Diary...

Not for me. I'm not much of a diarist myself - apologies to Samuel Pepys, but they always seem a bit pre-teen girl to me. However, Finn is really trying to read these days, and his two favorite books are "Diary of a Wombat" and "Diary of a Baby Wombat." It's not hard to see why he enjoys them so much; they are filled with short, declarative sentences, most of which end in mayhem, destruction or the consumption of Wombat treats (largely carrots).

Still, if I were to keep a diary, I'd probably note with some mournfulness the rapid passage of time, especially in light of Finn's first day of school tomorrow. I've packed his lunch and tried to keep as closely as I could to his request (hotdogs and strawberries, with strawberries and cookies for a snack), got out his clothes for tomorrow (he'll probably pick a BART themed shirt) and planned his special breakfast. Today was about the best day the day before school can be. We biked to the farmers market (note to new readers: while we don't live in Berkeley, we're pretty Berkeley), played with friends on the street (hoses and water balloons featured prominently, along with some ant slaughter), and barbecued before being shuffled protesting to bed. I'm sure there will be many days like this to come, but this one took on nostalgic sepia tones pretty quickly. So, in keeping with the theme of the blog and also with Finn's entrance into the hallowed halls of academia, below is a picture of some graduation cupcakes Lisa made for some friends, as well as some photos of Finn - one recent, one less so.



Graduation Cakes



Finn at Gilroy Gardens



Finn at his most corpulent

Poke-somethings

Some people probably find my sporadic blogging schedule charming. "Will there be an update this month? No? Perhaps in 2011?" I feel that it gives the hoi polloi something to look forward to and chat about on these dark and chilly bay area evenings. Unfortunately, my wife is not one of these people. I have largely myself to blame, as her expectations on the speed of content generation and her consumption of said content have been set by her iPhone, a birthday present that she has taken to in the same way that lab rats take buttons that they can push to send a quick zap into the pleasure centers of their brains. My usual response after being asked if I only updated this thing annually is that I'd write more if she baked more. However, she's been quick to point out that there's somewhat of a backlog of items that for one reason or another (indolence, and some sort of synonym for indolence), I've failed to post on.

With that in mind, here's a Pokemon cake that she made for Conor's friend Oliver late last year. Even at the best of times, I'm not too sharp on these guys names. Add ten months from baking time and the sleeplessness of new fatherhood (throat clearing from Lisa on that point), and I'm afraid that I'm quite useless - the yellow one is Pikachu. I think the one that looks like a turtle is called Turtwig. Beyond that, it's anyone's guess. Well, anyone, unless you are a 5-7 year old boy, in which case I'm quite sure you can identify them all, and then smirk that they're not nearly as powerful as some of the legendary Pokemon that you have in your card set.

Look what she made!

I never really played a lot of video games. We never had a Nintendo or anything of that ilk when I was younger. By the time I was in college, my younger brother had somehow managed to persuade our parents to get him a Sega Genesis, but we only had a couple of games. At that point I was in my late teens, and having not banked the necessary man hours to become a Gladwellian expert, and being the possessor of rather slow thumbs, I didn't play that much because frankly, one can only get killed on level one of a game so many times before finding it both uninteresting and a little humiliating. Still, I do have fond memories of Mario. I don't remember where I played it, but I think that everyone in America did. And I certainly remember where I played Mario Kart - in the living room of my law school basement apartment, with my roommates and various friends and usually several bottles of malt liquor covering the thrift store coffee table. So when Lisa said that the mom of one of Conor's former pre-school friends had asked her to make a Mario cake, I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe the kid is a retro-chic hipster who's only going to appreciate the cake ironically, but sincere or not, it's way cooler than Bakugan.



As awesome as the Mario cake is (I'd like one for Labor day please sweets), I think it's safe to say that Lisa's talent for cake decoration has been passed on to our kids. As proof, I'd like to present the cake that the boys decorated for my birthday. It has all of the things that are most important in their lives - candy and legos (OK, not the most important things but pretty important, not to mention books would get ruined by the frosting, and I came down firmly against Finn's plan to cover the cake in garbage). Conor's original concept was to have two lego figures playing soccer, the soccer ball being portrayed by a jawbreaker. Beyond that, the rest of the plan involved testing the adhesive powers of Lisa's buttercream frosting by sticking as many candies as possible to the top and sides of the cake. However, in a moment of creative genius, Conor decided that there should be another Lego guy on the cake, but this guy would be face down in the frosting, having tripped over a grape skittle. After a bout of pratfall-humor induced hysteria, Finn decided that the cake needed a several more faceplanted Lego and candy stumbling blocks. This was actually a pretty ingenious plan, as it ensured that there were large parts of the cake that the parents would refuse to touch, as god knows how many filthy and improbable places I've found little lego men.



