Rose turned three

It happened on Friday—Rose turned three. She is very happy about it. I was much more mentally prepared for this birthday than I have been in the past. I did my reminiscing and mourning early in the week so on Rose’s actual birthday, I was through the nostalgic sniffling and ready for some birthday-rific celebrating.

This year I suddenly realized that my kids are old enough to have favorite things. I know, they’ve had preferences for quite a while now. But it just occurred to me this week that I should do some sort of yearly documentation of those preferences.

After a quick Pinterest idea search, I used Microsoft Word to combine my favorite ideas and created a birthday interview, of sorts. I like how it turned out—I didn’t know if it would be possible to make something so…not boring in Microsoft Word. Success! Some of her answers were less-accurate (her favorite animal is SO totally a horse, but she said cows when I asked her).

Well, back to the birthday. Rose and Jay got up nice and early (6am-ish) on the big day. We opened presents first thing. I barely resisted the urge to do Rose’s hair before she opened her presents.

 

When Rose opened the plastic high-heeled Rapunzel dress-up shoes, she gasped and started stripping out of her pajamas at the speed of light. Then she put on the shoes and hobbled over to the dress-up bin, dug out her crumpled homemade Rapunzel costume, and struggled into it with a little help. [Aren’t those undies perfect? They used to be Jay’s. Every time Rose runs out of Pony undies, she moves on to Jay’s old training undies.]

With her transformation complete, Rose stumble-hobbled up and down the hallway in her new shoes for a little while before returning to the present-opening.

Jay gave her some castle-shaped blocks that he adores, ha ha ha. We also gave her a sweet castle tent (Ikea!), some princess books, the Tangled soundtrack, a David Archuletta CD (she’s a fan), fresh crayons and markers, and a ream of blank white paper. Yes, I used paper to wrap a package of paper. It was her second-favorite gift, after the shoes.

Rose-punzel by her tower.

It SNOWED more the night before Rose’s birthday, so Jeff had a convenient 2 hour delay for school. We spent a pleasant morning together with the birthday girl. A little while after Jeff left, the kids and I bundled up and went out into the whiteness.

I hunted through our closet and dumped the fabric out of our little old plastic bin-sled that I concocted two years ago. I left the rope on the bin all this time, and it came in handy at last. We had fun pulling each other up and down the snowy street.

[a quick flashback to Rose’s last ride in our makeshift sled]

We walked over to Steph and Jasen’s house to play with Layne in the snow.

A snow-couch was about all I could build out of the powder.

We went inside Layne’s house to warm up, and Steph gave Rose some hot chocolate and a birthday present. It was the “Bepunzel movie”—Tangled! Eventually, we went home and had lunch and birthday cake.

THE CAKE: Moan. Last year I gave Rose’s birthday cake its own post, but I’m sort of ashamed that I even have enough of a cake-baking story AGAIN this year to make into another post, so I’m putting the woeful tale in the middle of the birthday joy, to ease the sting of failure. Sorry if my cake-escapades are getting old! I know I’m tired of them, even if I do have to laugh when I look back…

Rose knew exactly what kind of cake she wanted this year, and she never changed her mind during the entire month leading up to her birthday. That was fine with me—she wanted a yellow cake with chocolate frosting. I can handle that, I thought, as long as I have a cake mix. Rose and I made the cake the night before her birthday. Sigh, it’s becoming tradition for me to BOTCH every single birthday cake I make, in one way or another. A yellow cake with chocolate frosting—it doesn’t get much more basic than that—right? 

Rose didn’t want it in a rectangle pan, though, and since she so compliantly chose such a simple cake, I felt I should indulge her one request on the shape. So I let her pick between two round pans or a single bundt pan, explaining in detail how awesome a bundt shape is and how less-exciting two plain round pans are. My tactic worked, and she picked the bundt. The plan was to make the bundt and then pour Texas sheet cake frosting on the top. No awful spreading and tearing up the cake. No nightmarish frosting-concocting (is this enough? is it too stiff?). Bake cake, pour on frosting. There’s nothing to it! I had visions of my first-ever birthday cake success: a pretty bundt shape, coated in glossy chocolate frosting. I even thought “wow, I’m actually going to do this right for once!” as I was putting the cake into the oven.

Alas, I forgot the rules of bundt baking at the critical moment. When the bundt pan came out of the oven, I couldn’t remember whether to dump it out right away or let it cool before dumping. As you can probably guess, I chose wrong, dumped the hot cake out, and watched half of it crumble and crack all over the counter while the other half stuck in the pan.

It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase birthday bash.

I pieced it together as best I could and then dumped the frosting on top, hoping for a birthday miracle. The problem with runny frosting is…it runs. The frosting coated all the cracks and gashes in the cake and then dribbled off the plate onto the counter. I scooped it back on until it finally solidified somewhat. There was quite a deep pool of fudgy frosting in the middle of the bundt. Note to self—the amount of frosting needed for a 10x15 Texas sheet cake is far greater than the amount needed for a midget crumpled bundt cake.

At least it tasted good.

Last year, we started the birthday tradition of eating birthday cake at lunch AND dinner on birthdays—why wait till night time to enjoy some birthday cake? It’s your birthday ALL DAY, after all. On Rose’s birthday this year, we added to that early-cake tradition: Rose blew out candles twice too: at lunch and then again at dinner. Blowing out candles is fun, so why not do it twice? That way I got a video of her blowing out candles at lunch, and pictures of her blowing out candles at dinner. Minimal documentation stress. Goodbye video vs. picture dilemma during the candle ritual!

“Bir-day-tate!” (birthday cake). We had fun joking that Rose was eating her cousin Tate instead of cake.

I should add that this was the first year that Rose blew out her own candles without any help—and she did it twice! It took a while, but eventually all 3 candles were smoking instead of glowing. That afternoon, we read a pile of Rose’s new princess books (the Little Golden Book versions of the Disney movies). Grama Leslie and Grampa Dan came over to give Rose her present: a talking, moving pink My Little Pony toy and a necklace. Ahem, thankfully the pony has an off-switch.

For Rose’s birthday dinner, I made the perennial favorite kid-food: homemade mac and cheese. Since it was Friday—family movie night—we ate mac and cheese and broccoli in the basement while watching Tangled. We had an intermission to sing Happy Birthday, blow out candles and cut the cake.

After the movie, it was bedtime. Jay and Rose slept in the new castle tent. It has a diameter of just under 4 feet. Good thing they have had lots of practice snuggling up together in their superbed over the past few weeks.

Their pillows alone took up 2/3 of the floor space.

But a few hours later when I peeked in, they were both asnooze.

And just like that, it’s official: Rose is three.