tuesday cake

My mom decided that Josephine needs to have a cake for every month until she is one, at least. The only kind of cake that I really like is pound cake and she just happened to make pound cake at one month and I have made sure it's been pound cake ever since.

May is busy, my first mother's day, my sister's birthday, both parents' birthdays, (and tomorrow my other sister is graduating high school) so there have been lots of cakes. My dad, whose birthday was the same day as Josephine's 5 month, always has strawberry pie so I decorated a pound cake just because I wanted to decorate something.

Are you asleep yet? Gosh I can be so boring sometimes.

Anyway, here is the cake I decorated for fun:

No those are not turds, they are logs! Pretty awful picture, trust me the real thing was much cuter...still pretty cheesy though. The flames were made of some left over fondant and there were supposed to be marshmallow coals but someone ate all the marshmallows...someone who might be getting a bag of marshmallows for a graduation present.

Only the third Tuesday and I'm already sinking

So here's the deal: My sister Martha eats what I cook for her, my dad eats what I cook as long as there's little to no wheat, my sister Sarah has only been here a little over a week so far but will eat what I cook, and my mom is so picky that she very rarely eats dinner with us.

This last week my dad was out of town, Sarah was busy visiting all of her friends she hasn't seen all school year, Martha has been busy preparing for the end of her high school career, and I was house/dog sitting for a few days.

What I'm saying is, I haven't invested much time in the kitchen this past week.

I have made several batches of the granola bars though.

Almond/cranberry

Blueberry/pecan

Chocolate/cherry

Chocolate/coffee

Bacon/sunflower seed

Also, you HAVE to let them cool completely in the fridge before cutting them up.



Tonight for dinner I plan on making some stuffed chicken, because there is chicken in the fridge that needs to be cooked.

And some potato pancakes, because YUM!



My mom had a birthday and she's a big pirate fan so I decorated her cake to look like a treasure map of our property and put a red X where her presents were hidden. Aaaand I didn't take a picture of it. Aaaaand the cat got into it the next day. It was covered with plastic wrap on the counter and when I looked at it I wondered who had been punching the cake. I know it wasn't that pretty, but come on! Turns out it was cat foot prints.



My sister had a birthday too but she opted for a Cold Stone cake instead of a "Rachel cake"...I don't blame her.

hello spring! how about a nap!

So, this 4 month sleep regression. Kicking. My. Ass.

I'm about as tired as the first few weeks home with Josephine, but it seems worse because since we've been home almost four months everyone expects that I have things down to a slick routine now. I should be able to take care of errands etc like What baby?

Some babies stop napping, some babies stop sleeping through the night, some babies (my baby!) just give up sleep alltogether. She isn't extra fussy or tired acting, but I sure as hell am missing the breaks her naps used to give me.

I am so glad I read about sleep regressions before Josephine was born. Otherwise I might be thingking that I had done something wrong, that I messed up my baby!

In other news->

I saw on msnbc Friday, that St Cloud, MN was still getting some serious snow. That's where I was just last year. Last night I turned the A/C on in the house. I'm wearing shorts today. I got a sunburn this weekend doing yard work.

Yesterday was my brother's birthday. My sister and I made him a cake.

Here I'm setting up to make a bow. Because I am a control freak in the kitchen I only let Martha make the red dots and dye the bow green.

Now the final product:

(I probably shouldn't have bragged about the warm weather...it's snowing now.)

I plan on making more cakes, it was fun. Sometimes I catch Ace of Cakes on TV. Man, I wish I could decorate at that level...

Anyway, I was eating the pieces of cake that I had to shave off and thinking about how the last several years I've declared I dislike all things cake, when really I've never taken a bite of cake and thought, "yuck". I think that the fact I could easily pass on cake no matter how hungry I was, combined with my legitimate dislike for all things frosting, led to my, uh, lying about not liking cake. Truth is, I cannot resist a good chunk of plain cake and a glass of milk. I lie in bed waiting for Josephine to be in a deep enough sleep that I can get up and get a piece, a glass, and further postpone my return to my pre-pregnancy weight.

Now I'm sure you're thinking "Didn't she say she had a baby that never sleeps? How did she get this whole post typed out? With pictures even!"

Well I say to you, I typed 90% of this with one hand while I nursed the little party animal. (The other 10% was typed out while she was actually asleep for about 5 min.)