The Sprinkles Discovery:

Nora and I went to the grocery store today to get some (surprise!) groceries, and as we headed through the cookie/cake/baking aisle, I couldn't help it but buy some cake mix and get Nora involved in the whole thing.

She does pretty well -- I cut open the bag of mix, then put an egg at a time into a measuring cup so she could dump them one at a time into the bowl, and she loved dumping the water and oil into the bowl too, and even held the mixer for a while before deciding that two minutes was a bit long to sit there just mixing.

She helped put the paper cups into the muffin tins, and even helped me put the batter in (with limited success, since she's sort of "all or nothing" about letting me hold something, and, well, we made what she says rather clearly: "A big mess."


But we baked and cooled and I whipped up some chocolate frosting (a cube of butter, a pound of powdered sugar, a bunch (1/2-3/4 cup) of Hershey's cocoa powder, a dab of vanilla and 1/2-1/3 cup of milk), and then the work begins!

I quickly frosted the tops and introduced Nora to SPRINKLES. Sprinkles, of any kind, are AWESOME to a 2.5 year old. She'd call them other things, like "balls", but she "got it".

And just before bedtime, we got to sit down and enjoy a nice fresh cupcake, and boy were they good!

I loved her face as she discovered the beauty of chocolate cupcakes.

Every night, as we're getting ready for bed, we talk about what we did today, and despite a very exciting morning of going to the DMV and the Bank for Daddy's stuff, the first thing to roll out of her mouth was:

"CUPCAKES!"