The problem is that I have never been a big fan of cake. It has a tendency to be dry, which bothers me and I do not enjoy making it. I also hate that it does not taste very good and it is really unhealthy, so I feel like I am wasting those calories. Well, I was not going to serve a gross, dry cake for my daughter’s party, so I was on a mission to find a delicious recipe for cupcakes! Not only did I complete my mission just in time, but I found multiple delicious cupcake recipes! I also found out that I *gulp* LOVE cupcakes! LOVE LOVE LOVE certain cupcakes that is.

I discovered vegan cupcakes. They are slightly healthier than their non-vegan counterparts and they are divinely moist (the ones I made are!) Check out these beauties:

Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake Cupcake

Smores Cupcakes

Fluffy Coconut Cupcakes and Vanilla Confetti Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting

Fluffy Coconut Cupcake

All of these cupcakes are completely vegan! I was so thrilled! I got the Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake and Fluffy Coconut from Chloe Coscarelli. She is a vegan cook that apparently makes damn good cupcake recipes! (They were my favorite out of all of the cupcakes.) The Smores Cupcakes are from a recipe by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. The Vanilla Confetti Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting were actually something that I pieced together from several recipes.

Well, now apparently, The Garbage Man has invaded her nightmares. Poor baby girl. She woke up just a minute ago crying and I rushed into her room to see what was wrong. She was sitting up in bed, so I scooped her up:

“Honey! What’s wrong? Don’t cry baby! What’s wrong?”

“Right there!”

“What? What’s right there?”

“Garbage Man! Right there!”

“Oh no baby, there’s no garbage man!”

“Right there! Garbage Man right there Mommy!”

“Ohhh, sweetie no. There’s no garbage man. It’s just you and me, Sara, Emily**, and all your stuffed animals. I promise there is no garbage man in here, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Go to sleep now baby girl.”

“Okay… *pause* …tooting…”

“Yes, sweetie, your tooting.” *giggle* “Now, go to sleep.”

“…tooting…”

*giggle*

Poor girl. I think next Thursday we are going to go out and meet the garbage man, so she understands that he isn’t scary. As for the ‘tooting’, well, she ate too many fruit snacks.

**Sara and Emily are her beloved soft dolls that she cannot live without.

• silence means trouble is brewing
• you have found random things in your garbage (clothes, cellphones, keys, etcetera)
• you have uttered sentences that sound totally absurd (I can’t believe she put two basil plants and a ton of dirt in my coffee this morning!)
• you have found yourself yelling, “NOOOOO!! DO NOT put that up your nose!”
• conversations about going pee-pee and poo-poo are more common with your spouse than how much you love them
• you have ever had to carry a kicking and screaming child out of Wal-Mart
• you have to interrupt telephone conversations multiple times with things like, “NO! Don’t do that!” or “In just a second baby…” followed by wailing in the background
• you have had to apologize to another parent, because your kid just bit, hit, tackled or otherwise harmed theirs over a toy.
• you are often late getting places, because you spent an extra ten minutes chasing your toddler around the house because they refused to put their coat and/or shoes on.
• you do a little happy dance when the house is quiet by 8:00 pm and you can do your dishes without extra, unneeded help.
• you cannot remember the last time you went in the bathroom without a toddler on the other side freaking out.
• you say, “Don’t hit!” way too much.
• you ding yourself saying, “I swore that I would never be that mom…. and here I am.”

Please feel free to comment and add your “You know you are a parent of a two-year-old if”s!! I would love to hear them!

For starters, I woke up looking like this…

Seriously!? ...and people wonder why I don't wear my hair naturally curly...

Then, as I tried desperately to tame that hair mess, my hair straightener shut off and would not turn back on… halfway through my hair… I looked like a scary hair version of the batman character Two-Face. It was baaaadddd. I finally got the straightener to work and I tamed the beast.

Next was makeup and I was using my brand new tweezers for the first time. I struggled with my olds ones for years and I finally caved and bought a nice pair. I immediately dropped them and when they hit the tile, the tips bent, badly! ARGH! Then, I poked myself in the eye with my eyeliner and I went around with a black dot on my contact all day long. (It would not come off!)

After leaving the room muttering numerous inappropriate curse words, I got dressed. Of course I did not have any clean clothes, so I had to fish some out of the laundry. (Yes, sometimes on really rare occasions, I wear dirty clothes out of the laundry.) Joy.

My whole day went like that, but I was determined to be happy and optimistic. My friend asked me to hang out, so I thought perhaps my day was turning around. Nope. Not so much. After spending an eternity looking for me keys and pleading with my grumpy daughter, who was very angry about having to get into the carseat, I was off. I was on the road and I got stuck behind a driver who was weaving back and forth going 10 under the speed limit on a one lane road. Again, joy. Thanks old man! It took me three times as long to get to my destination. No matter, I’m thinking positive, right?

