Charlie's 3rd Birthday - Cakes

Making birthday cakes for my son is something I take really seriously. My Mum used to make epic cakes for me, I had treasure chests, fairy toadstool houses and even a roller boot, and I want Charlie to have similar great birthday memories. Plus he won't be able to remember the early birthdays but we'll always have photos of him and his cake, so his memories of the first three birthdays will be solely created by the photos we've taken.

For his first birthday I made this hedgehog cake:

When he was two, I took the day off work to make him this Gruffalo cake:

He loves the Gruffalo, plus years before he was born I worked at Macmillan Children's Books, so the Gruffalo is a particularly special book for me. I wrote this 2nd birthday post last year.

So I needed to find something special for his third birthday. After doing some research on Pinterest (check out my Birthday Cake Ideas board) and flicking through some cookery books, I decided on a Dinosaur Chocolate Volcano Cake. I got the recipe from The Birthday Cake Book by Fiona Cairns (she made William and Kate's wedding cake!). The instructions looked complicated and the cake needed chilling time before sculpting it in the volcano shape, so this year I took two days off work.

The instructions were easy to follow, there were just loads of them. I made the grass with granulated sugar and green food colouring and the volcanic lava rocks with homemade cinder toffee (sticky but a brilliant home science lesson with syrup, sugar, white vinegar and bicarbonate of soda). The dinosaurs were supplied by Charlie (he picked his two favourites to sit next to the cake). The part that made it so spectacular was the indoor firework fountain in the centre. When we lit it Charlie's eyes went wide, he loved the erupting volcano. We had to wait for the sparkler to stop and then he could blow out the candles (his favourite part).

To add to the cake making this year I made a mini train cake for his actual birthday day. I hadn't planned to but on Sunday he turned to me and with real excitement said "and Mummy on my birthday on Wednesday I'll blow out three candles on my cake". Luckily Granny had given C some train shaped muffin moulds as an early birthday present, so I practised making the chocolate marble cake recipe and we had a mini train cake on the actual day. I had some gold cake glitter spray which worked really well on the galaxy minstrel wheels and the cake to make it look metallic.

 

Linking up for Mama Memoirs with Mandy @ A Sorta Fairytale:

Last day as a two year old

A busy bank holiday Monday

Today Charlie and I caught up with friends and enjoyed the beautiful May Day sunshine.

 

First up I went for a run this morning. Yes. Me. A run. I used to run all the time but haven't for years, not really since before C was born. So with some early morning sunshine and Tom watching C, I put on my gym kit and headed for the park. Obviously I was pretty rubbish, but it was fun and lovely to see the early morning sun light sparkling on the whole of the city as I stood at the top of the hill.

After a quick shower and picnic making session, C and I went out to the park again and met up with his best friend and her mama. They've been on holiday for a couple of weeks and C has been asking about little Miss C for ages. They had fun at the play park, watching the birds on the lake and playing football on the grass. Plus C was a champ using his potty in the park.

 

 

 

Back at home I picked up the picnic, C used the potty and we set out again. This time to our local museum to catch up with some NCT friends. The three boys had lots of fun together, seeing the fish, blowing bubbles and eating outside on picnic blankets in the sunshine. After lunch we wandered over to the sheep, then on the way home as the buses were running late, the boys were excited to get the train. C was not so much of a potty training champ with two accidents but he countered that with one proper potty use, so not all bad.

 

 



Back home I did some baking for Wednesday (little cake for C to have on his actual birthday) whilst the boys watched the muppets.

Bank holidays spent at home are the best.

Urchfont Scarecrow Festival 2013

This year's scarecrow festival was excellent, the theme was Singers which my husband excelled at, we think we may have got all 53 of them correct, but won't know until the end of the bank holiday weekend when they publish the answers.

When we went a couple of years ago in 2011 Charlie was almost one, so although he liked being in the buggy and walking around the village he didn't really appreciate the scarecrows. This year we didn't take a buggy and he walked/was carried which meant he could spot and run up to the scarecrows. He was pretty good, though we had a lot of tears when he fell off the curb and grazed his hand. Grandad bought him a toy scarecrow which he loved, and got v upset when we lost it on the walk, Grandad kindly bought him another one, and there was no pulling the wool over this boy's eyes, even though it looked exactly the same, he knew it wasn't the same one!

