For Posterity

It's been almost exactly a week since Poppy's birthday, and I'm just now getting around to posting pictures from that day. I have to do it, you see, as this blog is pretty much her baby book. Besides, I did it for all three of her brothers (Cubby here, Charlie here, and Jack here), and I wouldn't want to leave myself open to any accusations of unfairness in the future.

As if a mother can escape those.

Anyway.

The big day started way too early, thanks to Poppy's cold and stuffed-up nose that made it hard for her to sleep.

5:25 a.m.: Wide-eyed baby and haggard mom.

I got up so early that it seemed perfectly reasonable to be baking a cake at 7 a.m. I used this recipe for a one-bowl yellow cake, which was indeed as easy as they claimed. I can say that because I mixed the whole thing up and got it in the oven while a baby crawled around my feet, Cubby cooked eggs at the stove, and Charlie and Jack ran in and out fighting and demanding breakfast.

It ended up being kind of dry, probably because I over-mixed it. The recipe did say to avoid that, but it also said to mix it for about three minutes if mixing by hand, and by the time I had mixed it for about thirty seconds, there were no lumps left.

Whatever. It was fine. I made a half recipe, because I know who will eat any leftover cake (me) and that person (me) does not need unnecessary temptation just sitting around the kitchen.

I made a vanilla buttercream frosting for it. I didn't have anything to decorate it with, so I mixed a little of the frosting with some strawberry jam to make pink frosting. Then I used the old hack of putting the frosting in the corner of a plastic baggie, cutting off the corner, and using that to write on the cake. It came out as well as that always does.

Total amateur hour.

While I was creating that messy masterpiece, Poppy was creating her own messy masterpiece on the floor.

A bag of canning jar lids and rings is an excellent distraction.

I managed to dig out some balloons from a random box that hadn't been unpacked yet, though I couldn't find the birthday candles and had to use one of our big emergency candles. Good thing I only needed one.

Poppy looks suitably impressed.

That lump of newspaper there on the table is Poppy's birthday present. Singular. And the only reason she had that is because it was a toy given to her for Christmas last year that she was too young for, so I had it in a closet until she was big enough and it happened to be in the box with the balloons. 

Thanks for the chewy ark, Aunt Marilyn! She loves it! Finally.

She also loved her cake.

Don't get between this girl and her cake.

And . . . that was pretty much it. She had a bath to wash off the cake and snot and was deposited into bed.

And that's how a first birthday with a fourth child goes down. Low-key, but at least she never has to worry about having other kids at her birthday party.