I arrive, get out, and set my purse and keys on top of the car to get my daughter out of her carseat and then I shut the door…on my keys…but wait…wait for it… only on the part of my keys that unlocks the door and when the door shut on that portion IT LOCKED THE CAR. I tried and tried like a big dork to pull them out of the door and they would not budge, so I took a couple photos just for you people.

My keys! Sh*t!

*shaking my head*

I just kept thinking that this could not really be happening. At that point I gave up. Oh wait, no, first I dumped my Diet Mtn. Dew all over the side of the car (you see the can in the top right corner of the last photo?) That’s when I gave up.

(Oh! I nearly forgot! Before I left to go hang out, I made lunch. We had fingerling potatoes, not intentionally, but do you see that bandaid on my finger in the photo? I cut the tip of my finger off while chopping potatoes. Get it!? Fingerling potatoes! )

We are there with hugs and the amazing make-the-pain-vanish kisses when our children get hurt. We can bandage anything like a pro. We are there when something is scary and new to show them how to be brave.

We are there for every single thing that our children need and we are happy to be. We can fix anything… At least we feel like we should be able to.

What happens when you cannot? How do you assuage the guilt when your baby has something wrong and there is no way to fix it? What do you do when the doctors don’t have answers? When they tell you that your baby may have a genetic disorder that has no treatment?

My daughter is too young to understand what she is be facing, but it is all I can think about. I’m sitting in the passenger seat, heading home from a doctor who was our second opinion. We drove four hours and they spent five minutes with us and said, “Yeah mom, you’re right. That’s what we think she has.” Then they left and my husband and I are sitting there thinking, “Wait… What!? That’s it? We drove four hours to hear that our suspicions and fears were right? No try this or let’s talk about the options and treatments of the symptoms. No real help.

I am the mom. I fix everything, but I cannot fix this. It doesn’t matter that it is nothing I could have predicted or changed. It doesn’t matter that it comes down to genes and there was no way I could’ve known. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t my fault… it feels like my fault, because I can’t fix it.

I can’t fix it.

Sh*t. There is not too much else to say. I wanted to go for a walk to relax and my toddler and hubby decided to join me. In a matter of half a second my plans went from happy walk to major cleanup…. hence the sh*t.

These are her pants, gloves, boots and coat. This photo does not come close to showing the extent of the muddy mess. I swear.

We had to disrobe my daughter before she could go inside. My husband had to run into the mud to fish her out though before we could do that. Did I mention that she ran into it and SAT DOWN? Yep. In the mud. She SAT IN THE MUD…. and got stuck. My hubby had to retrieve one of her boots that was being sucked down to the depths of the earth after first retrieving the kid.

Hubby's shoes.

I am just really glad that I didn’t have to go in after them, because I wasn’t really feeling the idea of wandering out into the mud. They probably would have had a very long wait. Sheesh.

Tyrannosaurus Rex

Triceratops

December 10th was my 3rd Wedding Anniversary. Hubby and I decided to spend it celebrating as a family. We were out of town that weekend, so we decided to take advantage of the fact that the The Museum of Ancient Life was nearby. We went and it was so much fun!!!! We spent hours and hours walking around staring at all the amazing fossils in complete awe. My daughter LOVED every bit of it. For the first 30 minutes, she was as excited about all the other kids as she was the actual fossils. She was shy and nervous being around so many people, but once she warmed up, she ran around screaming in delight. It was so funny to see her that excited and silly!

*insert blood curdling scream here*

Yes, I got silly too…

Cute, right!?

WOW! This one was really cool!

Wooly mammoth and human fossils.

There were a lot of fossils and other things that you could interact with directly.

A fossil guessing game of sorts...

This is a dinosaur footprint with my, my hubby's, and my daughter's hands.

My daughter got to dig for fossils just like a real archaeologist!

My hubby and daughter underneath a giant dinosaur!

My daughter was so excited and she would run from one dinosaur fossil to the next pointing and saying, “Wow! Oooooo… Wow!” We know that she is still very young, and she probably won’t remember the museum when she is older, but it was something that neither me or my hubby will ever forget. They joy on her little face as she went through the museum was priceless. I cannot wait to go back!

After we went to the museum, we wandered over to get lunch and in the main area of Thanksgiving Point, there was an ice sculpture and a couple of Santa’s Reindeer!

Ice sculpture

My daughter looking at Santa's Reindeer.

Two of Santa's Reindeer

Check it out:

I’d say that we all did a pretty good job for our first gingerbread house. It was different than I expected though. I thought that the hard part would be putting the house together without it breaking into a million pieces. That was the easy part and the hard part turned out to be the decorating. It was extremely messy and kind of a pain in the butt (or back rather, ow!) I also think I may still be getting peppermint candy pieces stuck to my socks when I’m in the kitchen and dining room for the next year. I will definitely do it again though! Why? ‘Cause it was so dang yummy! I felt a bit like Godzilla each time I went over and broke a piece of the house off to eat it… nom nom nom. So good!

