Cake

I never thought we’d be a novelty-cake-making family, but Alan’s fish cake (fish-shaped cake, really; it was actually made mostly from chocolate) opened the fun-cake floodgates and now we can’t seem to stop (except on my birthday; my birthday = pavlova, every year).

Mo decided he wanted a digger cake months before his birthday last year; we showed him a few images of others’ efforts on the internet, and then told him we were going to use them as inspiration rather than copy one exactly, and he’d have to wait until his birthday party to see the final result.

We were pretty excited about the grand unveiling, expecting Mo’s face to light up with amazement and joy over our efforts. His first response? “I WANTED YOU TO PUT ALLLLLLLLL THE DIGGERS ON THERE, NOT JUST TWO.” 

This year we were stuck for ideas for both Hazel’s and Mo’s birthdays. Hazel liked Emma Wiggle (too fan-ish), dogs (too difficult/weird-looking) and, fortunately, marshmallows (we went with this option). One thing I love about making novelty cakes is the fact that it often involves Alan and I in the kitchen very late at night, over-tired and giggling over ridiculous things (in this case, how many ways a chopped-up marshmallow can look like genitalia) and wondering why we don’t just make a regularly-iced cakes like normal people. This was the end result of Hazel’s marshmallow cake:

I loved how the marshmallows and sprinkles turned out, but I wish we’d made a light-coloured buttercream frosting instead of sticking with the regular chocolate one. Hazel thought it was pretty awesome, mismatched top and bottom notwithstanding.

Deciding on Mo’s cake was even harder. I wanted to surprise him with cakes that looked like Lego blocks, but he was keen on the idea of a Ninja Turtle cake, and instead of telling him - “Moses, my dear, darling boy - you don’t even know who the Ninja Turtles are! You only love the idea of them because your friends are into them, but wouldn’t you prefer for us to make you something that you actually love, so that in 15 years’ time you can look back at photos of your fifth birthday and say, ‘Oh, did I used to love Lego?’ and we can say ‘YES!’???!” - instead of telling him that, Alan said, “OKAY!”

When he first decided to go with the Ninja Turtle cupcake idea, I thought I’d stick with the Lego-block cake idea and we could have a bake-off, but then I realised that would mean both a lot of work and a lot of cake, so I stepped back and left Alan to his crazy plan. He ignored all warnings we’d been given about the difficulties of fondant and spent three nights leading up to Mo’s birthday dying it, then baking the cake, and whipping up buttercream frosting. I stepped in and rescued him when it came to face-painting, having recognised that Alan was nearing breaking point and desperately wishing we’d gone with the Lego idea (I might have misread this, but I’m pretty sure that’s what was going through his mind at that point). I decided to mix up the emotions so that they didn’t all look cranky (which was the original plan).

They were too sweet even for the kids (which is a worry), and they’d taken approximately 20 hours to put together, but they looked pretty cool, and the texture of the fondant, buttercream, and cupcake together was so good (Alan used this recipe).

We have a year to recover and plan for the next lot.

Mix

Not my palettes.

So I’m over halfway through my holidays now, and I’ve had a productive break so far. I’ve crossed the most important tasks off my to-do list (‘Sign up for a month’s free trial of Netflix’, ‘Watch season two of Orange is the New Black’, ‘Read Faith Shift’, and ‘Do some colouring in’), so now I’m up to ‘Blog’. A couple of days ago I actually sat down to write a ranty piece about nagging but it was based on a blog post I’d read a loooooong time ago, and when I went back to the website to revive my anger I discovered that the author had edited it so that the quote I’d taken wasn’t there anymore, and I couldn’t build an argument based on what he’d left behind. 

The synopsis of what I would have written: if someone’s nagging you, it’s because you’re doing a bad job of communicating with them, either by lying (“I’ll do it this weekend!”) or by failing to explain that The Thing is obviously less important to you than it is to them. So: Tell the truth and have a flipping conversation. If you did say you were going to do something and you didn’t do it, apologise, and then either do it or work with the nagger to figure out a solution to the problem (that may not involve you). And stop being so judgey about the way the naggy person’s communicating with you and instead listen to what exactly that person’s trying to communicate. It’s not that difficult. ALSO, from my understanding of the way the world works, your wife can act respectfully, but she can’t respect you if she doesn’t respect you. I hope that makes sense, Mr Walsh. (The definition of “respect” also suggests that it is something that has to be earned, but I’ve argued with youth group leaders about this before, so it seems there are mixed understandings of what the word means.) PHEW! It feels good to get that off my chest. That’s been bothering me for over a year now.

