Transformers, Birthday Cake and Flailing Four-Year-Olds

If you're reading this you probably did not attend our recent birthday festivities. Kaydn Rye turned the big 0-4 earlier this month, an achievement marked by tons of screaming and flailing children running amuck in our home.


(Ignore the finger-print ridden window to the sunroom and you'll find a deliriously happy little boy just waiting to partake in the present-opening festivities.)

I stayed up all night the night before making that transformer autboto logo with marshmallow fondant. Until that week I had never even heard of fondant, let alone made it before. It began with a complete mess of powdered sugar and melted marshmallows, dripping down my countertop, to an actual, edible cake decoration at the end of the night. For some reason I could not find my cake decorating tips to save my life, so the cake had no writing on it whatsoever. But for me, I was still amazed that I got the thing to look like a cake, so I was happy enough with that. If you're interested in a fondant recipe, this lady, Peggy, seems to be the expert with fondant, Fondant 101. And this buttercream icing worked out well and tasted great, Wilton Recipes. Next time though, I think I'm going to learn how to make those whipped icings like the pros at the grocery store.

And of course, I added milk instead of water to the cake batter to make it extra wonderful, which did not sit well with my on-the-verge-of-lactose-intolerant-child, and we had an accident on our hands by mid-afternoon. Nonetheless, Kaydn Rye said he had a great day, which basically means he made out with tons of toys and got to run around like a crazy person with all his little friends. This year though, because I've had enough with birthdays being a toy drive in his honor, I informed all of our invitees that gifts were not required, but that if they chose to bring one, a gently used toy or gift would suffice. And Kaydn Rye has now resigned to the fact that for every toy he received, he will now have to donate one of his other toys to a needy kid. I haven't figured out if I'm going with donating them to the Ronald McDonald House or to our local women's shelter.

Here are some snapshots of our lovely gift-opening extravaganza:

That's his wonderful Spiderman scooter that he rides all around my house because it is still too snowy to ride it around outside.


This is hubby snapping photographs of my mom snapping our photograph.


No childhood is complete without the fishing game.




The day left me needing a good drink and reflecting upon the fact that despite trying to figure out how it came to be that I was put in charge of another human being, he's still alive and well all these years later.

When Kaydn Rye came into the world, I definitely was not prepared to take on the challenge of a screaming, flailing little person running amuck in my home. Like for instance, the time that I actually ran him over with the stroller.

You may or may not know that Kaydn Rye was born during my senior year of college, and I used to cart him back and forth to class with me. After a long and particularly fatiguing day at school, I had apparently just thrown him into the stroller, grabbed my stuff and made my way to the parking lot.

Unbeknownest to me at the time, he had just figured out how to sit up, and was doing so as I proceeded down and off the curb. He flipped out of the stroller and face planted onto the pavement. Still too lost in some other land, I didn't even notice that he was face down on the pavement, and I just kept going on my merry way, until... bump bump bump....

That's when I realized that not only had I just allowed my child to catapult out of the stroller, but I had also just run him over with the stroller.

He began screaming uncontrollably as I swiped him up. For I don't know how long, I just sat on the curb with him, in complete amazement at my complete lack of any kind of parental instinct.

This is him a few hours after the incident, after being peeled off the pavement and lying safely in his bed. You can kind of see his big bump smack in the middle of his forehead.



Miraculously, despite myself, today he is a well adjusted, non-brain-damaged child who thinks I'm the greatest thing since transformers.

Actually just today, while sitting in my Beth Moore Bible Study on "Living Beyond Yourself and Exhibiting the Fruits of the Spirit" I realized just how much personal growth is required to really succeed at this parenting thing.

For instance, the fruits of the spirit listed in the book of Galations are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control
(Galatians 5:22-23) - all of which are requirements for the task of parenting. Yet how many of us really can list those on our resume before we become parents. Definitely not me. I did my own thing, sought what I felt was best for me, quit whatever seemed too difficult at the time, usually reacted harshly too anyone or anything that didn't operate quickly enough. I was rarely patient, rarely peaceful, rarely loving and rarely gentle.

But someone needs to be the mature one in the relationship, and good luck getting a whole lot of maturity out of a 2-year-old.

Parenting is for sure a crash course on the fruits of the spirit. And not that I have become the Dalai Lama of parenting, but I have learned to apologize when I have done wrong and Kaydn Rye's usual response to that is, "It's okay mom." G-d has blessed me with a child who loves me even when I fail him.

So, little guy, happy birthday! Here's to another great year together.




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