Yes, I'm a Natural Blue

So Katherine and I were eating lunch today and we were talking about one of her favorite subjects: hair.....

Kirsten: What color is Betsy's* hair?

Katherine: It's orange!

Kirsten: Yup. People with orange hair sometimes call it strawberry blond. Her hair is a little bit red and a little bit blond. Your hair is all blond.

Katherine: Yeah! My hair is lemon blond! And your hair is brownie blond.....and Dad's hair is blackberry blond!

* Name has been changed to protect me in case my friend doesn't want her child or her child's hair mentioned on my blog.

The Most Exciting New Gameshow

Name That Baby!!

with your host.....me!

You can win fabulous prizes and the adoration and respect of your peers if you can tell the difference between my kids at Age 3-4 months. Ready? Here we go....

Category 1: Flash Shock

Category 2: Tummy Time Turned Naptime

Category 3: Changing Pad Poses

Category 4: Nekkid Babies!

Answer: For each category Katherine was pictured first followed by Logan.

You know those families where the oldest child is the model and each subsequent child looks like a smaller version of the preceding child? Everybody knows at least one family like that. Well, I guess I have one of those families.

Fun Summer Recipe: Neapolitan Sunburn

Ingredients:

1 pasty pale arm
1 tube sunblock
2 shirts with different sleeve lengths
2 weekend outings

Method:

1.) Wear the shirt with the longer sleeve and take the pasty pale arm out into the sun.
2.) Let the arm get good and sunburned.
3.) Wait two weeks till the burn fades to a righteous farmer's tan.
4.) Wear the other shirt with the shorter sleeve.
5.) Decide to avoid a second sunburn and rub the sunblock on the farmer's tan arm up to the point where the tan stops and the pasty pale skin starts.
6.) Rub sunblock over a random blotchy piece of pasty skin.
7.) Let the arm get good and sunburned again.




Voila! Neapolitan Sunburn!





Here's a better view. The straight line marks the end of the tan and the beginning of the sunburn. The circle indicates the funny blotch of pasty pale skin that didn't get burned. The photo just doesn't do it justice. In real life, it was much more dramatic.



Moral of the story: Pay attention to your sunblock application.

You Heard It Here First

Katherine was grousing about something completely unimportant the other day....

Katherine: I am whining and complaining about something that doesn't matter and I'm riding Mommy's last nerve.

Kirsten: Katherine, you are such a drama queen!

Katherine: No I'm not!!! I'm a drama princess!

Bring on the cake!

It's my birthday! I am 29 years old today and in honor of today, I am revealing one of my weaknesses. It's time I let the cat out of the bag....

I LOVE CAKE!


I mean, as a dessert I can take it or leave it. If you really want to wow me, I'm all about the ice cream and fudge and brownies. But the reason I love cake is because of all the cool things you can do to it. Cake can look like pretty much anything if the right person is involved. See?

Don't believe me? Here's an "In progress" picture

But I didn't always feel this way. Back a hundred years ago when I got married, I didn't really care too much about my wedding cake. I just wanted it to taste good and not look like a shapeless mass. I think my parents spent less than $150 on my wedding cake and it was a pretty standard, not too exciting cake visually, but it tasted good! And that is what mattered to me. I actually thought all those fancy-schmancy cakes with the fondant and crazy colors were awful. I was of the opinion that cake should look like what it is--food--and that any unusual decoration was just a waste of time and money. But I have since changed my mind.

Shortly before Logan was born, I learned that a friend of mine is a budding cake decorator. She created a number of beautiful cakes for a party I attended. At the party I talked to her about her creations (which were beautiful AND tasty, by the way) and she taught me about the usefulness of fondant and that there was a whole subculture of people that decorate cakes to look like non-cake. My interested was piqued. But being pregnant and tired, I never really researched it.

A month or so later, Logan was born and I got to stay in the hospital for a few days. While I was recovering, I became acquainted with a TV show called "Cake Boss." We don't have cable at our house so I had never heard of this show or this guy who made cakes look like buildings on fire and aquariums with turtles and coral. But seeing as how I was recovering from surgery and had nothing better to do, I watched A LOT of "Cake Boss." I came to appreciate the beauty and just sheer awesomeness of these crazy cakes he bakes every episode. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Then shortly after I got home from the hospital I was acquainted with a website called Cakewrecks (http://www.cakewrecks.blogspot.com/ ). I learned that there are lots of people who claim to be professional bakers and cake decorators, but have virtually no idea how to decorate a cake. This website makes fun of the cake disasters that people pay for and some of them are pretty funny. But apart from the cake wrecks, the author of the website occasionally showcases the work of some genuinely talented decorators. Here are some classic wrecks:

So it seems the universe has conspired against me in the last few months by bombarding me with cakey prettiness and more or less guaranteeing that I eat my words, so to speak. But at least in this case my words are red velvet with cream cheese filling and they look like a snuggly baby giraffe.

Triple Flip--ing out

Katherine got very interested in ice skating during the Olympics and has been pestering me to take her skating since February. Seeing as I was pregnant at the time and Casey would rather have his molars pulled without anesthetic than go ice/roller skating, poor Katherine did not get to go right away. Last weekend, Katherine's ice princess dreams were realized when I finally took her ice skating.

So, umm....yeah, it didn't really go as well as we would have hoped.

Pretty much as soon as she got on the ice, she was begging and crying and screaming to get off and go home. When she wasn't clinging to the wall for dear life, she was clinging to my leg for dear life. I thought if she gave it a few minutes, she'd relax a bit and start enjoying herself.

Boy, I was WAY off!

She never did stop crying long enough to see how well she was doing. Once I got her to let go of the wall and just hold my hand, she skated really well. She didn't lose her balance or fall at all. But she was too busy hollering to realize this. We made two laps around the rink and then we quit. I decided it's not nice to torture your child in the name of fun.

This is Katherine's near-hysteria AFTER she got her skates off. So, maybe we'll try it again in a few years, you know, or not...

Bedtime Conversations

When it's my turn to put Katherine to bed, we often have very interesting and very random conversations. This was part of tonight's chat. We started out talking about what we're going to do tomorrow and as usual, the conversation went in a completely unrelated direction...

Me: Kitties and doggies don't usually get along so that's why Grandma and Grandpa don't bring Sophie (their dog) to our house (we have a cat).

Katherine: Like Morris Stegosaurus and Alvin Allosaurus? (reference to a favorite TV show, Dinosaur Train...check your local PBS schedule)

Me: Yup.

Katherine: Mom, stegosaurus eats plants.

Me: That's right. Do you know what allosaurus eats?

Katherine: No...

Me: Allosaurus eats stegosaurus!

Katherine: what??

Me: Yep! It's true! Do you eat stegosaurus?

Katherine: No! Yuck! We eat healthy food.......we eat pizza and ice cream!