Anyway, after giving up on that post I realised I only have updatey things to write about, and I don’t know if updatey posts are incredibly boring for you, dear reader. I have no idea who most of you are. I have no idea if you want to know that I’ve been feeling pretty crap lately, and it’s frustrating feeling pretty crap when you’re taking antidepressants (I took the name more seriously than I should have, obviously). (I’ve only been on the new medication for a month, and these ones take a while to kick in, apparently, so I should be more patient.) (I suck at patience.) (The psychiatrist was neither old nor gruff, which was a pleasant surprise; he said things like “fragile sense of self” and “attachment trauma,” and called my children “triggers,” all of which I’ve translated to “Things may continue to be yukky for approximately 16 more years, if not forever.” He told me I should go back to the psychologist, and I said, “I don’t know that I have anything left to talk about, though” and he said, sarcastically, while flicking through his pages of notes, “Really? You have nothing to talk about?!” So I’m going back to the psychologist. For the next 16 or so years. Or maybe forever.)

I’ve no idea if you want to hear about how different it’s been wading through the thick of depression with kids around compared to before kids, when I could work with earphones on and go home when I felt like it and ignore Alan and mostly be left alone. I could put things where they belonged so that our house was tidy and together, unlike my head. These days, our floors regularly look as though they’ve been vomited on by a drunken rainbow who for some reason ate a stack of toys and textas and toast. These days I spend a lot of time with Moses and Hazel, neither of whom understand the concepts of “alone time” or “quiet” or “calm” or “crying in the dark because I really can’t cope with people (especially small people) at the moment.” Poor kids. Poor me. In times like those we are the worst possible match, and so I cry about the fact that my children didn’t get someone better as a mother, someone who’d be mostly joyful and playful and generally –ful rather than empty and in regular fight-or-flight mode. So, yeah. Here’s some colouring in to lighten the mood:

SO! I’ll tick blogging off my list now, too. I was also going to write a post on podcasts, but I don’t know if it’d be that great. The synopsis: Chat 10 Looks 3 is my favourite podcast ever – I smile through every episode and love that Annabel Crabb and Leigh Sales have silly sides. Here’s the Thing (with Alec Baldwin) is also really enjoyable – he asks the questions and makes the comments that I’m thinking of as I listen to the conversations, which is incredibly satisfying; I’ve been surprised at the episodes I really like, and the ones I really don’t (I turned off Jerry Seinfeld after about 10 minutes). I particularly liked his interviews with Ira Glass and Julie Andrews, but my favourite was the one with Bryan Stevenson (the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative), which made me laugh and cry. I also like Bullseye, partly because of who Jesse Thorn talks with (Nicole Holofcener, John Cleese, other people whose names I can’t remember right now…), and partly because his insight into the work of those he interviews seems to impress even them. Let’s just pretend that sentence made sense. He seems to get things.

And, finally, our podcast is now on iTunes, which means I don’t have to keep trying to work out how to embed the player here! And you can subscribe and therefore have new episodes magically appear while you’re sleeping or something! Hurrah! Search for “Ms Sundays” in the podcasts section. We’re up to eight episodes now, although the last two are Sarah-free, and Sonia and I accidentally talk about penises and TV too much when she’s not around.

I was hoping that all of my bloggy to-dos could be crossed off in this one post, but having just failed at coming up with a one-paragraph synopsis for my thoughts on church, I’ll be back again soon.

Alan's 30th

Alan and I went out on Saturday night, for our first dinner out together since my birthday in March last year. It was lovely, and I’m starting to think perhaps we sucked at dating for all those years simply because we didn’t actually need dates then. Now that we feel like we don’t have the time or energy for luxuries such as conversation, it was incredibly nice to sit (or lean on the wall next to us and close our eyes momentarily) and chat and eat good food and drink good wine and nod our heads to good music and enjoy each others’ company. It was also a bonus to realise that this guy sitting opposite me was fun! And interesting! And good looking! And we were already married, so I could have mini naps against the wall because I didn’t have to pretend to be sparkly for him; I look this tired because of his children. He gets it.

