Yesterday our little bear turned three which is impossible because we know for a fact that we got him out of the hospital yesterday. Seriously right here through the door to my right and we put the baby carrier he was fast asleep in on the table. It looked strange [We were also hungry and unsure of the logistics — is it rude to eat lunch with your newborn lying on the table? Isn’t it worse to put him on the floor?] Sure there were a hundred or two fewer fire engine parts stuffed hedgehogs and train tracks strewn across the living room carpet and maybe we looked a little younger and better rested; I probably didn’t wedge my iPhone between the couch cushions like I do now so my talking-walking-doing-things-mini-human couldn’t use it to watch Elmo videos again (how does he like them?) but other than that nothing has changed. Nothing! Don’t tell me. Didn’t your mother teach you never to pick fights with crazy people?
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
 smitten kitchen | 2021-06-30 12:00:05 |  102,789 Views |
The 'I Want Chocolate Cake' Cake | Smitten Kitchen with Deb Perelman
I know a lot of people who have recently had a baby and I feel like I need to say something sensible about this. I understand how hectic the first few months can be. Not because newborns are particularly difficult but because you are terrified of breaking them or maybe just a bit in shock. One moment they're slumped over your shoulder snoring the tiniest snore ever made and you feel utterly centered a sense of all the generations that came before them gathered invisibly around their crushed faces in radiant admiration and the next they're red-faced and furious their screaming mouths in a perfect open circle and you and your beloved are frantically running through the checklist in your head (hungry? cold? tired? wet?) that gets more complicated every few months (is your swaddle loose? did you roll over again in the night and can't get yourself back up? help us did we put you to bed with little George and you wanted big George?) and more complicated still ("Mommy we have to take Ernie Bert and Twacktor back to the park." "Jacob it's 2 a.m. Please go back to sleep."). I also have a couple of friends who are about to have kids but they are so understandably panicked by everything they read about the crying and the not sleeping and life never being the same that they are terrified to go ahead. But I can’t do that. I don’t have the wisdom to give pithy slogans that make sense of it all. All I can say is LOOK AT THIS. I can’t imagine life any other way.
I’ve always found it a little odd to throw themed children’s parties—I mean isn’t the theme the child? And how awesome are they?—and yet when it came time for my own son’s party there was a salient summary of all his loves that was so obvious to us that the party practically planned itself. You see he’s had two obsessions in the past year; the first is “horses” by which he means carousel rides meaning that the location (the most beautiful carousel in the entire country) was a no-brainer. The second is “choo-choo trains” by which he means subways. He doesn’t care where we go or what we do just that it involves a ride on the subway. He’s become the kids in this beloved book occasionally throwing a tantrum when he wants to take the N train but it was the 6 that got us where we wanted to go. It’s definitely a strange sight for tourists to witness.
I won’t lie and I couldn’t tell anyone who knows me well: I spent some time planning the cake. I really wanted to do a subway-inspired design but there were so many things I didn’t want to do: individual train cars were eliminated because they seemed like they would require a terrifying amount of decoration and candy; I wanted to use regular cake ingredients and icing (why eat fondant when you can eat cream cheese icing?); and as pretty as an all-gray (like a subway car!) or mostly red/blue/orange/yellow/green (like the colors of the subway line) would be I actually didn’t want to eat a bottle of food coloring with dessert. When our estimated party of 30 eventually turned into a whopping party of 50 I needed a cake that would feed a crowd. And of course I didn’t want a plain old cake.