Oh, and besides cakes, look what else Lisa made:

A somewhat maudlin post about superheroes

It was the first day back at school for Conor, after missing almost two weeks recovering from his -ectomies (tonsil and adenoid). He told me the best part of the day was when his teacher noticed that he was back (I think he was somewhat worried that no-one would). It was also the last day of music at Finn's preschool, which caused no small amount of anxiety the night before. Lisa sagely noted that there are lot of big changes going on for the boys, and for Finn in particular - new room, new sister, new school coming up (for Finn), and the consequent leaving behind of his friends at his old school. I think that I sometimes forget how powerless one is as a little kid, and how utterly scary that can be. It's probably one of the reasons that kids love big, powerful, dangerous things, things that can't be pushed around - monster trucks and dinosaurs and superheroes. I'm fairly certain that if Superman's parents told him that he was having a little sister, he could have reversed the world's rotation to go back in time and stop that from happening, and in the process ensure that he'd have at least a couple more music sessions with Jingle Jeff at preschool.

So as a tribute to the superheroes that my older son loves, and in recognition of their fairly heroic acceptance of the inevitability of the arrival of a sibling and all of the changes that are coming, I'm attaching a photo of some spiderman cupcakes that Lisa made a few months ago for the son of a friend's sister. Next time, less maudlin.

In which I am happy to be proved wrong

Last week we finally got around to building a sandbox for Finn. Building is really too strong a word - I dug a hole in the ground and lined it some time ago, and last week filled it with 1500 pounds of sand. I also ringed it with river rocks, ostensibly to keep the sand from going all over the lawn. Finn came and helped me choose the rocks, and only when I laid them out did I realize that he'd picked them with an eye to whether or not they fit in his dump truck. So the rocks, instead of bordering the sand box, are now scattered through it for various construction related reasons.

Yesterday, we had folks over for a spontaneous Memorial day barbecue, and Finn and his friends Jack and Joss took over the sand pit and decided that the rocks were all dinosaur eggs that needed to be buried. And this morning at breakfast, for the first time in quite a while, look who made an appearance.

What caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? Lego.

I guess that Finn liked dinosaurs for longer than 15 seconds. Looking back, we managed to accumulate a number of dinosaur related books, a stuffed stegosaurus who shares his bed with him and occasionally joins us at the table if we are eating salad (he's vegetarian), and approximately 800 million small plastic dinos of uncertain genus and species, which I shall call "spikosaurs" , the etymology of which will be readily apparent to anyone who has had to walk across Finn's floor in the dark. Still, we're not into dinos too much any more. Not that he dislikes them, it's just that there's little room for anything else in his head besides lego, either building, playing or whining for me or his mom to find lego instructions on the computer for him to "read" and "covet". I suppose there's no actual need for " " around covet - unlike the reading, which is aspirational, the coveting is very, very real).

Nevertheless, at the time of his birthday some months ago, he wanted a dinosaur cake. Lisa being rather pregnant and tired, she decided that the dinosaurs themselves could be represented by a selection from the menagerie that dwells in the boys' room, and she made a volcano cake in order to, as Finn would say, "extinct the dinosaurs so they are bones." The coolest part of the cake was that she built in a depression atop the cone, and put in a small glass bowl. When it came time to light the candle, she put in some chunks of dried ice and poured on some water, creating some nice eruption-like atmospherics. It was actually a little hard to see at the park, but the kids all really liked watching the dry ice fizzle. I'd like to think that I did contribute in some small way to the cake, insofar as I was the one who had to drive to the random gas-station/truckstop in west oakland that sells 10 pound chunks of dry ice. I can't imagine too many of lisa's pastry oriented competitors roll down there too often.

