Buggy Cupcakes

One of the downsides of having a birthday between Christmas and New Year's is that your birthday always falls on a school holiday. Seeing that Molly has a summer birthday, I couldn't quite bear the prospect of NEVER bringing special birthday snacks into school. So, I decided that it was perfectly acceptable to bring Max's belated birthday goodies in to school during the first week of January.

This year, Grandma gave me a neat cupcake book and an awesome cupcake carrier (it holds 27 cupcakes!). I hadn't decided what cupcakes to make for Max's birthday and it was just the inspiration I needed.

I loved the Creepy Crawlers cupcake idea and, after a little discussion, got Max on board. He originally wanted to make gingerbread man cupcakes, being enamored of all things gingerbread after making cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve. But, he changed his mind and decided that he loved the "buggy cupcakes."

This year the cupcake production was a bit more intense, since Max has twice as many kids in his class (necessitating a double batch of cupcakes). Surprisingly, the bugs were the easiest part of the process -- the cupcakes and frosting decided to be ornery. In spite of the less-than-perfect frosting job, the cupcakes were a big hit -- Max said that nobody was scared of the bugs because, "Mama, they're just cupcakes." Max was happy to report that he ate the orange caterpillar (centipede) and Molly (who scored one of the extra cupcakes) told me ate a "yellow spider with a BIG M&M on its back"!

I'd better start planning for next year!

Conversations With Molly

Molly has always had a lot to say, and lately she's been saying some pretty funny stuff. Of course, I need to write it all down before I forget it!

The other night, she asked me to play with her. I agreed and she promptly dragged out her pink princess jump rope and decide that we should have a little indoor jump rope-a-thon.

Anxious to show off my jump rope prowess, I started skipping rope while singing the old classic skipping rhyme:

Cinderella, dressed in yellow
Went upstairs to meet her fellow.
Made a mistake, kissed a snake.
How many doctors did it take?
One, two, three ... (we'll pretend I made too many successful jumps to count)

When I handed the rope to Molly, she got right into the spirit of things. Without missing a beat, she started to (pretend to) jump, while singing the following:

Sleeping Beauty, had a dolly.
Ee i ee i oh!
With a quack quack here
And a quack quack there ...

Dad and I were trying not to laugh until she'd finished, because we didn't want to ruin her ad libbed song.

Then the other day, when we were driving past one of the local motorcycle dealerships, Molly turned to me and said, "Mama, I like motorcycles. I want a motorcycle." Obviously, she's a girl after her dad's heart. I told her that when she was grown up, she could decide whether or not she wanted a motorcycle. She nodded sagely and said, "Yup, when I'm grown up. When I'm five." Yikes!

There is one conversation that we have almost every day that continues to crack me up. We received an American Girl catalog in the mail a couple months before Christmas. Since Molly tends to like to throw fits about having to use the bathroom before bed, one night I brought the catalog into the bathroom to try to convince her to sit on the potty. Happily, it worked and she's spent a lot of time perusing that particular catalog. One of the dolls in the catalog is named Molly, a fact that never seemed to please MY Molly.

One night, after we'd looked at the catalog a few times, Molly was naming all of the dolls. She had all of the names right, but when she got to the Molly doll, she declared that it's name was "Mexica." I reminded her that the doll's name was Molly, to which she replied, "No, I'M Molly. That's Mexica." And the doll has been Mexica ever since!

Resolved

Well, along with the standard New Year's resolutions (making healthier meal choices and sticking with my workout routine), I'm also going to get my blogging butt in gear. I managed to get (way) behind when we had our computer problems last year and never was able to entirely catch up. And, since I didn't want to post new stuff until I caught up with the old stuff, I just didn't post. So, my resolution is to start off this year with a clean blog slate and catch up with the old stuff as I am able (I really do have lots of notes and pictures, so it really could happen ... maybe).

So, Merry Christmas, Grandma! And I hope everyone else had a wonderful holiday season. We're wishing you all good things in the new year.