Afternoon Play

Tommy's typical afternoon consists of telling me all the people he is going to see in his "wiggle car." For those of you that do not know cocky equals birds.

Coloring

He may not have Daddy's artistic ability quite yet, but they do have the same hairdo in the morning!

Ring Around the Rosie

Tommy's new favorite game is ring around the rosie, he could do this for hours!

Baking With Tommy

Tommy has really taken to cooking. Since his birthday, he is always "cooking a cake" as he says in his play kitchen. Today we have our library Valentine's Day Party. So I thought it would be fun to frost and decorate cookies for the other kids. Tommy had so much fun doing this. He was so meticulous about the sprinkles, making sure each cookie had enough. About half way through he did realize that the sprinkles were food, and instead of putting them on the cookies, they were ending up in his mouth!

Erupting Dinosaur Volcano Cake – Part 1

When we decided on a dinosaur birthday theme for Tommy’s second birthday, we thought the perfect cake would be a volcano, complete with pyrotechnics, perhaps chronicling the extinction of the dinosaurs. After a lot of internet research (apparently thousands of people have already had this idea) we put together a cake plan. I took a day off from work to complete this masterpiece. Like many before, it seemed only appropriate to document and publish the creation of the volcano cake.

Step 1.
Baking eight 2 x 9” cake rounds and a rectangular 11 x 13” for a base. Cooking with dad is a little different than cooking with mom



Step 2.
We cut each round a bit small in diameter than the one before. And shoved a paper towel roll through the center for stability (civil engineering)


Step 3.
Frosted and adding green coconut "grass"



Step 4.
We debated on lava. Some kind of pudding…strawberry syrup…we finally decided on white chocolate died red and orange with candy dye (different than food coloring and works with chocolate.


Step 5.
Pouring the lava. This part was fun

Erupting Dinosaur Volcano Cake - Part 2

Step 7.

Adding the dinosaurs. This part was also fun

Step 8.

Things didn’t work out to well for this poor Triceratops. I guess they call this Darwinism.

Step 9.

The finished product. We were pretty proud of the way this turned out. Now we wait for the unveiling. All that’s left is to find some dry ice for the special effects. It’s not as easy to find as you may think. Plus you can’t keep it for more than a day unless you have a freezer that gets to 109 below zero.

Here is a video of Tommy and his volcano cake at his birthday party. The kids were quite impressed. The look of pure, unbridled, two year old joy in Tommy’s face at the 32 second mark of this video make the hours of running down dry ice and candy dye, and the three hours of labor, all worth it. Tommy had a great day.

Tommy is Two!

We made it to two and I don't know whether to laugh or cry sometimes! We have officially entered the stages of a terrible two year old. He loves to say NO! and MINE! He loves to throw temper tantrums anywhere. He now has timeout chairs in every room in the house. Yes, the joys of a two year old, like I said I don't know whether to laugh or cry half the time!

Tommy did enjoy his 2nd birthday and we are looking forward to his dinosaur party in a few days. Here are some pictures from the big day!