Happy Birthday Princess!

Today is Ms. D's ninth birthday!  She is so excited to have friends who are in town and able to go to a movie with us.  At noon, two of her buddies will descend upon our home, and we will go hang out with some 3-D minions.

She has a lot of opinions right now.

"This year mom, I want to MAKE my cake.  I don't want a store bought one."

"Okay honey."

"Mom, there are two books I want for my birthday."

"Okay honey."

"Which cake mix do you want dear?"
"THAT ONE!"  she says pointing to Duff's tie-dye cake.  Oh boy.

Last night, we baked the cake.  It was a learning process.  She was satisfied with going to bed once we had them in the oven.  A bit of foreshadowing about what she'd find this morning.  

1) Mr. Man wasn't real happy with how one of the eggs separated.  He was worried there was too much white left behind. We probably should have put in an extra, and reduced the water a bit.

2) I let the girl grease the pans, but wasn't overly careful about checking them before we added the batter.

3) It was really, really, humid from the rain.

4) It said to cool in pan 10-20 minutes.  I forgot about it for almost an hour.

The first cake came out almost okay.  A little bit tore on the top, but it was on the inside and not too deep.  Nothing a knife couldn't fix.  After the battle with the second my first thought was, birthday rainbow trifle?

Somehow I knew that wouldn't fly with the girl.

This morning, when she first saw it her eyes went wide with horror.  So I did what any mom would do.  I totally bluffed my way through it.

"Don't worry honey.  It'll be fine.  We'll use the torn up one for the bottom layer and make a filling.  If we try to frost the middle it would just shred more."

She calmed down immediately, but was still uncertain.  I was too.  

And that friends, is the maturity peeking through.  The ability to self calm, even when there's still doubt.

Unfortunately that doubt is part of it too.  If she was six, she would have beamed at me, blindly believing I could fix anything.  The time is quickly approaching where she will insist on fighting her own battles alone sometimes, and I won't be "allowed" to save her, nor should I.  The struggle is just part of the "becoming."  Thankfully, that day is not today...and I have a strawberry cream recipe.  Here's hoping she thinks the cake is delicious.