David Bowie was the most extravagant, but I also really liked Liam Gallagher, Bob Dylan and Johnny Rotten. The weather was wonderfully sunny, so warm we could get an ice cream and lots of beautiful blue sky to help make the photos look great.

Toddler days out - Emmetts Garden

 Day out number two with our National Trust membership and a toddler.

 

The sun came out today so we packed a picnic and looked for a NT place within easy driving distance of South London. As we're mid potty training we didn't want a stately home so somewhere with lots of outside space sounded perfect, we decided on Emmetts Garden in Kent. This is the Edwardian garden of a stately home, but only the garden part is open to the public. Perfect.

 

There was so much to explore so we'll go back again another time, but we did a quick loop of the first garden and then made our way to the picnic field where we sat up camp. The National Trust run this place with family fun in mind. There was a little log cabin filled with outdoor lawn games (bowls, cricket etc) and as I sat down with Charlie (whilst Daddy went back to the car for the picnic) a kind member of staff brought me over two deckchairs. The boy loved the deckchairs, he hopped in and out of them and I was relegated to the picnic blanket as we ate our lunch.

 

We took the slingshute and the boys had fun throwing it up up into the air and running to catch the parachute and Charlie was a potty training genius. He sat on the travel potty in the toilet stall with me and again by the car, proving that we can take him out for a day without any embarrassing accidents. We ate cheese and ham sandwiches, teddy bear crispies, strawberries and raspberries and homemade gingerbread. And I took LOADS of photos, making the most of the blue sky and two happy boys.





 

 

Insta catch up

Some of the things we've been doing this April, taken from my Instagram feed.

- Cheeky morning face
- Jar of jelly beans
- Ill boy lying on a log in the park
- Blossom and blue sky - one of my favourite types of photo
- Boy running in the park
- More blossom
- Burying the Typewriter - memoir of a Romanian childhood under the eyes of the Secret Police
- Yogurt EVERYWHERE
- Slingshute in the park
- C loves running after the parachute and bringing it back to us
- Wilf
- Stanley
- Boys at cousin M's 2nd birthday
- New bedding (far too girly for T's liking)
- House of Rumour and a latte
- Skeleton C
- Horsing around
- M's birthday cupcakes

Miscarriage - six weeks on

 

I felt it was time to put down in words how I'm coping after finding out about my silent miscarriage on 12th March. Six weeks feels like the right time to do this, if I'd chosen to let nature take it's course, six weeks was the maximum time that it could happen safely without surgical intervention. Some days it feels like I've been grieving forever and also like no time at all has passed, but looking back, I'm glad I chose the surgery option and had my ERPC two days after finding out rather then waiting until now for it to happen naturally.

 

I've got all these little bits and pieces bumping around my head, so will write them down as coherently as possible to help me continue to move forward.

 

- Daily wobbles. Nothing's lessened with time, I still feel all the grief I did on that day six weeks ago. At the moment it's like I'm split in two, my rational self who can cope with day to day living and is in control 90% of the time  and my emotional self who is one step away from a whole vortex of grief. Sometimes I wobble but can take that step back and sometimes I fall into it completely.Things that have triggered this in the last few weeks are:

• The doctor's not updating their system so I was sent a text reminding me of an appointment. When I phoned up (during work) to find out what the appointment was for, it was my 16 week midwife check up. Gutting. I had a big wobble, shed some tears but was able to pull it together and be back at my desk before anyone noticed.

• My book group discussing a book I'd read almost a year ago, I'd brushed up on the main facts but forgotten the heroine has a miscarriage at the start of the book. When this came up in the conversation I had a tiny wobble but held my breath and blinked my eyes and mentally coaxed myself away from the vortex so as not to break down in front of others.

• My son casually saying to me 'when we have our baby', he's too little to understand that after two months of telling him he'd be a big brother in the future that future is much further away.

• I'm currently off work with a gastric stomach bug, being violently sick brought back too many raw memories from the last week of my pregnancy when I was sick on a daily basis.

