Hannah's 2nd birthday

I can't believe how busy a weekend it has been but so worth it.  I have been looking forward to Hannah's 2nd birthday for quite some time now - not because we had a particularly eventful day planned but simply because I was looking forward to seeing her face when she saw her cake and opened her presents.  That, to me, is far more special than expensive parties.  And, let's face it, there will be lots of years ahead when she will want the expensive parties so I was more than happy with the simple one today.

While Hannah was having her afternoon sleep yesterday, I decided to bake the cake.  What I hadn't realised was that the baking of the maderia cake was the simple bit.  The fun bit came to sticking it together, trying to make the castle turrets stay up, make butter icing, get the icing on the cake and not everywhere else, and stick the sweets on without knocking anything over.  I started at 1pm and finally finished at 9pm - 8 hours of cooking and cleaning - shattering but rewarding.

The other problem was where to store the cake and no boxes were big enough so it ended up in the oven.  An easy solution I thought, until I forgot where I put it and had the great idea to bake banana muffins while I had a spare minute this afternoon.  Of course, I had to pre-heat the oven, so on it went while I casually started weighing and mixing ingredients.  After ten minutes, it suddenly dawned on me what I had done and I raced to the oven fearing the worst.  Fortunately, only the turrets had melted (along with the butter icing on them) and had started slipping off.  It didn't look perfect but at least Hannah didn't mind and I managed to get a photo of it before the melting accident.

The 'before the oven accident' cake shot

She loved all of her presents too although got a bit upset when she realised that there was nothing left to open and proceeded to say, "Pres gone."  Trying to explain to her that they weren't gone, merely unwrapped was pointless and we had a while of walking around with her head hung low trying to look as depressed as was dramatically possible, uttering, "Gone" every few seconds.  Maybe I should enrol her in a drama class already.

So, all in all, a lovely day with one very happy two year old who ate all the wrong foods and got all of the attention.  But that's what it is all about at the age of two.  On the other hand, her Mummy is very tired and feeling very bloated from the sugary food consumed (in the name of testing her products first and then having to join in eating them later) but Hannah's smile made it all worth while.  Back to the reality of work tomorrow and the fact that I have done no preparation for it at all - oops - well, I can't do everything all of the time.

One happy little girl!!