This year instead of making a birthday cake for daughter Mary Ashley, I planned to make cupcakes to coordinate with the girls' pajamas -- enough to share with her kindergarten class and slumber party guests. But when we stopped by the grocery store last week to pick up a few ingredients, Mary Ashley burst into tears.
"Why do you have to make my cupcakes?" she choked out between sobs. "Why can't we just buy them like everybody else?" It surprised me how hard I took this. I honestly felt like I had been stabbed in the heart. I was on the verge of tears throughout our shopping trip, and had to apologize to Mary Ashley when we got home for being short-tempered with her .
We came to a cupcake compromise: store-bought for school and homemade for home. Mary Ashley was excited to pick out chocolate cupcakes from the Wal-Mart bakery for her class, and at home she was eager to help me bake cupcakes -- even licking the beaters just like always. With fluffy pink icing and sprinkles, the cupcakes I decorated coordinated with the cupcake appliques on the girls' PJs.
Friends have encouraged me that Mary Ashley will appreciate my efforts to make things for her when she is older, and I took their words to heart.
I guess she just needed the extra maturity of turning 6. After she blew out her candles, I slipped into the kitchen to do some cleaning. One of the mommies who joined us for dinner laughed as she repeated what she overheard Mary Ashley say to the other guests:
"See, I told you these would be much better than the ones we had at school!"
