the little candy pearls and sprinkles and candles.

 

Anyway, the party crisis was this: I had Aden make her own invitations and be responsible for handing them out at school.  Two nights before the party I asked her who was coming, and not only wasn’t she sure, but she said three of the invites never made it out of her backpack.  It was after 8:30 in the evening, so I made her call the mom of each of the girls in question and ask if they were available for the party (which they were). 

Now, initially Aden told me she wanted a small, quiet party, maybe even with her being able to serve hot cocoa from her tea set for fun.  But she made about eight invitations, which with my three kids adds up to a lot of kids.  The only guests who actually showed up for the party were the three I made her call. 

The party was perfect.  Three girls turned out to be the perfect number to have over.  That made six kids gathered around the dining room table, and they made their own pizzas and while the pizzas baked the kids played Pin the Tail on the Donkey, and then a sort of makeshift two team version of Pictionary.  (That game was adorable, because Quinn was the ‘hat’ that held the slips of paper telling people what to draw, and for some reason they couldn’t all sit back to watch the person drawing, they all kept jumping up to gather close to the easel.)

In any case, they all had a great time, they made great pizzas, they were happy with the games, Aden got to serve cocoa in her little teacups, the cake was fine, and Aden just smiled and smiled and occasionally jumped up and down with sheer joy.  It could not have been nicer.  Except that at the end of the day it finally hit me that if I hadn’t made her call those friends a couple of nights before the party, there would have been no one there.  Can you imagine how tragic that would have been for Aden to be waiting by the goody bags she put together to hand out, standing among her carefully hung streamers and balloons and have no one come?  Agh!  I’m not sure exactly what happened to all the other invitations. 

I know one of the kids who came to Mona’s party had simply put that invitation up on his fridge without mentioning it to his mom until the night before, and she panicked and gave me a call and I told her it was not too late to RSVP and of course he could come.  I’m sure lots of Aden’s invitations will show up during winter break backpack cleanings.  But as I say, it was a perfect little party and exactly what Aden wanted.  I just can’t believe how close it came to being a really disappointing day instead.  I think next year I will follow up on the guest list a little more closely.

I can’t believe I’ve been a mom for nine years.   It’s gone by so fast and yet feels like forever.

I love my Aden.

Party is such sweet sorrow (Babble)

When I was growing up we used to take these whirlwind family vacations to the East coast.  My parents are self-employed which meant time off to travel was rare, so when they decided to close the gallery for a couple of weeks every few years we would cram into the car and see as much as we could in the time we had.  We went to Washington D.C., New York, Boston,  Rhode Island, Connecticut….  Every place we went we would go to museums and galleries, historic homes, college campuses and bookstores.  We had fun and it was all interesting, but my brothers and I used to complain that we always ended up doing just what my parents wanted to do, and we never got to pick. 

So one bright morning in the middle of a vacation mom and dad said, “Okay, you can decide today.  What shall we do?”  My brothers and I looked at each other and thought for a bit, and finally we said weakly, “Well, I’m sure there’s a museum around, and I think I saw a bookstore….”  The truth is we didn’t know how to pick what to do.  We only knew one way to do things, so even given a choice there was no choice to make.

That’s kind of how I feel now with my kids.  I’m used to having at least one of them around all the time and that’s the way I do things.  I don’t get out alone much, and when I do it’s for a scheduled purpose, such as a rehearsal or a concert.  I know I probably should make time to be alone, but when I contemplate an evening away from my kids I draw a blank about what I would do with it.  I’m so out of practice with the concept that I don’t even know what the choices are.  It’s especially weird since most of what I would want to do is at home, and finding a sitter who can take the kids away but leave me here is awkward.  I feel like if I’m home it doesn’t make sense that the kids aren’t here too.

So when my friend Carol told me she was having a party I automatically asked if I could bring the kids along.  She said she had envisioned a more adult affair, and that I should see it as a good chance to get out for a change.  She even found me a place nearby that was having a babysitting fundraiser event on the same night, so there were no excuses.  I was going to a party.


I’m not good at parties.  I adore my friend and definitely wanted to go, but I don’t drink and I’m a geek which always makes me worry about fitting in.  I don’t have a problem with this–it’s not a flaw and I’m fine with who I am for the most part, even if who I am means being uneasy at parties.  I don’t need to learn to like parties more.  I get by okay, because I can talk to almost anyone and when I have the energy for it I can be amusing (so I’m told), but it doesn’t help that parties are the kind of event where I intensely notice my husband’s absence. 

It’s hard to go to a party alone, even when everyone there is nice and you know some of them already.  When you come with a partner there is a default in place for when you don’t know where to stand or what to do.  It’s like home base in tag–there’s a safe spot to retreat to and catch your breath.  Plus my favorite part of a party is always that period after it’s over, when you can talk about it and compare notes.  I especially like it if we host a party, and as Ian and I clean up together we talk about how it went.  Some of my favorite memories are of the two of us washing and drying the dishes as a team, chatting about what went right and what we’d do differently next time, who was funny, who surprised us, me assuring him his sense of humor wasn’t too odd and him assuring me I didn’t talk too much.  Leaving a party alone has an unfinished quality to it.

