This afternoon I made & frosted a carrot cake that's so good I would feel justified in paying exorbitant amounts for a slice at an upscale bakery. That's the first piece of good news. The second is that my mother seems to have called off the cold war on the provision that the Boy gets a job by the end of the week. As I said to the Boy last night, she gets like this whenever there's unemployment in the family; there's no reason to place all the blame on our rubber rent cheque.

The third piece of good news is that Blake can point to noses. Sometimes. Maybe 3 out of 5 times. I love him. I even love the fact that he is a human snot factory who has produced his own weight in mucous this week. Eeeuuuk.

The Original Six Birthday Party was far too short. Our group booked the party room for 3 hours, but the Boy & I were an hour late, so we always felt like we were rushing to catch up. Every baby and every mommy was there, plus quite a few daddies & a grandparent or two for good measure. Nobody minded that Blake was a snot faucet and everyone liked the special organic carrot cakes I baked for the afternoon. In fact, the only dark spot on a relatively spotless afternoon had roots in my own attempt at creativity.

See, I wanted to bake the cake, but really liked the idea of each baby having a cake to destroy for him/herself. So I made six. The problem was that there were seven families in our prenatal class. We've very rarely seen the seventh, which is why I consider our number complete at six. And when I made the cakes, I didn't know that we'd have a full compliment. Fortunately, I found out before we left and was able to cut a section of zucchini-carrot bread for Blake so that no one would lack a destroyable cake. (Brent opined that Blake would need therapy for this masterstroke, but I stand by my work.)

And also? I worked really hard on this cake. The carrots were from the organic farmers market. The flour & cane sugar came from an organic grocery store an hour away from my house. I had made a titanic effort to locate cane sugar for the cake, as Opera Sarah recommended it as a much healthier alternative to refined sugar. There were no nuts and no icing. I made it as safe and healthy and wholesome as I possibly could, while still making a cake. I was damned proud of myself, and prouder of finding an ingenious way to cover up my numerical assumption. Everyone who ate the cake raved about it, and the babies who ate their fill were not noticeably revved up by the sweetness. I was thrilled.

But the seventh mom refused to give her child his cake, because it contained sugar. Byarrrgh.

And yet the party was a magnificent success. Three of our babies are walking, but Blake is still in the non-walking majority. The seven of them tumbled and crawled and pushed and yodelled and generally lived it up like royalty. I was so proud.

(Click through thumbnails for larger pictures. My apologies to Shelley & Lisanne – we have no pictures of Dexi to share. Sux.)

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 11/16/2004 09:57:00 p.m.