It really is. Happy birthday to my sweet Jacob-man. You continue to be a total joy and also a welcome challenge. Your personality is vibrant, exuberant, and curious. As we continue in our extended course in "human training" it's so exciting to see you begin to develop greater kindness and empathy. You're becoming a boy with more perspective and purpose each day. I am grateful that I get to be your mom.
We had a birthday party for Jacob on Saturday (putt-putt, backyard baseball, pizza, cake & ice cream, presents and Phineas & Ferb) and Jacob said something for the ages that I have to share. I typically make our birthday cakes (often from a mix) and home make frosting (yummmmm) because I think store bakery frosting tastes like tar (Jacob does, too). I say that to let you know that I have no great Pinterest dreams. I have simple and functional dreams. Most of our cakes are rustic looking at best, but you could eat a bowl of the frosting!
So, baking "at altitude" is awful. Especially cakes. No matter how much I adjust it they come out weird every time. And since I'm not in the business of making cakes at times other than birthdays generally, there's no improvement from one cake to the next. Jacob's cake came out as a big crumb shedding mess. The worst yet. I had planned on just frosting his cake white and putting some licorice on it to make it look like a baseball. Easy! Whimsical! Done! However, the cake was almost unfrostable. I became agitated and frustrated as I attempted to just get the thing covered in frosting. To add insult to injury I lost my piping bag in the move...so it was a zip lock with the piping tip for me. And so his name turned out terribly. No bigs tho, right?
About an hour after frosting it this happened:
All those crumbs just couldn't band together and resist gravity. I felt really bad about his cake fissure. Really sorry to produce a cake that was well beyond rustic. I told him that I was sorry and he said, "But Mom, it's still cake!!" I loved seeing his sweet face and realizing that, yes, it's still cake! Yummy cake with rock star frosting! His optimism was lovely and so grown up. And there are a few sage life lessons there for the taking. Jacob is reading this while I write it and wanted me to add that, "the cake was yummy!".
I love you, darling. Thank you for being irresistibly "Jacob" every day.
Here's Jacob being "Jacob", in case you were wondering
Celebrating after a hole-in-one
The golfers