So tonight you get to play Ian’s role in this one-sided post-party chat.  Here’s how my evening went:

I don’t know why leaving the house always has to have a Keystone Cops quality to it, but we can never just go in a timely and calm fashion.  Mona is the most reliable of the bunch in terms of actually following simple directions, which means sometimes when I tell the kids to use the bathroom and put on shoes, Mona ends up buckled in the car before Aden’s even dressed.  (I’m not exaggerating.)  But there is always some scrambling over coats and snow pants and gloves and hats that is frustrating, some kind of discussion about what toys they can or cannot bring, and no one ever remembers where we are going. 

Anyway, Aden and Mona both got into the van while I struggled to put a coat on a sound asleep Quinn lying on the family room floor.  About a minute before I was ready to leave (and about five minutes after we should have left), Aden came rushing into the house yelling frantically that Mona had spilled water everywhere.  I don’t know why there was that much water waiting to be spilled in the backseat of the van, or why they couldn’t figure out on their own that Mona should come in and change, but I told Aden to please go out and ask Mona to come in and find new clothes.  Mona clomped upstairs a minute later, jeans soaked, coat wet….  She found a new outfit, twirled in it for me, and got back in the van.  Quinn was sleepy and cranky, and I nearly forgot to grab all the cream puffs I’d baked for the party, but we were finally on our way.

But to where?  The babysitting fundraiser place was in a facility I’d never been to before.  I had an address, but my sense of direction is a strange and magical place where anything can happen.  Apparently even an inexplicable drive out to the airport.  I finally dug out the GPS and while I was fiddling with it and looking at the time, I reminded myself that I couldn’t really be late because none of it mattered.  This was supposed to be fun, and getting stressed about fun is stupid.  Carol would be happy to see me whenever I got there, the babysitters wouldn’t care as long as they got their money.  So I didn’t get agitated about being lost, which is good because it was better to laugh when it turned out the place I was trying to find was only a few blocks from my kids’ school.  From the backseat Aden said, “Why have we been driving so long and now we’re almost back home?”  Excellent question.  We chalked it up to one of those things that happens when her dad isn’t here.

The babysitting fundraiser was kind of cool.  Lots of people and activities and snacks and a movie.  There was a ball pit and lots of games.  The girls vanished into the herd of kids immediately and didn’t look back.  Quinn…Well, Quinn fell to pieces.  He clung to me for dear life, turned away from anyone who tried to help, and wept.  This is another one of those areas where deployment makes things more complicated.  In a normal circumstance I would probably be inclined to say, “Hey, he’ll get over it as soon as I leave.  We both need to toughen up.”  But this is not normal.  Daddy went away and now he’s just some guy we talk about.  I have no idea how deep Quinn’s fear of my leaving goes.  Maybe this is run of the mill separation anxiety, and maybe it’s something more traumatic, but I don’t know, and it makes it hard to decide what to do.  I know to other parents it looks like I’m being too indulgent sometimes, but I’m just trying to be sensitive to what might be a bigger problem.  In some cases the regular parenting techniques might prove to be cruel, but again, I don’t know.

So I walked about with Quinn glued to me as long as I could and I finally had to just peel him off, hand him to another mom, and listen to him scream as I walked away.  I burst into tears before I even got out of the building.  I sat shaking in the car for a bit before setting the GPS for the party (because it was close but I didn’t want to risk seeing the airport again).

The party itself was really nice.  It was a tropical theme, which in Milwaukee during winter is particularly welcome.  The food was abundant and tasty, and I met some interesting people and ran into a few friends.  I had volunteered to make something sweet (and no, cream puffs are not tropical, but who turns down cream puffs?), and one of the best parts of my night was when I went to see what else was on the dessert table and a couple of guys sitting near it kept pointing me toward my own cream puffs saying, “You have to try these, they’re really really good.”

It was pleasant, but the moment when I felt most comfortable?  When Carol’s youngest daughter who is Aden’s age came up to ask if she could take my picture.  I said yes, but only if she was in it with me.  I was much happier sitting with Carol’s kids at the back of the room than I had been anywhere else.  Proabably because I don’t know how to choose not to be around kids.  It’s what I know, it’s where I fit right now.  (Plus she’s got super great kids.)

(Me and Anna, photo taken by Sara Kraco)

I was tired, and decided I’d done as much of a party as I felt up to.  I missed Ian.  I missed my own kids.  I think I hit the time limit someone who doesn’t drink can do at a party where other people have glasses of wine in their hands.  Carol gave me some colorful pinwheels to take back to my children and I headed out with about an hour to use up before having to get the kids out of hock.  What to do with it?  Should I go home?  That sounded lonely.  I chose Target.

It’s nice to shop without having to chant an endless litany of, “No.  No.  Put it back.  No.  Did you hear me say no?  Maybe later.  No.  Put it down.  I don’t care, put it down.  No.  No.  No.  I love you, but no.”  I picked up a few things we needed, like paper towels and shampoo.  And then I thought, “Hey, it’s my fun party night out–I’m going to treat myself to something nice!”  My husband, if he’s reading this, is already thinking (correctly) “Good lord, we own another flashlight.”

