An 18-Month Old's Buried Treasure

A common occurrence around the house these days is L... procuring various shoes (usually just one in a pair) and slipping it on and clomping around the house. Nine times out of ten, it is one of MY shoes. R...'s shoes work well for him since they are only about 4 sizes too big. He can put them on himself and they aren't exceptionally large for him. But his preference is my old tennis shoes or any of my work shoes.

A natural consequence of this is that I often find myself hunting through the house for a missing shoe. Sometimes I find it at the top of the stairs. Other times it is in the middle of the play room floor. These are spots that L... has grown tired of lugging the big shoe around and has found something more interesting. This morning I wanted to wear my new Land's End all-weather mocs. There was one in the middle of my bedroom floor. Certainly it had been placed there by the little tike. I looked for its mate. R... started helping me search. Then we got Daddy out of bed. We searched in the playroom, R...'s bedroom, the living room, through all of the cabinets in the bathroom, the kitchen (including the food cupboard where L... enjoys extracting cans of chicken broth to stack like blocks) and even the basement. The shoe was no where to be found.

I finally resigned to wearing my Brooks tennis shoes (its a jeans day at work). I placed the one shoe we had on top of our highest dresser. I didn't want L... getting that one and losing it too. I even went so far as to check the trash bin sitting at the sidewalk waiting to be picked up. L... is notorius for deciding that the proper place for something he is done with is the trash can. No luck.

Around 9am V... is awoken a second time by a clomping sound. L... was stomping around the house in my brown Lands' End all-weather moc. We don't know where he stashed it -- but he retrieved his treasure!

Plotting Perfection

My husband V... finally received his naturalization on Monday. I could write a whole novel on that experience. I may elaborate on that at a later date. Of course since this day has been elusive for five years, we naturally wanted to throw a party to celebrate. I can't throw a party without making a cake -- especially for an occasion as special as this.

So yesterday afternoon I took out some scratch paper and started to put to paper what had been dancing around in my head for the past several hours. It has to be patriotic. The main thing that symbolizes that is the Flag of course. After a few drafts, I came up with a design that featured two tiers covered in fondant. The bottom tier would be painted with red stripes (on white fondant), and the top would be painted blue with white, shimmering stars appliqued. Finally there would be run-in stars suspended by florists wire leaping from the cake top and other various locations. This was the cake I dreamt of. This was the symbol of love and happiness I wanted to create.

It is now into the afternoon, with less than 48 hours before the party. I have the bottom tier baked, the fondant made for that tier, and side one of the stars piped and filled in. With a 1.5 hour commute and two children that really miss their mommy during the day, it wasn't until 1 am that I got that far. 1 am. I'm supposed to wake up to drive that blasted 1.5 hours again at 5am. So I sat in the rocking chair in my bedroom in disbelief of how can I possibly pull this cake off. How can I modify the design to still be acceptable... acceptable to who? me of course. Does V... care what it looks like? Typically on his birthday I make him pecan pie... not cake. But he knows me and knows its important to me to let me give him this gift. So as I'm about to leave for work I am stricken by Divine wisdom... make the top tier a styrofoam dummy! No baking, can use icky boxed fondant, etc. The cake as designed was going to be WAY too much cake for the guests anyway. So this solves two problems.

On top of all of that, I am teaching the last session to Wilton Course 1 tonight. So there will very little time to actually work on the cake tonight. I will of course need to tuck in R... when I get home from class and spend enough time with L... . I have definately spread myself too thin, but I don't want to quit or give up. That would indicate failure.