Isaac turns 6

Our family life is flying past at a rate I am not entirely comfortable with. A short list of things I adore about my first baby:

1. He loves the cartoon classics . . . the black-and-white ones with only music and very rough animation. We stumbled across these at my mom's house and he thought they were the coolest.

2. He is extremely tough and hardly ever cries. But that is not what I love. What I love is the face he makes when he is straining not to cry, and the hurried way he looks for something to distract himself. It is so cute, but when he does this, I feel sick in my stomach, like his time with me as a child is too short and he is already becoming a little man.

3. When he rides his bike fast, sometimes he says, "Mom! It's like I'm flying!" I remember as clear as anything when I was struggling to convince him that I was holding him, that I would not drop him, that riding a bike is the best thrill of a young life, that I knew he could do it. And now I'm crying. Shoot.

4. He loves dessert. He doesn't mind eating pretty healthfully, but he really gets enthusiastic about planning elaborate treats for birthdays, FHE, other kids' birthdays, etc.

5. I loved the look on his face a few weeks ago when he got off the bus after his first day of school. He was beaming about his independence and bubbling over with chatter about all the things I'd missed.

6. Isaac loves his peeps: grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings. If they are related, they're in.

7. He says "pampcakes" for pancakes, and he always mixes up tomatoes and potatos. They are the only leftover language mistakes from his little years, and I love them.


For his birthday, he wanted to be Emperor for the Day. This meant choosing everything we ate and did. I had to trick him into choosing to have us all go to church, and a couple of other mandatories, but otherwise, it was all him. He decided we should have pancakes for breakfast, with faces built on them using all manner of processed sugar items.

Opening presents!


We threw a small birthday party the following weekend, which I will post next, but for our family, I made this cake. It was tasty; layered with thin layers of chocolate brownie and chocolate pannacotta, then wrapped with dark chocolate and topped by Isaac with canned cream (his favorite; the cake was all my idea but I convinced him that it was his by suggesting he might, as Emperor, want a cake that would go perfectly with canned cream. It worked easily, and I gained great insight into world politics) If you have lain awake long nights trying to figure out a way to get the absolute maximum amount of chocolate into a cake, then this is the one for you. I will post the recipe some time soon.

That yellow thing in the pitcher off to the side was Dirk and Isaac's attempt at a parfait, because "there ain't nobody ever said they don't like no parfait," and my boys are no exceptions.