• My worst situation was a curve ball taking me completely by surprise and happened when sorting out holiday at work. This wasn't a wobble I was fully taken over by grief and had to leave the office. It was drizzling and I went to a nearby square, sat on a bench in the rain and just cried and cried and the really scary thing was that I couldn't stop. I couldn't calm down, all I could think about was that when we booked that holiday I would have been 7 months pregnant and now I won't be. I should have gone home, but had a commitment I couldn't get out of that evening, so after a long time looking like a crazy person in the rain, I dried my eyes and read my book over a latte in a nearby coffee shop until I'd calmed down enough to return to work.

- No secret. When you have a miscarriage it's like you've been forced to lay all your cards on the table. The months of trying to conceive and then hiding early pregnancy have been a happy secret and suddenly wham, the news is out there, family and friends and colleagues all know that you want another baby. I believe we were right to tell the people we did about the miscarriage, but now, six weeks down the line, it's uncomfortable having so many people holding this knowledge and waiting to hear that you're pregnant again.

 

- Draft posts. I have a few draft posts I wrote about the pregnancy and was waiting to publish further down the line once we'd announced it. Yesterday I accidently deleted one, it was called 'Morning Sickness and Other Fun Things' and basically complained about how sick I was feeling at 8 weeks but how worthwhile it would all be in 7 months time. I wrote it on my phone using the blogger app and assumed it had synced to my main account. Yesterday I had issues with the app so uninstalled it and when I reinstalled it that post was missing. When I feel strong enough I guess I need to edit the others into one post, including the week by week stat images I'd started to create, and then publish them, because I don't think I could bear accidently losing any more.

 

-Saying Goodbye. Another blogger recommended this website and I've found it really useful, I'm now seriously considering attending one of the cathedral services.

 

-Pinterest. Surprisingly putting together a board on Pinterest has been really helpful. It's secret board at the moment, but there are so many inspirational pins with quotes and help and beautiful images that I wish I'd discovered it sooner. My favourites make up the image at the start of this post.

 

Currently

Currently we're enjoying a weekend at home and starting take two on potty training the boy. I'd planned to keep him inside all day with just his new big boy pants on, but the sunshine was so lovely we postponed losing the pull-up until late in the afternoon. C and I had a great walk, I remembered to take my proper camera instead of my phone camera and got some gorgeous shots of him and he remembered to take his football and had lots of fun chasing after it.

When we finally put the pants on at (ahem...) 4pm, he was a little star with proper potty usage and no accidents until bed time.

Fixing the crocodile

I asked Charlie what he wanted to do this morning, it's Saturday and we had no definite plans. I was expecting the reply to be to go on a train or go to the park but out of the blue he said, "can we fix my crocodile Mama?".

His crocodile puppet got a rip in the inside seam a couple of weeks ago and ever since it's been sitting up on a shelf after I said I'd fix it and hadn't got round to it. So feeling guilty I sat right down and sewed it up. His smile was worth it, then after two minutes of playing he moved onto the next toy and the crocodile was left lying upside down on the floor. Toddlers huh!

This boy

 

 

This boy is smiley and cheerful and likes saying silly rhyming things.

 

This boy's conversations revolve around trains, cranes and dustbin lorries, stinky bins and rubbish dumps, his best friend, chocolate, daffodils and buses.

 

This boy loves to sit at the top of the bus, or in the window seat on the train anywhere but in a high chair or a bus stop bench.

 

This boy waves hello to the lady at the bus stop every morning and she always waves and says hello back to him.

 

This boy loves to share, it always surprises me when a little voice says "here you go mummy" and a little hand proffers a piece of rice cake or his 2nd favourite train.

 

This boy has a wonderful proud face when he achieves something tricky.

 

This boy loves swirly whirly pasta, babybel and yogurt tubes.

 

This boy will eat cucumber and carrot when forced to but says "remember mummy I don't like cucumber". 

 

This boy remembers days out from over a year ago, beaches and castles and steam trains.

 

This boy is always saying "when I'm big I'll..." does he not realise that he's already so grown?

 

This boy will be 3 in 3 weeks time - eek.


I'm linking this post up with Mandy at A Sorta Fairytale's Mama Memoirs.