Celebrating Daddy's Birthday

I am a month behind in posting this, but since these are some of the more recent photos we've taken I thought it was still worth posting.

Last month was Ross' birthday, and thanks to one of his books a certain toddler had his heart set on baking Daddy a cake. A chocolate cake.

Unfortunately, the week of Ross' birthday happened to be a pretty horrible week and I was tempted to opt for a store bought cake. In the end I decided that the horrible week we had was even more reason to take time out to celebrate something good, and that Ivor especially could use a little messy fun. Still being me though, I decided to compromise on store bought frosting because I couldn't handle the thought of a toddler and icing sugar... (shudder).

In the morning we left early to get ingredients from the store on our way to the park for a play date. While Ivor napped, I prepped the kitchen for our bake: Chocolate Cake with white chocolate chips and chocolate frosting. Having everything out and ready means less time for Ivor to get into stuff or lose interest. Once he woke up, we popped into the kitchen to mix up our cake batter and put it in the oven. (I'm pretty sure that more white chocolate chips ended up in Ivor's mouth than in the batter, but he had a great time. The mess was minimal due to my planning ahead so I had a good time too!)

We ate a snack and played while the cake cooked. Waiting for the cake to cool enough to decorate was the hardest part, so I tried to distract Ivor with coloring and 'practicing' the Happy Birthday song we needed to sing for Daddy. There was some discussion about presents and comforting a very disappointed little boy when he heard that ALL the presents would be for Daddy. (Ivor only wanted 'just one'...) Eventually we got out the frosting and start decorating. After a few minutes of swishing his fingers through the frosting and eating it, Mommy took over decorating.

I was pretty impressed that everything went to plan and that Ivor mostly cooperated through the whole process.

Can I eat some cake now? What do you mean we have to wait for Dad?

Our creation! Cake Baking success.

We made a video message just in case Daddy didn't make it home in time for Ivor to present the cake in person. He ended up making home well before Ivor's bedtime, so I share the video with you intead:

Happy Birthday, Ross!