"Practice party"

Carter had found a recipe for a chocolate birthday cake in one of his kids' cookbooks (Sesame Street: C is for Cooking) and informed me he wanted to bake himself a cake for his birthday. I thought, ok that sounds like fun, but I want to try it out before subjecting any innocent party goers to my baking misadventures. The recipe called for all kind of healthy stuff - yogurt, applesauce, etc. and add to that the fact that I've never baked a cake that didn't come out of a box...well, let's just say I was nervous, to say the least.

So, we went to the store and picked up all the ingredients, plus everything we needed to make a bread bowl artichoke dip recipe (YUM) that I had found with my Pampered Chef stuff and we were off...I called a couple of unwitting victims, I mean friends (HA HA, love you guys!) :) to come and have a little pre-birthday "practice party."

I wish I had my camera here to take a picture of the cake when we were all done. Carter was pretty proud. I won't lie - I was too :) And it didn't even taste half bad. A big mass of ooey gooey chocolatey goodness adorned with rainbow sprinkles...Plus, I got to spend some quality time with some amazing friends and their kids. What more can you ask for???

Busy Day

Today was a busy day. We went to my cousin's wedding at Lake Wilderness. It was a beautiful wedding. Lake Wilderness is where Dave and I got married and this was our first time there since our own wedding 6 years ago. And wouldn't you know I made a wrong turn and nearly got lost :) It was really neat having the kids out there and telling them stories about the day when we got married. That spawned this gem of a conversation between Carter and I:

Carter: What's a wedding?
Me: It's where two people get married.
Carter: Am I getting married?
Me: Not until you're 40.
Carter: Are you married?
Me: Yes...
Carter: (confused) Who are you married to??? (by now people around us are starting to chuckle)
Me: I'm married to Daddy.
Carter: What about Bella? Who's she married to?
Me: No one. Not ever. She's becoming a nun.
Carter: Oh, ok.

The ceremony was outside, on the lawn by the lake and the reception was held inside. The kids wasted no time whatsoever breaking in the dance floor...




This went on for a really long time, receiving random bursts of applause from thoroughly entertained onlookers . A little later, they settled down and grabbed a bite to eat...



















Next, it was off to a birthday party at the Little Gym in Renton. Carter has been watching the Olympics, so he has been counting down the minutes until this gymnastics party.

By the time we got home, all of us were totally wiped out. I put Bella down for a nap, in hopes that I might be able to get some rest as well. I woke up 3 hours later and she was still sleeping. That was 5 hours ago and still not a peep. I have a feeling it's going to be an early morning for us tomorrow...

I wanna live on Sesame Street!

We have a morning ritual at our house. The little ones crawl into bed with me and we turn on cartoons (generally because I'm too tired to actually get my lazy butt out of bed). This may happen anywhere between 5 and 7 AM. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, it might even be 8. Lately our morning show of choice, while Mommy is getting her bearings, has been Sesame Street. I loved watching Sesame Street when I was little, but I don't ever remember it being such a hip place to be. Lately I've woken up to scenes like this:




and this:



Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street? No, seriously...

Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy

Ok, so I'm not really new to the whole idea of blogging, per se, just new to this particular format...bear with me!

I had one of those "I'm a horrible mother" moments the other day. In hindsight, it was for the best, but at the moment, I felt terrible. For those of you who don't know him, Carter is one of the most loving kids I've ever met. He has a huge imagination and a sense of humor way beyond his years. Oh yeah, and Carter LOVES Superman. And I'm not using the term "love" lightly. He has watched ALL of the movies so many times he can quote them. Seriously anyone who has ever seen Superman 3 even once can probably feel my pain. But that aside, about a month ago, he started insisting I call him Superman. I thought, ok, it's a phase, he'll grow out of it. I tried playing up the "Carter is way cooler than superman" angle, but he wasn't buying. He started telling me he didn't want to be Carter anymore. If that's not a painful thing for a mother to hear, I don't know what is.

Then, the other night we were having Lima beans with dinner and he called them power beans and started eating them like candy. Not an entirely bad thing...However, after dinner he said "now I'm so strong I can lift a car" (a scene from the first superman movie, of course). I told him he could pretend to lift a car, or he could lift one of his toy cars, but he could not lift an actual car for real. He (somewhat) politely disagreed.

The next day, he started in again. This time he started saying "if only I could fly..." yikes. I finally asked him, "but why would you want to be Superman? Carter has a family that loves him and Superman is all by himself, that sounds pretty lonely to me; no parents, no friends..." to which he replied "I don't need any parents. I just want to be Superman. I am NOT Carter anymore." Here comes the part where I lose it. I told him he wasn't Superman, he can't fly, he can't lift cars and what's more; SUPERMAN ISN'T EVEN REAL." That was when the flood of tears started. I think he cried for at least a half hour straight. I told him I loved that he was using his imagination; he's so creative and so smart, but I was so worried that he would eventually believe these things he was saying so much that he would try something and wind up getting hurt. I might as well have told him that there was no Santa, Easter Bunny, or Tooth Fairy all at once.

In the end, we came to a compromise that he could play a game where he pretended to be Superman, but I still got to call him Carter. And I kept reinforcing the idea that the things that Superman does in the movies are not real and he would get hurt if he tried. That was a couple days ago and so far things have gone ok. I don't think we'll be watching any more Superman movies anytime soon though...