A Birthday Cake for Kendra

Kendra's birthday was Saturday so over the course of Sunday, we baked her a carrot cake for Julie to take to work on Monday. Julie peeled carrots in the morning while Baby Bird supervised from the Moby; later, Ted mis-en-placed the rest of the ingredients; after his nap, Joe assisted Julie in putting it altogether. Ted had to supervise Julie as to how to let Joe help. Ted is very practiced at instructing Joe how to help in age-appropriate ways. For example, Joe informed Julie he would help with the eggs and Julie looked panic-stricken at Ted who murmured, "He puts his hand over yours." Julie also learned that Joe dumps all liquids measured out into the bowl, and it's best to break say a cup and a half of corn oil into three half cup increments. Joe takes the cup from you in a sort of swashbuckling fashion and you have this heart-clutching moment of fear that whatever it is will not make it into the bowl, but it does. Once we had everything in the mixing bowl, we put on our ear muffs for the actual mixing as "It's loud."

As this cake was meant for Kendra, we could not eat it Sunday. Our Hero took this news in stride, but seemed happy when a slice was saved for him and brought home Monday. He informed us that we needed a candle. Indeed. What is a slice of birthday cake without a candle? After Joe and Clara had eaten Monday night, we sang Happy Birthday to Kendra, blew out the candle*, and all had some carrot cake, even Bird.

*Joe almost had it. In the third picture, you can see him blowing on his hands after Ted told Joe to practice blowing on his hands to understand the sensation of blowing out through his mouth.