When your baby turns six you feel old. When your baby turns six and starts asking to wear deodorant you feel a little older. But when your baby tells you she doesn’t like frosting on her cupcakes, you wonder if she’s really yours.

This Sunday is my daughter’s birthday party. At her request, we’ll be having it at our house, old-school style, featuring duct tape as the main attraction. I’m thrilled to be avoiding the overpriced jumpy place and to resort to good old-fashioned fun in the backyard, pin the tail on the donkey, pinata, homemade cupcakes (one without frosting) and juice boxes. It better not rain.

When it’s all over, it’ll probably wind up being more expensive than the jumpy place.

I’m not exactly sure how the whole thing will be pulled off, but I’m leaving that up to my eight-year-old daughter who claims to be running the show.

It’s funny, when you plan activities for little kids you anticipate they’ll take a lot longer than they really do. What I’m projecting to be a half-hour craft project will likely last about four minutes long. I’ve got twenty minutes down for a scavenger hunt which will probably last about two. Seriously, how do teachers do this? I have such respect.

*A minor digression* You know those people who talk waaayyyy too loud in public places so you’ll purposely overhear them and think they’re smart? This is happening right at this very moment at the table next to me at my office Starbucks. No, I don’t care about why Mary Francis decided to speak up at yesterday’s staff meeting. I am not really interested in what Rachel said to her to make her so upset. I wasn’t there, I’m not on your ‘team,’ and the entire line at Starbucks wasn’t either. They don’t care about your “model,” your “protocol” nor your “account maintenance expertise.” Can’t you see I’m trying to work plan a birthday party here? Starbucks should really consider renting out closed-door offices for people like her. Man, that voice is shrill.

But back to the cupcakes. My daughter’s the only one who doesn’t like icing. So she’ll be having the boring one. I also worry she’ll be so overwhelmed by the gaggle of girls at my house and will wind up putting herself to sleep upstairs in her room mid-party, PJs and all. She’s been known to do this.

Why am I nervous? It’s a birthday party for crying out loud. But it’s stressing me out. Maybe it’s because the onus is on me to make it fun. And I’m competing with every else’s jumpy place party and over the top gymnastics blitz and relying heavily on my eight-year-old to organize the activities and make kitschy duct tape crafts that double as goody bags. Yeah, that’s probably why. Maybe I’ll serve some Bloody Marys to go with the cupcakes. That’ll help.

I’ll let you know how it goes. For now, I’m going to lick the beaters.

Buttercream Frosting (*Warning, this has measurements!)

• 1 cup softened butter (do not use margarine)
• 8 cups powdered sugar (if making chocolate frosting, use 4 cups powdered baking chocolate and 4 cups powdered sugar)
• 1-2 splashes vanilla extract (or mint extract, or orange extract depending on desired flavor)
• 1/2 cup milk
• food coloring

 

Tags: birthday cupcakes, Buttercream frosting