The Sweetest Thing
At Sticky Fingers, Tara Cain is hosting a Gallery of photos and the theme this week is Motherhood. I’m not always one to join in, but this time I wanted to. First I chose a very meaningful shot of the first moment we introduced our freshly delivered (on the living room floor) son to our daughter (who had slept through the whole thing despite having been an atrocious sleeper for the two years beforehand). It says a lot about motherhood but it’s not what I want to say about motherhood on this particular day.
Today I want to say: you don’t have to try very hard to find joy. This is the shot that sums it up. There is joy in my son’s face as he blows out the third and final candle, and there is the thrill of seeing him happy in my face, but what I really want to say (to myself, mainly, as you may have figured this out yonks ago) is: look at the cake. It’s from a supermarket and has plastic dinosaurs stuck in it and took me thirty seconds to prepare with a stressed-out factor of nil. That’s not my usual style. I have a reputation for creating complicated novelty cakes from scratch – pirates, mermaids, castles, dinosaurs, guitars – and that reputation includes yelling at people (my children) during baking and construction: “Don’t come anywhere near me or speak to me or touch me or even think about me while I’m doing this, it’s VERY IMPORTANT”. Cakes are just the start of how stressed out I am able to get about parenting, so this photo is my big fat chocolate-covered reminder that love is all you need.
Girl Out Loud, Scholastic June 2012
Willkommen In Meinem Leben "Welcome To My Life"
UKYA
Gorgeous. Just gorgeous. All of it.
xx
That is lovely and so very true.
[...] The Sweetest Thing « Emily Gale [...]
Gorgeous photo (when did he get so much hair?!) and post.
I bought Harry’s birthday cake just today (SuperMario, Asda. £8)
so true – been there myself! Lovely pic.
Thanks for the comments, and to Tara Cain at Sticky Fingers – I really enjoyed taking part in that photo challenge.
This is such a gorgeous post. Can you tell me the title of your pic in the competition? Cos I can’t be bothered to wade through hundreds of les interesting ones in order to find yours.
Oh, I get it. Like *first* you chose the shot of introducing your son to your daughter, but then you changed your mind and chose this lovely chocolatey one instead. I get it.
beautiful picture, full of joy !
And now, please, I want to see pictures of YOUR cakes ! I’m curious !
Sian – MummyTips / CyberMummy Here…… I’ve just posted with the info you need in order to get your pic printed for the real life CyberMummy Gallery exhibition courtesy of Photobox.
http://www.mummy-tips.com/2010/06/cybermummy-gallery-get-your-pics-in.html
Do add http://www.Mummy-tips.com to your blogroll if you like what you read…
Less stress, more enjoyment, such a good reminder to us all. Could have done with thinking this when I just had to make a Jessie Cat cake for my little girl’s first birthday despite being surrounded by un-unpacked moving boxes, her obviously being oblivious to the concept of a birthday and not having made a cake for about ten years!
Thanks, Sapph!
Sister3…I am ashamed to say I’m tempted to make a montage of my cakes…it doesn’t take much to make me stoop so low.
Sian, thanks – I’ll try to get that to you this evening.
WDYDTM, I can relate…in fact I shudder when I think back to making my daughter’s first cake – there I was yelling orders at my partner to finely chop a million raisins so I didn’t have to put SUGAR in the cake (*headdesk*)
The most gorgeous photo of you both, Em.
Just beautiful.
Thanks, that’s a lovely thing to say. E.