In honour of a special birthday

It is one of my favourite people’s birthday today. She is 5 years old and probably one of the funniest people I know. The funniest thing I remember her doing is on New Year’s Eve last year.

Because Mummy had said she could stay up until the final countdown to midnight, she was told her and her younger sister must have a nap during the day. She agreed but obviously the excitement of the whole day made sleep difficult. They went upstairs and promised to go to sleep. For the next fifteen minutes, the sound of footsteps dancing about was all too clear on the ceiling. Giggles trickled down the stairs and the little singsong voices were quite clearly awake and playing a game.

After the fifteen minutes of fun, they both descended the stairs, serious faces on, and announced to Mummy, “Mummy, we’ve been asleep for ages. For TWO HOURS!”

“Have you really?” asked Mummy, suspiciously.

“Two hours!” she repeated, putting up two of her fingers, for emphasis.

“Ok,” said Mummy.

The day continued on and it came to the evening time. We were watching Ice Age, everyone cuddling on the sofa. And that’s when the tiredness-induced meltdown happened.

There was this scene where we see some eggs, unguarded, in a corner somewhere. There are big booming sounds, footsteps of an approaching dinosaur. And my favourite little birthday girl had an utter freak-out.

“Ah! Ah! I’m scared! Turn it off! TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!”

We said soothing things like, “It’s ok. We’ve turned it off. Look, it’s just the normal TV. Oo, Spongebob Square Pants is on. We like him. It was only a silly dinosaur, he can’t hurt you.”

It didn’t matter! It didn’t matter that the dinosaur was inside the TV, she was scared and that was that. She wasn’t interested in Spongebob Square Pants. In fact, she wanted the television off altogether. She was terrified! She cried uncontrollably and as we all watched in confusion, cuddles from Mummy eventually soothed her a little. She gulped big sobs down and rambled on, the words hardly decipherable, until suddenly, in a fit of confession, she sat up and announced to her mother:

“MUMMY! WE DIDN’T GO TO SLEEP FOR TWO HOURS! WE WERE PLAYING GAMES! I’M SORRY!”

Probably the best voluntary confession I’ve ever witnessed.

Shortly after this, at 9.15pm, we sneakily wound the wall clock forward and said it was midnight soon, then all stood, counted 10 down to 1 and had a big ‘celebration’ before sending poor tired child off to bed.

Yaya’s Meltdown

The other day I was hanging out with Yaya at his house. We were watching Mr. Bean. It was loads of fun. We had just been out for dinner where I had eaten scallops, braised pork belly and a goats cheese crostini with walnuts and an onion marmalade dressing. It was amazing. Yaya had turned his nose up at his dinner, declared ‘it doesn’t look nice’ then fallen off his chair, taking his apple juice with him. Later he had eaten a bit of chocolate brownie and ice cream and had a long conversation with me about the milkman who delivers his milk.

I should mention now, in case any new readers are unaware, Yaya is a four year old boy.

While watching the TV, he decided he wanted to sit on his dad’s knee. So he pottered over and plonked down. Dad got up for a minute so put Yaya in the space while he got up. He came back a few minutes later and sat back in his space and invited Yaya back onto his lap.

This is when Yaya’s Meltdown happened.

Yaya wanted Dad to go and sit on the other sofa. Dad, confused, said he wanted to sit with everyone else on the same sofa and didn’t Yaya want to sit with him? Yaya was angry. Yaya wanted the space Dad was in. Dad tried to reason, he had been sitting in the space just a few minutes ago, he wanted to stay in the same spot.

So Yaya formulated a plan (which was ultimately flawed). He would push Dad out of the space. He stands up on the sofa, gets his hand behind Dad’s back and pushes. He pushes, pulls, squeezes, tugs. We were all stifling giggles at his loud effort noises. We did not realise how serious this was about to get. So his plans started to it’s flaws pretty quickly – when you pit the strength of a four year old boy against his father, the four year old boy is always the weaker.

He makes valiant attempts to squish himself in between Dad and sofa, to reclaim the space.

I attempt a solution.

“Yaya,” I say, “there’s a space in between Daddy and me here, it’s just the right size for you. Why don’t you sit here?”

It is as though I have not spoken. The struggle continues. Dad is getting annoyed. Eventually Dad threatens Yaya with bedtime. Yaya freaks. He cries. He screams. He’s going, “I don’t want to go to bed!”

He’s told he has two options. Sit nicely with everyone on the sofa together. Or go to bed. He sobs loudly, “I don’t want to do ANYTHING!” and sits in the doorway in the other room whimpering and calling, “Mum! Mum, come downstairs, I need you. Mum!” Mum is busy with child number two and doesn’t hear.

