Time like an ever rolling stream...

Having my first child at a fresh faced 28 makes me somewhat of an outlier in the bay area. Not to the point of where prim matrons cluck and tsk when I walk the streets with my soiled progeny, but still, at 35 I'm youngish for the parent of an (almost) 7 year old and a 4 year old. I'd always thought my relative youth was an advantage in relating to my kids, particularly in keeping up with their interests. I'd smile with thinly concealed disdain as some doddering mother (or was it grandma?) would ask if my son liked "Thomas the Train". I knew it was Thomas the Tank Engine. I knew the words to a vast majority of the songs, and enough characters that I could tell stories without once having to return to set pieces motivated by Henry's aversion to ever more improbable scenarios that might render him dirty. I assumed that this hipness to the three year old mind would grow as my children grew. To bastardize Terence (the dramatist, not the tractor) - I was a [young] man: I held that nothing [kidlike] was alien to me. I would always be cool and know what my kids liked.

And then there were Bionicles.

I wish I could put into words how befuddling I find their mythos. But then, I don't have to, as the good folks at Lego have done this for me. Please enjoy the following (I can only assume the stilted dialogue is due to the difficulty of finding a good translator of Bioniclese).

"The Turaga told an ancient tale of the Bohrok: the Toa must collect eight different types of krana from each of the six types of Bohrok in order to defeat the swarms. Despite villages being ravaged, the Toa and Matoran bravely fought the bugs. The Toa discovered a Bohrok nest and placed their Krana into niches within the tunnels, halting the swarm but unleashing Cahdok and Gahdok, the Bahrag twins. They commanded the Swarms. The Toa created an energized protodermis cage which traps the Bahrag, finally halting the swarms."

Trust me when I say that this is among the more comprehensible paragraphs.

As Conor fell for these creatures - insecto-robotic, crypto-polynesian incomprehensibilities, I felt all my smugness slipping away. I don't know what a Mata Nui is. I didn't realize that Toa Pota is not only a female, but god forbid an attractive one. I just don't....get it.

And so here I sit, sipping my prune juice and filing my bunions. However, I am somewhat comforted in that my spouse retains some semblance of hep. And as proof of that hepness, allow me to present the bionicle cake that she made for Conor's sixth birthday.








Oh. And don't even get me started on Bakugan.

Because we don't just obsess about cakes around here

Adding to the litany of implausible non-excuses, another reason for reduced cake blogging has been Lisa's learning to knit, which has led to a reduction in cake output as the household's knitted hat production has ramped up.

I'll put a reader poll to the side on cakes vs hats, but throwing out some thoughts:

Hats:
1) less calorically dense than cakes
2) babies like them
3) one doesn't feel compelled to brush one's teeth after wearing a hat

Cakes:
1) often topped with candles, whose guttering flames remind all creatures of mans dominion over the beasts of the field
2) babies like them
3) one doesn't feel compelled to check the nearest reflective surface for hat-head after eating a cake

I'm not one to be too forthcoming with my editorial biases, but I'll note that pretty much all of the hats are too small for my head, but to date none of the cakes have proved to be too large for my stomach.

She still does, in fact, bake cakes

How to summarize the last nine months or so? Lets see. Finn turned 4. Conor graduated kindergarten. Summer was largely unstructured and hugely enjoyable, and She made a lot of cakes.

But instead of the unpleasant prospect of abasing myself before the readership with pathetic and, lets face it, rather transparent, excuses for not writing, I'll do what I do best and draw attention to other people's misdeeds.

Lets take our friend Joe. Good guy, great father, and devoted husband who is planning a 40th birthday party for his wife. His call to the cake hotline three days before the party goes something like this:

"Hey, Lisa, y'know Kari's party. It would be great if you could make one of those cool cakes."

"What kind of cake? What's the theme? For how many people"

"Oh, I don't know. Something cool. Maybe in an italian/cowboy/hoedown theme. And could it serve 150?"

The eponymous She took this all in stride and, after a quick run to Costco to purchase approximately 2 1/2 US adult male heart attacks worth of butter, put together the the Hoedown Italiano cake. The bottom layer is yellow cake, the middle chocolate, and the top was made of both such that when you slice it there's a checkerboard effect. In keeping with the theme, the bottom layer was patterned after cowhide, similar enough to the Dell box that Michael Dell himself is seeking a slice in return for use of his IP, the middle layer is patterned after a bandana (and looks fantastic), and the top is done in fondant in the colors of the italian flag. Because our love for cheap italian stereotyping has no limits, the top of the cake is a spaghetti and meatballs motif, done in buttercream, ferrero rocher and ollalieberry jam.



















The party was a blast. Kari loved the cake, the kids all danced to the country band, and Finn learned that mixing warm sprite with vigorous do-si-doing leads to projectile vomiting.