I don’t know why a nice flashlight puts me in a good mood, but it just does.  I like one with some nice heft, a good grippy grip, and a button with a satisfying click.  I have no explanation for why I enjoy buying flashlights, but it works in my favor a little that my kids are always absconding with them and running the batteries down and breaking them.  I like to have one in my nightstand and one on the refrigerator in case of blackouts, but especially since we hung a mirror ball in the kitchen and the kids use those to light that up, I can never find either one of them.  So I found myself a nice new flashlight for on top of the fridge.  I put the batteries in it in the car and clicked it on and off happily a dozen times before it was time to go get the kids.

The girls didn’t want to leave they’d had so much fun, and Quinn had eventually calmed down enough to hang out with one particular mom.  The mom kept saying to me, “My goodness he’s smart,” and couldn’t get over how much detail he was able to bring to his descriptions.  Between that and the big happy hug I got from my cutie boy it was the complete antidote to the upsetting dropoff earlier.

A weird emotional mix of an evening, but it’s a start.  I need for all our sakes to get out alone a little more often where it’s not for work or errands.  I signed the kids up for the next babysitting event at the same facility in a couple of weeks.  Quinn promised not to freak out next time, and I’ll try to find something quiet to do by myself.  I have no idea what, but at least I’ll have a nice flashlight to do it with.

Happy Halloweeniversary (Babble)

Ian and I met on Halloween in 1989.  I can’t believe that was twenty years ago.  I have now known him half my life.  Halloween is one of the harder days to be without Ian.  The only other time we’ve been apart on Halloween was his last deployment in 2006.

We met at a party where everyone was asked to wear black and bring something grotesque sounding to eat.  String musicians own a lot of black clothes, so that part was easy for me, and I brought a box of vanilla pudding I figured we could call phlegm.

The party was loud, and I ended up wedged between my stand partner from orchestra and what looked like a young republican in a suit.  My stand partner was annoying and I really didn’t want to have to chat with her outside of orchestra, so I was stuck turning to suit guy.  On closer inspection I realized the suit was an ROTC uniform.  I come from a family of artists.  I thought ‘Hair’ was a very patriotic movie when I saw it at age nine.  I didn’t think I’d have anything in common with an Army guy.  I remember having the very conscious thought, “Well, not fair to judge a book by its cover….” and I said hello.

I find it impossible to picture my life today if I hadn’t gone to that party.

No Ian in his ROTC uniform means no Aden, no Mona, no Quinn.  I might not even be in violin making because Ian supported me and gave me encouragement all through my apprenticeship.  I don’t know who I would be right now.  I don’t know where I would be living or what I would be doing.  I’m sure I would have picked a different path that would appeal to me and I would be happy and fine, but the mere idea of a world where my kids never existed is unsettling.  They are supposed to be here somehow, I just know it.  Which brings me back to Ian in his ROTC uniform.


He told me later he specifically wore it just to be counter-counter-cultural.  He wanted to see if anyone in the all black wearing dancer/musician crowd would talk to him.  We had one of the best conversations of my life.  I had just finished reading “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman” and really wanted to discuss it with someone, but no one else had even heard of it–except Ian.  We laughed together over the safe cracking chapter, and talked on and on as if we’d known each other a long time.  As if he weren’t in a uniform.  As if I didn’t come from a family that would be baffled about what to do with an engineering major when I brought him home.

Eventually, I had to go.  I had a paper to write and it was getting late.  I said goodbye and walked home alone, rerunning parts of the enjoyable conversation over and over in my head.  I’d sworn off dating for a bit because I was having a rough time at that point in college, but after a few days I realized I wanted to talk to the guy in the Army suit again.  I told the person who had invited him to the Halloween party to give him my number.  I thought that was very clever because he could call me, but he knew ahead of time I wanted him to.  A fabulous plan, except that at the time Ian was not good at calling people.  I ended up calling him myself, and left messages twice.  I should have figured it was a sign he wasn’t interested, but that conversation on Halloween had been so nice….  It just couldn’t have been my imagination.  The person I talked to would want me to try again, I just knew it, despite whatever signals I seemed to be getting.

When I tried the third (and in my mind, final) time, I actually caught Ian on the phone.  I asked him to a movie that night, and he said, “No, I can’t.  But don’t hang up!”  I hadn’t imagined it.  We had another great conversation.  We met the next night for a movie.  We’ve now had twenty years of great conversations, and mundane conversations, laughter and comfortable silence, and the occasional movie.  I still have the box of unopened phlegm pudding in the cupboard.  One day it will be a fun anniversary treat to make.  (Or at least an interesting experiment about the shelf life of instant pudding.)

I never imagined I’d fall in love with an Army guy.  It’s not always easy, but the proof that it’s right is in the form of three remarkable people who I get to tuck into bed each night.  I miss my husband.  There is no one else I’d rather talk to right now.

(Happy Anniversary, Ian, if you can read this.  I hope next Halloween we’re together.)