Five

Yesterday, at the pool, Zack started swimming. This was the first year he could "touch" in the shallow end (barely) and he's been content to splash around there, or swim around in a life jacket thus far this summer. Yesterday, though... he told me he was going to swim under water to me. And much to my surprise, he did. It wasn't pretty, and I'm not confident that he's a "swimmer" yet by any stretch, but the funniest thing was when he said "Mommy, I can swim now because I'm five." As if that extra day made all the difference. Apparently, it did.





This is my non staged messy house, by the way. Normally I pick up a little more or at least make sure the angle of the photo misses the mess. This is the reality. Messed up cake, disorganized house, dead flowers on the bar and all.







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Birthday Cake Fail

The problem with having taken the Wilton Cake Decorating class is that now I have enough knowledge to do a few things. Actually, I really felt like I had some success at making pretty cakes and didn't think it would be any big deal to whip up some dinosaur decorations for Zack's cake. I had it all planned out. It was going to be perfect. And it might have been if I'd started it on Sunday instead of Monday, and left enough time for the dinosaur piece to dry and be hard before I tried to move. Or if my other icing hadn't been the consistency of pudding and might possibly have held it's shape. So, therein lies the problem, overconfidence = total failure.
Before a messed up cake would have been no big deal... a drop in the bucket. Heck, before I'd have gotten a cake from Publix and been just fine with that. But now, oh now, I'm supposed to create a masterpiece for each and every birthday.

Alas, Kevin came home and saved the day. Drawing a rough figure of a dinosaur with a tube of gel icing I had in my cake decorating kit. The cake was lopsided, an odd shade of green, and had a very questionable looking dino on it. But it tasted great, and it had five candles on it, which pretty much made it the best cake ever in Zachary's mind.

How did he get to be so big anyway?

Ben Loved the Cake Too

Ben's birthday cake was a bit of a fiasco. And not in the cute one year old dive into the cake with gusto sort of way. I had put these sprinkles on the cake. Cute little star sprinkles. He even had his own small cake to destroy and make a huge mess with. I have no doubt that he would have loved it. Except, those star sprinkles... he choked a little on one and wanted nothing to do with the cake after that. In fact he just cried. So we were done with the cake festivities. He made up for it with Zack's cake.

Yum!


Mom, this is SO good!


And then when his was all gone, he went to check out the brother's leftovers.


Everyone else enjoyed the cake too, but no one was as enthusiastic (or messy) as Ben.

A Cake Story

Once upon a time there was a boy with a birthday. When asked what he wanted for his birthday dinner he said "uhhhhh, a CAKE!" When asked what type of cake he wanted he said, "uhhhhhh, a CAKE!" And, when asked what he wanted for birthday presents he looked at his mother with a cute little smile and said (can you guess?) "A CAKE!" At one point, when further questioned about cake flavors he said "A Target Cake" which should tell you something about the kind of cakes his momma makes.

Um, can I eat the cake already?

Not yet? Come on what are we waiting for?

Finally! Blowing out the candle.

Studying. Looks good.

Getting ready for the deliciousness.

It's good!!!

Who needs a fork?

Three

Three years ago today I woke up at 4 am and told Kevin... "Hey, I think my water broke." Which was strange because that never happened with my other two. Well, it happened, just not first. So, since my labors are super speedy, I called my doc and headed to the hospital, dropping Eric and Mark at a friend's house along the way. And how nice were they to take my 3 year old and 2 year old when they had 3 month old twins at home. I'll always appreciate that! So anyway, on the way to the hospital I kept trying to decide if I was even having contractions and was I even IN labor. Since my water had broken I knew they wouldn't send me home.

I got there and even without contractions was dilated to a 5. We decided to wait awhile and see what happened. I walked and walked and walked the halls to try to get things going to no avail. My doctor went back to her office to see a few patients and when at close to 1 PM there was still NO sign of labor they started pitocin. Oh how I didn't want to do that! But I am also impatient and Zachary seemed to be just happy as can be in there, and he had to come out so we started a pit drip at 1.

This is about the time the nurse started really annoying me. Something was up with the contraction monitor and I started having these ginormous contractions and it was a blip on the machine. I didn't have any pain meds so I knew they were ginormous. At 2 PM I asked her to check me because it was really intense and was starting to feel the urge to push and she said "Oh, no because you just started having good contractions, let's give it all time to work." Well despite being able to endure natural childbirth, I am a complete wimp about arguing with people so even though I knew I was right I didn't insist she check me. So, she walked out and I had the mother of all contractions at which point I completely panicked and started crying and tried with all I had not to lose control. I was about to tell Kevin to push the call button to get the nurse back in there when my doctor walked in. Kevin asked her to check me and guess what! The woman who had done this twice before actually knew what she was talking about. 10. They rushed to get everything together and my little Zack was born at 2:22.

The first thing I heard about my baby was "Ohhh he has dimples" from the newborn nurse.
He is my funny little man. He's always been silly and joking from the time he could talk. He loves to run in circles and jump just do anything active. He looks up to his big brothers, especially Mark. He loves to snuggle too.

For some time he's been asserting to me that he's not my baby anymore. I'd say "Come here baby boy." And he'd say "My NOT a baby Momma, my a BIG boy." And I have to admit, he is getting pretty big!

Happy Third Birthday Zack-a-roo. Mommy loves you!