I recently read this post by Mama Watters and thought I might
take a little inspiration for my husband’s birthday this year. My daughter is
pretty focused when it comes to cake, it’s her favorite food item and she talks
about it A LOT. So I thought giving her a chance to
decorate a cake for daddy’s birthday might be just the sort of activity she
would enjoy.
We made a ‘daddy’ garland together earlier in the week which
turned out to be a very relaxing way to spend the afternoon together. But
Sunday morning, I guess we just caught her on the wrong day.
Her first word of the morning was; ‘cake’. I tried to cover her relentless asking by telling my hubby she
just wanted pancakes and convinced him to stay in bed. Did I mention it was
meant to be a surprise? She yelled ‘CAKE!’ all the way down stairs getting more
and more excited the closer we got to the kitchen. I spent a few minutes convincing her she
needed breakfast first, set her up in the high chair, then set out our
cake decorating station and hung the
bunting.
Come time to decorate the cake the
poor girl just about had a melt down when I placed the store bought sponge cake
in front of her and she realized she wasn't just allowed to just dig in. Second meltdown attempt happened as I was desperately trying to smear icing on the top
as quickly as I could; she asked if the cake was hers and her fool of a mother said,
‘no honey, this is Daddy’s cake’. Fool. Another meltdown.
The decorating itself was almost fun. She took to it like a pro, although she
did take a bite out of several lollies before adorning the cake with the half
eaten goodies. We had another melt down when we were finished and I took the
cake off her. And another on the stair well when we tried to go up to wake daddy- which meant walking in the opposite direction to the cake. Sigh. You
made it look so easy Mama Watters.
All that aside, daddy loved his cake and afterward we all hopped in the car and headed off to the beach for a coffee and to run off the morning’s sugar.
Sadly we had a few more mini melt downs at the beach; the seagull was too
close, she didn't want her hat on, she wanted her hat on, mummy forgot her
shoes, mummy forgot to order her a baby chino (although daddy forgot to order
mummy something to eat and mummy felt like having a bit of a meltdown herself-
so I can understand that one) and we decided to call it quits early and head
home. Not surprisingly the wee one fell asleep early AND slept long (which was
perhaps the best present of the day). Not surprisingly mummy will probably
attempt to do it all over again next year. Because she is a little bit foolish
like that.
