WHAT?!?!?

 You postponed my birthday!?!?!

ARE YOU CRAZY!?!?!

You wanna see why they call it 

Terrible Twos, lady?  

Huh?  Do ya?!?!?

Yes, Fems and Gentry, that is a giant bread knife in my toddler's hands.  

Look no further.  I'm the mother of the year.

Actually, he was helping me with his birthday cake by chopping the trimmings into unrecognizable confectionery crumble.  He was well supervised, and I promise that after the photo was taken I did swap his machete out for non-amputating cutlery.
You can take CPS off your speed-dial now.

***

We ended up postponing the b-day-ing till today, two days late.  

There was no way that we were going to pull it off yesterday, what with a dropping-off of teens to the river, a dinner made for a grieving friend, present shopping, cake baking, and the regular rumblings of daily duty.

So today, after exercise, building a pond with Kathy, and babysitting, I hit the road. 

 The fondant and food coloring road. 

 I built the cake yesterday, but all the sugar-bling went on today.

About 3/4ths of the way through the seventeenth shrub,
I began to question my own sanity.

Why do I work so hard on these cakes for the kids?

I started to wonder if my efforts would be better spent... um... well, see, that's the problem.  I could tell myself that maybe I should do something else more lasting and more important, but it seems that nothing in my life is... not lasting at least.  

Is there such a thing a temporary and important?

I think of the things that I spend most of my time doing;

laundry

dishes

cooking

cleaning

shaving

(ok, so that doesn't take all that much time, but honestly, 

is there anything more temporary than a well shaved pair of legs?)

- all things that will be undone inside of a day, or more often, an hour.

What, in these rice-paper days, that melt away one after the other, 

can I do that will matter?

***

At the end of the night, the cake demolished, wrapping paper shreds adorning the floor, 

I turned to face the catastrophe that was my kitchen.  

I wanted to leave it.  I dared not.  

Tomorrow is another full day, and the ants in my neighborhood send scouts to my kitchen nightly.  

One misplaced cheerio and it's a regular

block party in there.

So, I reluctantly began.  Before I knew it, tears were falling into the dishwater.  

Am I the only mom that cries into my sink-o-dirty-dishes?

I was just so tired, and that sad little song from Toy Story Two, where the girl abandons her cherished doll because she grew up, looped in my head like a ridiculous soundtrack to the end of my day.

My baby is growing up, 

my children are changing but I don't even see it until 

I look at a photo from not-so-very long ago,

and I hate that I spend so much of their lives

washing dirty underwear and scraping congealed mac-n-cheese 

out of tired old pots.

I guess I make their cakes because, even though all of my work will be undone in one fell swoop of the only good knife in the house, they will always know I did it for them.  All of the dishes and the food and the laundry is for them too,
but they will never see it.

What is the old saying?

Let them eat cake.