Thursday, April 12, 2007

The Sweet Melodies of Sanjaya Malakar

My daughter’s birthday is less than a month away. She will be two. I’m still in shock. I know it is a cliché but time passes at
lightning speed. Babies are gone before
you even realize how much you adore having a baby around and demanding toddlers
take their place. They start to talk
and argue and you long for the days when they would stare up at you from the
nook in your arm and smile with sheer delight at the sight of your face. Things change. Fast.





Ai
My current dilemma is a very important one. It has to do with my daughter’s cake. What kind of cake am I going to order? She’s not really a TV watcher so she’s not
into any particular characters. On our
trip to Disney World last fall she screamed and clawed at my shoulders like a
cat trying avoid water every time Mickey or any of his pals would come within
20 feet of her so the Disney gang is out of the question. When my son turned two he was really into
Dora the Explorer. It was obvious that
she was his favorite character and that made the cake choice easy. My daughter is a little more of a
challenge. She is into yelling, eating sand and swinging. How does that
translate into a cake?







I like to torture my husband about this cake business. He loathes all celebrity culture and thinks
our society’s obsession with Paris Hilton is going to be the downfall of
humanity. It is for this reason that I
regularly quiz my daughter about what she wants on her cake in his presence. Here’s how our conversation goes:



Me: Tatum, do you
want Lindsay Lohan on your cake?



Daughter: Nods and
smiles



Me: How about
Brittney Spears?



Daughter: Nods and
smiles



Me: Do you want
her with hair or without?



Daughter: Nods and
smiles





Me: How about the
Girls Next Door (Hugh Heffner’s girlfriends and a really trashy reality show that
I love to watch in secret)?



Daughter: Nods and
smiles





My husband hates this. I try to quiz my daughter while we are in the car so that he cannot
escape. It’s a source of endless
entertainment for me.





Right now I’m leaning towards an American Idol cake. Every Monday night my daughter watches
American Idol with us and dances like crazy, in the nude, to every
performance. In some sort of a
Pavlovian reaction, she immediately starts undressing when she hears Ryan
Seacrest’s voice and insists on being completely naked for the duration of the
show. Watching her rock out to the
sweet melodies of Sanjaya Malakar in the nude is, by a landslide, my favorite
part of the week. Would a cake with a
headshot of Sanjaya on it be inappropriate for a two-year-old’s birthday
party?



14 comments:

  1. If you're going to go the Sanjaya route, you must use the "faux-hawk" image. That's been my personal fave so far. Good luck with the cake choice! We did Care Bears for Ailey's 1st bday last week. That was an executive decision on my part since all she cared about was smashing it with her hands, feet and anything else close by.

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  2. So funny! I love the conversation part! I say do a beach theme since she is into eating sand. I think just for kicks it would be hilarious to do a brittney one and not tell shawn!

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  3. How about something generic like balloons or flowers? Granted, she's not turning 80, but it could be an option.

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  4. why don't you bake a cake and let Tatum spread the frosting. She probably doesn't care what it looks like as long as she gets her sugar buzz going after eating it.

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  5. I'm going to start printing all these blogs so I'll have a hard copy to blackmail you with later in life, I figure I'll need the leverage to use to insure my senior care some time down the road. We must spend a Monday night at your house on our next trip down, the floor show sounds incredible. -Wait a minute, my birthday cake last year, at Pigeon Forge, didn't it have flowers? and the coffee cup, I remember balloons from somewhere, Aunt B's tryin' to tell me somethin' ain't she??? I may need that blackmail sooner than I thought, sure glad I didn't sign that power of attorney!!

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  6. Check this out - - some good ideas here:
    http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/special/specialfeature/cakefinder-birthday/

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  7. Angie-
    I agree. If I'm going to do Sunjaya, I've got to do the faux-hawk.

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  8. Melinda-
    A beach theme would be perfect! Instead of goodie bags with candy, I could wrap some sand in a cute plastic bag with a ribbon and, voila!, a practical treat.

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  9. Dang, Aunt Becky, why'd you have to go all Ockham's Razor on me? Great idea and, believe it or not, I hadn't thought of it.

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  10. Uncle Carni-
    Because that would involve me baking a cake :)

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  11. Papa Dale-
    YOu know you loved your Dolly Parton cup! And Grandma Mary, well she REALLY loved the Dolly Parton cup.
    Yeah, you guys should stay for American Idol one night. It's not to be missed.

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  12. Thanks Aunt B, for the link. Checking it out now...

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  13. Thanks to the due vigilance of Chase, I have updated this blog to correct the spelling of Sanjaya's first name. I'm so sorry that I overlooked such an important detail.

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  14. Am I too late to comment? Her b-day is in May, right?
    How about a Sandbox cake, crumble up some graham crackers for sand, make a box, get some shovels, buckets, give them as a goody gift.
    I know we just rolled down through the aisle at Walmart in the party supplies area just looking for an invitation. I had a Monkey one Ben seemed to like, then we started passing the Lightening McQueen stuff and he went crazy. So, that was it. We had a cake from Federal made for him w/ a road and cars etc.... it was cute.
    Hum, I am starting to wonder about you guys :)- dancing naked watching American Idol! :) Sounds cute, maybe sure you have video for later years to show potential husbands :).

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