Gotta love it- incredible, but not so edible

James decided to start this morning off with a lighthearted egg toss game, and although this unfortunate egg never did get a chance to ruin my bowl of cereal (I was grateful) it did end up sustaining some serious, life-threatening injuries. Not to worry, an egg is easily expendable; you simply toss it in the garbage and there is relatively no change in day or lifestyle. Throwing away a cracked egg is completely harmless, in fact, until you factor in my 2 year old. Jonathan is a trash-digger by nature, and he is always curious about the contents of his favorite white container with the cool flip-lid. He must have somehow known about this new addition, because about 30 minutes later, I found him with a coated drinking glass. Fortunately, he tends to get a little hung up on how the tall glasses work, and the egg plastered his stomach on the outside rather than the inside. After cleaning that mess, I assumed we were done with the incident. That is, until I opened up the washing machine and found I had to shake the life out of every single thing. Apparently the trash can is not as intersting a place for an egg shell as an agitating wash machine.

big boys don't cry- unless their bottles are taken away

Jonathan was doing fairly well with the bottle-sippy transition up until Ethan was born. For the past 9 months, it's been a real struggle, however, as Jonathan is (as mentioned before) big on Jonathan-equality. About 3 weeks ago, I was trying to decide when would be a good time to make him give them up. Do I wait 3 months until Ethan is old enough, and take them away together? Then I wondered, what if I got pregnant again (just for the record, I am not going to) and there was another baby who got bottles? Would all 3 of them get bottles? Of course not, that would be insanity. People with multiple children can wean their eldest, and so can I. That morning, we decided we were ready to do whatever it took to help Jonathan recover from his bottle addiction. Of course, the first day without baba's, it ended up reaching 86 degrees inside. Having left our 2 bedroom apartment with central air for a three bedroom with windows that don't even accomodate window a/c, I probably should have tried this in the spring. He cried and refused sippy after sippy, big boy cup, straw, even the ones he used to like best, as part of an elaborate thirst strike. Bedtime that night was fun for all in attendance, and for the neighbors who must have wondered what on earth was going on. I think he drank maybe 16 ounces that whole day. As he was curling up, finally going to sleep, I nearly caved. We were trying to teach him to give up babas, but what kind of lesson would I be teaching my son if we had to take him to the emergency room for dehydration? That IV's are better for little boys than bottles? Just as I was about to spring from my seat and get him a bottle, his little eyelids fell closed. We tucked him in, until 3 am when he woke me up crying. At that point, I got the biggest bottle we have (nine ounces, not eight!) and filled it with cold water. He felt warm and I was starting to really worry. The next morning, he woke up with a sopping wet diaper and I couldn't have been happier. I handed him his green sippy and he downed it. There have been times since then when he has looked longingly at Ethan's bottles, when he has even taken them, but he's getting used to it. I should have known it was going to be an ordeal when Jonathan was learning his first words. I wasn't surprised when he said dada first, but I was surprised that baba came before mama. I guess that means that with bottles out of the picture, I must be Jonathan's second favorite thing. Finally.

the mind of Jonathan

A couple of months ago, James and I were playing a "would you rather" game, and he posed the question, "would you rather have Ethan hold his own bottle, Jonathan learn to talk, or Jonathan potty trained?" I replied that I would rather Jonathan learned to talk. He was somewhat surprised by my answer, until I explained how nice it would be if Jonathan could just tell me what he needed, rather than having it be a twenty questions game I played by myself. "Does he need to poop? Might he be hungry? Is he thirsty? Bored? Tired? Maybe his tummy hurts? Do kids get headaches? What happened more often than not is a whole rigamarole of possible solutions to possible problems that ended with a Tylenol and 2 exhausted parents. James has actually been working with him on a lot of words, and Jonathan has expanded his vocabulary very well. What I have discovered, is that the 2 year old mind is a lot simpler than I would have thought. I was standing at my dresser picking out a shirt the other day, and Jonathan burst through the door. Previously, he would have screamed some kind of "ole-oo-ugh-mim" and I would have been left scratching my head. But this time, using his new vocabulary, Jonathan could tell me exactly his frustrations. "Out!" he cried, and then he began putting up his little baby fingers. "One, two..... out!" He was furious with me for not listening the first time. I get it. Jonathan isn't allowed in my room, neither is mommy. None of this silly double standard stuff. My 2 year old is all about equality.

what have I done?

When I was in my early years of public schooling, we had to fill out a cute little assignment that included our life's goals, aspirations, dreams, and plenty of other things that we had spent very little time thinking about. At this age, I must have had no concept of what Josh and I were like, because I picked as a future career that I wanted to be "a mommy." Years later, I met the requirements and got handed my sparkling new title. It's been kind of a crazy 2 1/2 years, but I have learned a lot and so far I am loving it amidst the frustrations.