Finn, as you can see, is ever ready to help.

New Quote of the Day

Conor: "I'm going to have five quarters of the (inaudible) [probably some sort of candy]

Me: (unnecessarily pedantic) there's only four quarters in a whole.

Conor: What if it's a big hole?

Quote of the Evening

Context: Finn has escaped from his bed again, giggling and trying less and less plausible excuses each time. After a victory lap of the living room, he declares that he needs to go poo and parks himself on the potty. When asked, after five minutes, if he really, truly, actually, needs to be there, he laughs, points at his protruding belly and says:

"Just kidding! No poo's coming now - all the food is still in my small intestine!"

That one's up there with the time my older son tried to explain the birds and the bees to me and his grandmother (with predictably mortifying results).

Because it's never to late to be...ummm...late

In keeping with the sporadic postings, I think it's high time to grace the intertubes with pictures of birthday cakes from parties past. Since the eponymous she lives in Oakland, we dwellers in the house of cakes are hip to what the kids these days call "mash-ups". This means that she has a few tricks up her sleeves that even Danger Mouse (the hip hop producer of Grey Album fame, not the eyepatched mouse who, with his cowardly sidekick Penfold, battled the evil Baron Greenback) would be hard pressed to match. I, like most of this blog readership, would quail if my five year old informed me that his birthday party must reflect his twin passions of pirates and pokemon. It would just seem that the two don't have a lot in common, other than being equally likely to enthrall the six and under set. Undaunted, Lisa set out to create a mash-up birthday confection that would satisfy these seemingly irreconcilable themes - and so I give you Boris' Pokemon-Pirate birthday cake (circa late October - hence the posting title).

A couple of notes about the cake:

1) One of the pokemon (pokemons? pokemen?) pictured is pikachu. Duh, even I know that. The other three, I'm afraid I can't satisfy your curiousity. However, if you do happen to come by the house and have a few spare hours, Conor would be happy to discourse at length about their names, their powers, from whence they evolved, and the techniques they use to defeat their various and sundry enemies. I am assuming that the Oakland Unified School District is implementing a far more poke-centric curriculum than was favored in my tragically unhip Vermont kindergarten.

2) Each of those creatures was sculpted out of fondant by Lisa the day before the party. I believe that they are still living in Boris' fridge, as he loves them too much to eat them. That's kind of cute, though it has some serious Ms Havisham potential.

3) Why yes - the blog author did think of the "poke-ball and crossbones" motif. How remarkably clever of him. He did not, however, think to make the helm of the ship out of chocolate. That was all her.

4) Look at the ship. OK, now look closer - each individual plank was sculpted out of fondant. OK, now magnify the picture. Look closer....and yes, that's right you can see wood grain. Squint a little and look at the end of one of the planks...right again - nail holes! What am I saying here? I'm not sure, other than that the person who makes sure that every one inch long individually crafted plank on her giant fondant covered pirate ship has the correct number of nail holes is no one to be trifled with.

Thanksgiving is pie time

Gentle reader, we have have several options for dessert on thanksgiving. I present them in no particular order.

1) Pumpkin pie bought from Safeway. Served with Kool-whip (lite) refrigerated dessert topping.

Pros: Cheap. Pretty Tasty. Boys will want seconds of kool-whip. Finn will try and eat it without using hands.

Cons: Questionable nutritional value. Will cause foodie friends to throw organic, free range, hormone free eggs at your house.

2) Pumpkin cranberry pecan upside down cake from Trader Joes. Served with dreyers vanilla ice cream.

Pros: Relatively inexpensive. Tasty if you like pecans and cranberries. Conor will eat seconds. Both boys will demand more ice cream. Dreyers is a locally founded business.

Cons: Not, strictly speaking, pumpkin pie. Could result in dire vengeance from ghosts of our pilgrim forefathers. Also, Finn doesn't like pecans. Or cranberries. Dreyers is now owned by gigantic multinational corporation that probably celebrates thanksgiving by stuffing, roasting and devouring babies and kittens.

3) Homemade pumpkin pie (made by blog author).

Pros. Commencement of thanksgiving feast will not be delayed by lengthy thanks for delicious looking pie.

Cons. Meal participants might feel obligated to try said pie.

4) Homemade pumpkin pie (made by Lisa)

Pros. Tasty, organic, and so perfect that a glimpse of its radiant orangeness provides the US RDA in vitamin D, and one small slice cures rickets and scrofula.

Cons. None for blog author, except perhaps weight gain.

In the spirit of generosity that is thanksgiving, we the Chandler/Hennessey household pledge to eat whatever dessert is chosen by the readership of this blog. We will also post pictures, and, if this proves succesful, we will open the floor to those who care to debate the superiority of cranberry sauce in a can over chunky, relishy cranberry sauce with stems and actual berries.