The party was a big hit with Finn's classmates. They hunted in the sand pit for dinosaur eggs (each contained a small spikosaur - my gift the the parents of his friends), had a dino themed treasure hunt and went at trays of plaster of paris encased dinosaurs (more spikosaurs - you're welcome people) with hammers and screwdrivers. The hammers were a big hit - while none of the kids displayed the patience and restraint of future archaeologists, they were certainly focussed - most ignored the dinosaurs and spent up to half an hour ensuring that every piece of plaster of paris had been reduced to dust before moving on to the next activity.

I can't believe that Finn's five already, and that the dino stage has already come and gone. Tune in next year for the lego cake, or whatever it is that will have swept into the imagination of the six-year old to be. Just please don't let it to be bakugan.

On tonsils and princesses

I'd like to say life moves quickly, but I'd just be trying to justify the slow pace of my blogging. Life moves on at its leisurely pace, with perhaps a touch of urgency brought on by the impending arrival of our newest cake afficianado, but I still can't manage to keep up with it in terms of blogging. So I'm going to compromise by writing about some stuff that happened recently, while posting pictures of cakes and pastries of yore. If you're lucky, I'll tie them together thematically at the end of the post. (hint: you're not going to be lucky).

So the biggest news these days is that conor had his tonsils out last week. He was one excited kid, waking us up the morning of (and the morning before, actually) at 5 a.m. to ensure that we wouldn't miss the operation. I'm informed that he was charming and perky all the way through, and confounded us with his ability to look cute even in hospital garb (see photo below). I arrived at the hospital just in time for his awakening from anaesthesia. Lets just say he was somewhat less perky. In fact his first words, croaked out amid screams of agony were "You are savages! You are savages and you are torturing me!!!". The dire imprecations that he hurled at the nurses were softened somewhat by his swollen throat and general grogginess, as they later confided that they had thought he was calling them "sandwiches".



Since the operation, he's been out of school and largely enjoying it. He's had a pile of new books to read, more TV to watch than he has in the previous five years combined, and visits from neighborhood kids bringing him icecream. Over the weekend, even his much loved first grade teacher Mrs Flanagan stopped by to chat and gave him a joke book and a star wars guide. The downside for conor has been the near constant throat pain that he has been enduring. The downside for the rest of us has been (i) his carrion scented breath, and (ii) his inability to swallow has necessitated (to his mind) his carrying around a small pink plastic dish that he refers to as "my spittoon". It comes to the dinner table. It sits by his bedside. It rests, precariously, on the couch as he reads. It is beyond gross, and I say this as the family member who has been permanently deputized to clean up after our elderly neighbor's spastically-coloned cat.




OK, now, how to link this to the cupcakes. Ummmmm, yeah. Well, Lisa made these for a friend of a friend's daughter's 3rd birthday party. From what I understand, she likes princesses, so Lisa made some snow white heads and tiaras out of fondant.

Sorry readers, i think you're just going to have to accept inapposite pastry photos as I go through the backlog of the last few years.

It's been a while...

but, considering my audience consists of two people, one of whom is the subject of this blog, and the other of whom lives across the street, it's not like you've missed much guys. Also, we have a much larger baking project underway, in the strictly metaphorical sense of the word, which should serve as a fairly good catch all excuse. It having been a while since I've done this, i don't want to sprain a writing muscle, so I'll just put up a photo of some of the eponymous she's creations.



Also, on the newsy weekend front, we drove up to Tomales Bay, bought ourselves a sack of oysters and then headed to Dillon beach. Rather than launch into an extended narrative, I'll sum up using quotes and paraphrases from the crew.

A+P "Snarf, gulp, snarf, burp".
L "Oh my god, I can't believe you're eating all of those oysters in front of a pregnant lady! That's so unfair!"
A+P "Snarf, gulp, snarf, burp".
A "I don't trust some* people. Case in point, I just knew those meth heads were going to lose the keys to their minivan"
C "Can I have another oyster? Can I have another oyster? Can I have another oyster?"
L (junior) "Can you cut out the gross bits?"
A "The gross bits are the oyster. Why don't you have a hot dog?"
P [Refrains from telling L what gross bits are in a hot dog]
Q + F [sounds of of digging for 3 straight hours]
P "We should take some home for B. I feel so terrible that he has to work today, we should at least bring him some oysters."
A "OK, I guess I'm kind of full now."

* A did not actually use the word "some" here.



Lisa and the boys