One of the most challenging things about this career is how difficult it is to track your progress. I've told my son many times, in the midst of punishing him, that I am "not going to raise a brat." Then there are many times that I wonder if I already have. I say "no," he screams it back in my face. Baby Ethan plays with one of Jonathan's toys, he snatches it up. Baby Ethan plays with one of Ethan's toys, and Jonathan snatches it up. I tell him to go to his time out chair, he gets up twenty seconds later and pulls his diaper off just so he can pee in his toy truck. Once in a while, however, there are these glimmering moments where he does something so super sweet, like kissing brother because he is sad, or helping Ethan eat his bottle when Jonathan openly resents that he can't have one anymore. It's times like those when I like to think that his real, sweet little spirit is shining through, and that when he's finished trying to accomplish his toddler agenda, that's what will be left. I don't know. Perhaps it's just that there are little bits of him I haven't managed to ruin. Yet.

shopping in style

The other day, I was heading out on a late evening trip to the grocery store with the little ones. It had been a long day of spills and shirt changes, and the clothes I had on Jonathan weren't exactly a perfect match. He had actually crossed over to red firetruck pajama bottoms, a blue Wall E long sleeve T, and had shoes that matched nothing. I was trying to decide if I should change everything, or just put a jacket on? Not enough time, too hot. I did the next best thing- grabbed an orange Tigger hat for him so it would look like my 2 year old had dressed himself. Boys will be boys, not much a mom can do.

I CAN have my cake, and eat it too. But it's not all it's cracked up to be.

I finished making the cake yesterday, it ended up being 3 layers (after destroying one of my homemeade cake halves transferring it out of the pan, I discovered it was actually still pretty delicious, even with the baking mishaps) and had a really ooey gooey frosting that was reminiscent of fluff. I put on a few finishing touches, and stuck the candles in early. They were trick "sparkler" candles and were long enough to poke all the way down. I figured it would add stability, so I put them all in. ("What do you mean you're not 18, Josh?) After getting everyone in the car, I put the cake on the passenger side and proceeded to back out of the driveway to pick up James. Halfway down our road, I realized just how difficult this cake would be to transport. I had put it on my glass cake pedestal, which probably wasn't the best idea. I gave up early trying to find a box to put it in, and that probably wasn't wise either. I had to hold onto the rim to keep it from tipping when I stopped my car. This was difficult when I was slowing to a stop, even going 25 mph, and haunting visions of coming off the exit ramp from 81 began to fill my mind. I ended up picking the cake up at my next available opportunity, and held where the pedestal meets the cake plate for the rest of the ride. Everything was going alright until the heat caught up with the clouds. White avalanches started to gather up at the edges. I shrieked in terror, and in a flurry grabbed them with my driving hand and let my leg handle the wheel. I didn't have any good option to deposit these snowdrifts, so I shoved a handful in my mouth and went for the wheel again. When I was merging onto 81, a falling chunk of cake made my blood run cold. I turned the wheel back over to my left leg and shoved that piece in too. About this time a group of 30 or so motorcyclists got on the highway, just before I needed to get in their lane to exit. There was no way I could get out of signaling this time, so my frosting-laden steering wheel got a matching accessory. Once I did get over, and motorcyclists started appearing on my left side, a series of people started looking in at me. They must have signaled to each other to come check out the driver of the red car. I can't imagine what I must have looked like, covered in frosting from chin to forehead, with a partial cake balancing precariously above my lap. My white-tinged hand was all but plastered to the wheel. At one point I was actually scooping up a cloud puddle that was on its way to my leg, and halfway to shoving it desperately into my mouth, when a couple on a motorcycle pulled up next to my window and gave me a laughing thumbs up. As I pulled off on the exit ramp, I started bawling. James said it was hard to contain his laughter as I pulled into the driveway at church, crying and frowning with a cake face. I burst out of the car. "Things did not go well. It's a good cake, but I don't think I'll be eating any more." A few moments later I found myself staring at the cake. "Do we have to take it to the party? Can't I just leave it here?"
On the way to Cortland, the long candles started to cause something of a continental divide. The cake was on the verge of splitting down the middle, but fortunately it survived the trip. Thankfully, my nephew is the very easy going type. I don't think his opinion of cake will change anytime soon, and I'm ok with that. I think this experience may have even changed mine.

let them eat boxed mix.

One of my nieces and both of my nephews are extremely disinterested in most junk food. It's like, "Mom, do I have to eat my brownie?" Anyway, I offered to make my nephew his birthday cake for our family party, and had hoped to change his mind; show him how amazing a really good cake can be. I have yet to find a signature cake of my own, so I spent most of an hour (ok, maybe longer) searching in vain for an amazing cake recipe. I found several that would certainly be appealing to an adult, but wasn't sure how far I could delve into nut territory, for example, with a 10 year old. He also wanted a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting, so any amazing chocolate candy bar frosting was out. Sigh. I nearly went with a chocolate hazelnut cake, which looked divine, (honestly, who doesn't like nutella?) but figured if I spent $30 and as many hours making a cake for a birthday party, I was slightly nuts myself. I finally went with a layer cake that had 2 candy bars in it. After all, how can you go wrong with candy bars?
As I was shopping for a couple of the ingredients, I decided I had better throw a box mix in the cart, just in case. I also grabbed a container of frosting, in case my white cloud recipe turned out more stratonimbus than cumulus.
Anyway, this morning as I was making the cake, I realized that there were no eggs in the recipe. I was extremely skeptical, and thought myself very clever as I reserved a little batter to make a test "cupcake." I went to check on the cake, which by all counts should have been done, and realized that in a braindead moment I had turned the oven off 20 minutes prior when retrieving my test cupcake. Excellent. I had hoped my oven retained heat *exceedingly* well, but, alas, this turned out not to be the case, and my fallen cake looked pretty desperate. Oh well. Dunkin Hines to the rescue.