I’m looking forward to our next D&M, some time in the early months of 2015.

///

For his birthday, Alan requested a cake with smarties, and Moses wanted it to be a chocolate cake, so we turned to google and, after scrolling through the various “smarties on cake” images, were inspired by the simplicity of this one, and decided to make it using this recipe. But we didn’t have the right tin size, so we poured the leftover batter into a square tin, and then, when it came time to decorate, I figured we should at least try to chop up the square one to make a tail, and then Alan suggested we add a couple of fins, and we ended up with this:

It was fun to make and yummy to eat, but now I feel slightly ill whenever I think of chocolate.

Nous faisons

I find it hard to let Moses play or paint however he wants when the way he wants to do it makes no sense/ruins a perfectly good Paint With Water page. I’ve mentioned my issues with Duplo before – if I make a house, I don’t want nobody messin’ with my blocks, mmmkay? I don’t care if you want to build a dinosaur, have you even seen the amazing pattern I’m building into the wall?! That kind of thing.

I know I should be the mature one, being, you know, Mo’s mother, so I let him do what he likes even if it means pulling my awesome house apart (okay, occasionally I find him other blocks so the house stays intact, but usually I let him pull my house apart)(Okay, so sometimes I tell him he has to find other blocks if he wants to build his dinosaur because I’m still building my house, but generally if I can’t bear to pull my house apart I find him other blocks and usually I just let him pull my house apart). On the days when it’s very hard, I wait for him to go to sleep and then I do it properly the way I prefer.

His.

Mine.

You’ll notice I did mine one colour at a time, LIKE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO.

///

In other news, inspired by Todd Sampson, we decided to buy/try a fruit we’d never bought/tried before every day for a week. We ran out after 5 days:

Tamarillo

Coconut

Pomegranate

Blood Orange

Star Fruit

Apparently trying new things encourages creativity (I think that’s what Todd said; I didn’t watch the show) so yay for our brains.

///

Speaking of creativity, we’ve decided to make Sundays taste.com.au days, where we choose a new recipe for dinner from the website in the hope of finding another batch of meals to eat until we get bored of them. Last week was our first: San Choy Bau. It’s totally going on the menu, it was GOOD.

(I figure I’m allowed to post photos of food again, since it’s been over a year since the last time. I hope that’s okay with you.)

 ///

Speaking of Christmas, I have only one present to buy this year – I scored my niece in the Secret Santa draw. I haven’t seen her for 2 years (her family moved to England), so I’m slightly worried that what I choose will be met with disappointment and/or tears. By slightly worried, I mean seriously panicked.

I’ve figured that if I include lots of little bits and pieces then hopefully at least one thing will make her happy and she won’t leave our place feeling like she totally lucked out and wishing she got one of her other aunties in the draw instead. Apparently she likes crafty things, so I spent a substantial amount of time on Etsy and stumbled across these colouring books, which I love. And then I realised the shipping was nearly TWENTY DOLLARS, so I decided just to make my own pages.

I won’t tell you how old she is for fear that you’ll write to say that these are completely inappropriate for a 5-year-old. I want to colour them in, so if she does run out crying, at least I’ll have something to do to console myself.

///

Speaking of crying, Mo’s started asking for a “farm crab story” from both me and Alan at dinner times – that’s two crab stories we have to come up with per night. He started just asking for a crab story, and then at some point he decided the story should be set on a farm, and now he asks specifically for a farm crab story. Our stories started off pretty well; I reckon we had a few good childrens’ book ideas. At first I enjoyed being forced to be creative, and I’d get right into telling mine, animatedly explaining what Curtis the crab was feeling as he scuttled his way around the barn, etc. Now, 3 weeks on, I have no inspiration left, and Alan’s are getting pretty boring too (truth be told).

It occurs to me just now that perhaps Mo’s not expecting a new story each night; we have read other books thousands of times without him growing tired of them, after all… I’m glad we had this talk, thanks.