Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Second Birthday Updates [UBC Post 24]

I don’t know if I ever wrote about the little one’s first birthday here, but it was quite chilled out. We had no plans except that we will bake cake for him, wear same colour T-shirts and just have a relaxed, funfilled day. And yeah, lots of balloons. We had exactly the same plans for this year too.
The only change was celebrating it out-of-town. We have not gone out-of-town for a while (say 8 months), so it provided a perfect opportunity to make a trip. We chose Lavasa [there will be a separate post for the trip] so that we wouldn’t waste too much time on the road.

Birthday Cake Disaster and Decking up the Place

I had a premonition about this. It was bound to happen. Once I make a lot of noise about something, it would anything but go smoothly. I had told everyone and their neighbor about how I was going to make a rainbow cake. And when I finally got down to making the much anticipated cake [mind you I already had a practice session. Read more about it here], at 2 am I realized that the cake was not baking properly at the centre while it was sort of burning around the sides. Initially, for some time, I kept on believing that the cake was not burning but that was the brown colour that I had added in the cake. When the cake finally came out, it was anything but satisfactory. I was a little disheartened. We were supposed to leave for Lavasa by 10 am [as 12 pm was the check-in time]. I did not have the patience or energy to make another cake at that time. I was getting numb with sleep. Moreover, since the little one was sleeping, I was doing all the mixing and beating in the balcony [yeah, mommies would know what I am talking about. You don’t mess around a sleeping kid.]

This is how the
Final Birthday Cake looked
I decided I will bake another one in the morning. Somehow. As I said I had the premonition of this happening, and therefore the good sense of getting 2 sets of 200 gm Maida [all purpose flour] and sugar for the cake.

I woke up at 8.15 am. I was waiting for my cook to prepare breakfast for us before leaving, while I also had to bake a cake. It is difficult to do too many things together in the space we have in kitchen [though my kitchen is really quite big. I think about 10 ft X 8ft]. But psychologically, I feel uneasy. I was anyways not feeling too energetic. But I still went about the business. Did the whole thing again. Read about the procedure of baking Rainbow cake here.

Let me also add that my stuff were yet to be packed. My husband is excellent in such situations. Anyways, he is always the one who does the packing. I just give my stuff to him. Since I was occupied with baking the cake, he packed his and little one’s clothes and other necessities. He also fed him his breakfast and kept him engaged in one thing or the other, as I had a lot of stuff on the kitchen floor as well.

After I put the cake in Microwave, I went about packing my stuff and getting ready. The cake baked till the last 10 minutes of us leaving for our trip. But it turned out well in the end. I was prepared to buy a cake if the second one had not worked out. I am not fixated about such things.

I was carrying the icing material with me to do the icing at night. As per plan, I did the icing after the little one slept [in Lavasa] at night. Hubby gave me company as he decorated the apartment suite we had with balloons. Our son, as other kids, just loves cakes and balloons.

The room decked up with balloons
We retired to sleep again at 2 am. When the sonny boy woke up in the morning, he was super-thrilled to find balloons all over the place. Orange is the first colour that he started identifying, and it is the colour he prefers.  Hubby had kept a few balloons for playing but unfortunately, none of those were orange. So, he had to pull out orange ones from the décor. Ha ha!

So how old are we? We are 2!
The Birthday boy also loved his cake, which he wanted to attack like the way he did on his first birthday. We had to stop him and get him to cut it. We also wore our White T-shirts; which had the number 2 and our names at the back, and a little number 2 on left handside in the front. We wore them the entire day. It looked cool, and felt special. And because of all this, our son also remembers now what is 2 and how old is he. 

Apart from these, we just strolled outside, played with blocks inside the room and just had a relaxed time, as intended.

My main task at hand is to make the birthday album as early as possible or it will remain pending like all the thousands of photos of last 2 years. 

8 comments:

  1. that was such a lovely effort Reema.. wishing your little one a blessed year ♥ .. the t-shirt idea is just super cool :) :) cake looks delicious..did you find out why it was not baking in the centre for the first one??

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much :-) I really could not put my finger on what went wrong. In the first one I had not put Baking soda, unlike the practice session. So, when it did not come out well, I did not take any chances the second time. I stuck to what I did during the practice session. And thankfully, it came out well.

      Delete
  2. Wow!! The cake looks yummy and beautiful and so does the apartment and special t-shirts! Very cool. Wishing the big boy a very happy birthday and lots of love and blessings! :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. The cake looks beautiful!! And disasters are bound to happen in life but I liked the way u tried it the next day, had I been in ur place I wud have given it up...or may be not...dunno!!!

    The apartment looks beautiful & Sonny boy looks so grown up!! I liked the way u wear same T-Shirts! Too cool :D

    Belated Birthday wishes to the little boy :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. See, we were not in a hurry. My husband is cool that way. I told him I want to bake another one. He was ok with it. We checked-in late but how does it matter!
      I will post few pictures on FB soon :-)
      Thanks a lot Smita. Your rainbow cake recipe rocks. I had to put the baking soda in the second attempt by the way. And the brown colour I added was a mistake. I would suggest, one should select only bright colours. I could not get blue :-(

      Delete
  4. And ya even I am not comfortable in working in kitchen when there are more than one person inside...I goof up and start dropping things :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The only person I love having in the kitchen when I am cooking is my husband so that we can talk. But he asks me to go out when he is cooking :-/

      Delete