The first photos I started finding were all like this...

...and this...

Hey! An Elmo ball...

One day I found my first image of the culprit!

Ha! The culprit in action!

See what I mean about the budding photographer? She got the cat!

The culprit in action again!

I kept getting photos of my daughter, but I could never seem to catch her in action. Then one day I found out that she has roped in an accomplice to help her with her scheming.

She has an accomplice! I recognize that man... HUBBY!

The culprit in full view! She figured out how to turn the camera around!

And then finally, I walked into the room at just the right moment…

Guess what she's looking at? Me!

My little monkey had been taking photos for about a month before I actually caught her doing it! She is super sneaky at 21 months, so I can hardly imagine what she will be like at 16. OY! As for the photo with my hubby… apparently he caught her taking photos once and helped her without telling me. Huh. It is okay when it’s my phone, just not when it’s his… She has also taken a few 1 and 2 second videos. How she figured out how to use the camera is beyond me. The little stinker is smart!

I have always felt that the vast majority of cases where an owner is having a problem with an animal can be corrected with behavior modification in a kind way. I do not believe in using unnecessary, and sometimes cruel, treatments to correct unwanted behavior. In fact, most of the time, the problem lies with the owner, not the animal. Let me also quickly mention that for those of you who think I am talking about things I know nothing about, you’re wrong. I do know what I am talking about. I am not as much of an expert as some professionals, but I am a Certified Animal Behaviorist. With that said, let me tell you about declawing.

Declawing is a barbaric, cruel practice that should only be done in the most extreme of circumstances. All of the people I have spoken with that tell me they declawed their cats, did it because they were tired of shredded furniture and people. However, in nearly all of those case they no longer had shredded furniture, but they did have other (often worse) behavioral issues after declawing their cat. Unfortunately, sometimes the issues that come after a cat has been declawed are so much worse that the cat ends up in a shelter.

I want to share some ways that I know of to correct unwanted scratching and other claw-related behaviors, but first let me explain what declawing actually is. Many people are under the impression that it is simply removing the claws, kind of like pulling off our fingernails. This is not the case, because their claws are attached to bone, not skin like our fingernails. While I think that would be awful enough to justify never doing it, it is actually much worse. When a cat is declawed everything up to the first joint is amputated, including tendons, ligaments and bone. The cat has the ends of their toes amputated. It is comparable to having the ends of our fingers, up to the first joint, removed. Here is a visual:

There are many countries in which declawing is already illegal and I hope that one day the United States follows suit. Already many veterinarians in the US refuse to declaw pets unless there are very specific circumstances for it. In fact, I just read a great article by a veterinarian blogger. Read the blog post here. He is against declawing and he offers some important information on it as well.

There are many alternatives to declawing. I personally use two methods two control the scratching issue with my two cats. First, I keep their nails trimmed, so that they cannot inadvertently scratch anything and so if they do intentionally scratch anything the damage is not bad. Second, I teach them what they are allowed to scratch and what they are not. My cats have a scratching post and a huge cat castle that has multiple scratching posts on it. I trained them immediately after adopting them to use the posts. When your cat scratches somewhere they are not supposed to, you tell them “no” in a firm voice and then immediately take them over to their post (or wherever else you want them to scratch.) I even demonstrate how to scratch on the post. Rubbing catnip into it is helpful too. It is time consuming, but worth it. You signed up for time consuming responsibilities the moment you brought a cat into your home anyway. When you see your cat scratching in an appropriate place give them plenty of praise and reward them with a treat.

You can deter unwanted scratching in a number of ways:

• You can also use soft paws, which are covers you apply to the nails. Check out their website here.
• A spray bottle filled with water.
• An empty soda can with coins in it that you shake once when they begin to scratch in an unwanted area.
• Canned air that you spray. (You can even set canned air up to spray automatically when a cat approaches a certain area if they have a favorite spot they scratch that you do not want them to.)
• Aluminum foil placed over the area or doubled sided-tape (there are pet specific products you can buy as well.)
• Citrus sprayed on the area you do not want them to scratch. You can either use a citrus scented air freshener or use citrus juice in a water bottle (Check for color change on some fabrics and do not use near litter boxes or food, because it can create an aversion to them.)
• Try different things for them to scratch. My cats do not like sisal, but they adore carpet. They also like posts, but not flat scratch pads. Every cat is different, so you need to be willing to try several different things.
• Make their post (or whatever it is) easily accessible. If you hide it in a back room where the cat does not go very often, they will use something else.

I can think of many other ways to prevent unwanted scratching, but this post is too long already. If you are having a cat scratching problem, comment or email me and I can give you more ideas. Just remember to consider the problem and solutions very carefully. Scratching is a normal behavior for cats. If you absolutely hate scratching, then don’t get a cat.