Eventually, after ten long minutes of the whimpering, Dad goes to Yaya and asks him if he wants to come in and sit nicely. Yaya whimpers. The Meltdown has sapped all his energy. He lets Dad pick him up and bring him in and sit on the sofa with him. In the exact position they had been in before Dad left his spot and The Meltdown happened.

So here we are, all on the sofa, Yaya whimpering and no-one quite able to understand what just happened.

Maybe it’s because I’m a non-parent but whole thing seems totally illogical. I can’t stand things/people which are illogical. That’s why I’m not too keen on animals, I think. Animals and children. They both don’t make any sense.

If any parents can explain to me this situation, I would appreciate it. Here are the events as I see them:

Yaya sits with Dad on the sofa.
Dad gets up.
Yaya occupies the space.
Dad returns and sits in the spot again, offering his lap for Yaya to return to.
Yaya wants Dad to sit on the other sofa.
Yaya freaks and ends up in another room crying for Mum.
Dad gets Yaya, brings him back to sofa and sits with him on his lap.
Yaya is fine again.

WHAT. ON. EARTH!

This is why I do not have any children.

I’d be going, “Don’t be so illogical. It offends me.” And they’d be going, “I want that! Now! Waaah! I hate you! Give me lots of things now!”

P.S. Very exciting news. Following the Food Fair last week, at which we discovered truffle butter, the manager is considering stocking it. I am delirious with excitement!

Cake talk

Today, I have a day off work, so my brain has gone into meltdown. I’m not very good with time off. So I make jobs for myself. I have made a cake this morning already. I have also done a bit of Land Law revision. It’s mortgages today. Not the most fascinating thing I can think of. With the brain in meltdown, I’m not very good at thinking what to blog about. So I’m just going to blog what’s on my mind.

The biggest thing is planning a wedding cake. Not for me, I might add! Someone else is getting married and I’m doing their cake. (Me? Getting married? What a hilarious thought!) I had trouble falling asleep last night because I was planning it in such detail. I love a foodie project. Yesterday I went into the cake supplies shop and was just out of control. It’s like someone had unleashed the mad woman that I usually keep under wraps and told her to get one of everything! It’s not like I went in with a plan in mind and got things which fitted with my plan. Instead I looked in great detail at absolutely everything in the shop and thought about how I could possibly use it, picked it up and kept moving. Occasionally I placed things back when I’d re-made the plan after looking at the next item but my arms were still pretty full by the time I got to the till (maybe an hour after entering the shop).

When I was falling asleep last night I was running through, over and over again what I was going to do, whether I should put this here or that there. What type of cake should I do for the cake bit? I also took the momentous step of finally purchasing a piping bag, which is a thing I’ve always felt like I should have but was quite intimidated by, like muslin cloth. I now have both. I think I should practise piping things first because I can just see a big disaster happening on the actual cake.

Now I don’t want to jinx things by talking about it too much and I hope Mr/Mrs Soon-To-Be-Married don’t stop by this blog before the big day but here’s the plan. Opinions please.

He owns a gallery and requested a cake in the shape of a picture frame. So I’m going to do a square/rectangle cake with gold frosting for the frame bit. Then inside the frame there’ll just be white frosting and I got two little silver letters for their names.

Oo! I’ve just thought! Gold framing and silver letters?! It’s not going to go together. Dammit. Should I go and get gold letters instead? Or will that be gold overload?

Anyway, two letters for names, whichever colour they end up being. Then I have edible red carnation petals that I thought I’d make a little flower out of for one corner and two small white icing hearts for the opposite corner. I’ve got two teeny tiny mini champagne flutes to put in the middle and thought I’d make some really small white chocolate truffles to either put on the board around the bottom of the cake or to put round the edge next to the flower, so it looks like part of the pattern on the frame.

It will probably change tomorrow, and the next day, so I’m going to start making little sketches or something so I remember each idea before I change it. Actually, here’s the one for what my current idea is… (Obviously my artistic skills are somewhat lacking and the proportions will no doubt end up completely different.Those little blobs in the two corners are the mini white chocolate truffles.)

Anyway, that’s the main thing on my mind this morning. Other thoughts are:

‘I’d better try and finish revising mortgages today as the exams are really close..’

….and ‘Omygoodness I ate a lot at the staff meal out last night, I should probably try to do a long walk or something to balance it out…’

…and ‘I want to make the truffles for the cake today.’