Sunday Pic: The Cookies

Two and a half months, birthday cake and numerous cookies do a chub-ola baby make.

She Turned Five

This once a week posting is for the birds, but I have been excessively busy, so suck it up and eat birdseed my friend.

Seriously... another birthday and party, Valentines Day, Pearl with her usual double ear-infection plus sinusitis, Birdie and Henry down with RSV, all the attending doctors appointments, meds, and love and care for the sickies, a trip down south to St. George for the weekend, and now with the serious focus on potty training for the Pearl-girl... lucky any post of any kind is comin'! And oh yeah, the computer bought the farm and this post is coming to ya via the laptop; stupid Safari and blogger don't play well together, and I don't know how to mediate.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that there is no significant difference between three and seven kids, take your thumb and forefinger and flick them soundly upon the nose for me. They are lying to you.  Is load of crap.

Lala  wanted a "Littlest Pet Shop" themed birthday party for her fifth birthday, so I planned a cake and drew a cat poster which the girls color in the day before the party, a day that turned out to be a sick day for everyone anyway (ref: the RSV and ear crud and nose crud) .  Then I drew some tails on papers so the guests could color and cut out their own tails for the game.... an activity in itself.

The poster turned out better than my Turtle debacle.



Cake was great, and the kiddo was happy too.



The thing that really slays me though... with all of my generous eating of birthday cake, Valentines chocolate and cookies, and the vacation crap food extravaganza, I have lost three pounds.  This mysterious loss of weight baffled me until I looked over and realized that somebody now has cheeks that bear an uncanny resemblance to cookies, and there are a few thigh rolls that I swear look like buttercream frosting.  Doesn't he just look like a white chocolate bonbon, all wrapped up in a Sunday suitie?! I promise you...that little button up shirt under the sweater vest really does have a collar.

Happy Bird-day!

huh.... this is my 400th post.

These days the Chaos family is exploring the realm of "good 'nuff." Nothing is getting any elaborate treatment, nothing is 100%, nothing is perfect... but it sure works OK, and we have a good time balancing a larger family. Mostly.

My days of spending hours decorating a cake (or writing a post for that matter) are over, but in my opinion, the cakes that are resulting are still fun and cool. The kids dig 'em so... even if they weren't and aren't, big whoop-tee-do.

Birdie wanted a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle birthday party, so we got the invitations, a few TMNT themed party goods, and went on a search for a good cake; as per usual we found a great, do-able cake on this site, truly a website filled with the coolest amateur cakes you have ever clapped eyes on. Birdie hit on the one that I was interested in trying, a cake that used some fondant, but not enough to cover the whole cake.



I had never worked with fondant before, but it was much like working with a sticky Sculpey or Fimo. As far as taste? I think it is accurate to call it "chewy frosting," kinda gross, but it looks cool. Plus Birdie had the TMNT mini's that she had gotten for Christmas, so it was kinda a no-brainer to try it.



Two very satisfying comments/squeals from guests: "Look! It's two cakes STACKED UP!" and "Look! There is FROSTING in the middle!"

The part where the balancing act collapsed was in the party-games department. I figured with the extra time used in eating pizza as well as the cake, we would only have time for a few short games. So Birdie came up with a Duck-Duck-Goose game called Turtle-Turtle-Ninja, and as she was running out the door for school the day of the party, she asked me to come up with a "pin-the-tail-on-the-Turtle" game. I was running short on time, so when I finally grabbed up a magic marker, paper, and one of those Ninja Turtle minis and saw that they had no tails... I just decided to add one and call it good.

Y'all... there is a reason that the creators of the TMNT franchise did not give them tails.

Observe.




...and I am here to tell you that when we added the little green construction paper tails that LaLa designed for the project, things did not look any better. I did not get a photo of that bit of risque business, just suffice it to say that it was in no way my finest hour or judgment call. Really, I didn't realize what I had wrought until I was taping the stupid poster up the the wall, and by then I had zero time and just hoped for the best. Luckily, most of the guests were of the seven year old girl variety and if anyone saw anything to comment on, at least no one did.

Happy Birthday little Bird!

Snuck Up On Me

This has been a busy week... Saturday morning a beloved nephew was Baptised, followed by a family gathering. Sunday morning at church Dadguy gave Henry a name and a blessing, followed by a family gathering (at OUR house no less). Monday Henry had his two month old doctor's visit and immunizations, followed by Tylenol and exacerbated by all the snot and misery he and I are sharing; A cold to beat out all colds.

No. Really. I am SURE that my misery far exceeds your misery.

Good news is, he's up to 13 pounds and is hitting all the milestones that he should. Bad news is... there still isn't a cure for the common, wretched cold.

Then on Tuesday was Birdie's seventh birthday with the cake and attendant party to accomplish... an event that I promise to cover in a post tomorrow. Ish. Tomorrow-ish, unless all hell breaks loose... and it may.

All of this with my head so full of snot it feels like... choose your own @%$# metaphor, simile or otherwise... whatever.

I am concerning myself with the blessing of the boy-o in this post. Three things have occurred to me, with this blessing of my last child, and they came upon me in this order.

1. There is a Catch 22 in preparing a house for a big event that will take place first thing in the morning when that house is inhabited by a number of the small minions. It is as follows... it is useless to clean any earlier than after the kiddos go to bed, the night before the event. However. If you WAIT till the night before said event... at least ONE of said minions will wake up a-puking, thereby foiling your cleaning. Catch 22, sux 2 B-U.

2. While I am perfectly aware, and have been, obviously, that I have a boy baby as opposed to my myriad girl babies, it has been just that in my mind... my boy baby. We call him boy, and I refer to him as a boy, kiddo, brother or baby, but Sunday night it occurred to me that we have a son. For some reason the semantics make a difference. I now have a son.

3. Don't know why, but I have been completely without sentimentality in viewing the ending of my procreative period. Rather than any feelings of grief or sorrow at the end of any portion of my gestation or giving birth my feelings have been more along the lines of "good CRAP! Thank heavens I will never have to do THAT ever again!" and "if I can just gut my way through this, it'll be the last time... I can do it just this last time." I have been wondering if I am especially cold hearted or callow as I have watched these many "lasts" with glee. Then late Tuesday night as I was pulling Henry's freshly laundered blessing suit, that had been provided by my MIL, out of the dryer and placed it carefully with the exquisite blessing dresses that my MIL had hand made for each one of my daughters. I was thinking to myself where I could purchase archival quality boxes or bags to keep these treasures in, until each child would be ready to claim them when they were old enough (read: married and having a child of their own).

...and then it hit me. This is my last.


oh, wow.




I am going to be that mother who is crying as she sends her "baby" off to school.