Emma’s Rainbow

My beautiful baby girl turned 3 last Sunday. I still can’t believe that she is now 3 years old... 3 years old! It seems like yesterday that she would wake up a zillion time per night and that we had to turn on the vacuum to put her back to sleep (yep, we totally did that).

For her birthday I asked what kind of cake she wanted. We went from Madagascar, to Toy Story, to Little Einsteins. While browsing cakes on Pinterest, she saw a rainbow cake! Imagine that, a cake covered in Skittles with the inside the colors of rainbow. Given the facts that Skittles are Emma’s favorite candies and that Minnie’s Rainbow is one of her favorite episodes (red, orange, yellow, green, blue don’t forget there’s purple too), we had a winner!

Here’s Emma’s Rainbow birthday!

 

 

 
 

 

 

For those who are wondering how to make a rainbow cake. It’s fairly easy.

1) Make a double batch of white cake (I used 2 boxes of Duncan Hines White Cake Mix)

2) Separate the batter in 6 different bowls and add coloring to each one (I used Wilton coloring gel)

3) Bake the 6 colored batters in 8in pans (I did 2 batches with 3 pans)

4) Make butter cream icing

5) Cool layers

 

6) Assemble layers with butter cream icing.

 

 

7) Decorate with Skittles



 



What I learned in the past couple of weeks... teething sucks and tres leches cake rocks

Teething sucks. After trying to get your baby to sleep through the night, this is the worst thing about having babies. They’re in pain, they don’t understand what the hell is going on, they cry, they drool rivers all over the place. BLAH. Poor baby Alex has been suffering a lot from teething and I couldn’t help myself... that’s right, I took some photographic evidence:

1)      Alex not pleased

12)      Alex definitely NOT pleased

13)      Drooling

14)      Trying some teething biscuit

On the bright side, after 34 years of searching, I’ve finally discovered my favorite cake of all time: Tres Leches cake with Mango Mousse. I’m salivating just writing about it. I made my first Tres Leches cake for Francis and Lucas’s birthdays back in September when we had a Mexican themed birthday dinner and it was so delicious that I was just waiting for another opportunity to make a second one. 

Three weeks ago, for my grand-mother and sister-in-law’s birthdays, I finally had an opportunity and I made a second one, topped with strawberries. It didn’t turn out as well because I inverted the amount of “Tres Leches” that is used to soak the cake. Oops!! Nobody seemed to notice but I was on a mission to make a better one.

The following week was my father-in-law’s birthday and because he loves mangoes, I used my super-duper googling skills to find the best Tres Leches cake with Mango recipe in the world. Oh my God. Seriously. Heaven.

Other things worth mentioning from the past 4 weeks: Alex turned 6 months old! (pic) 676 703 720 745

To celebrate, he decided that his Jumperoo was a good place to nap.

Emma decided to see if she could fit into a box.

Here are Emma and Alex chilling with their “graille”.

And my proof that Alex is about twice the size that Emma was at the same age, titled “same pyjama, different baby” ;)

Coming up next: Easter and Sugar shack!!!

What I learned in the past couple of weeks... babies loose their hair

Oh yes they do! Here’s some photographic evidence:

1)      Alex was born with lots of hair (here in September)

 

 

2)     In January it became clear that he was having a hair loss issue...

 

 

3)     He begged me to hide the “problem” ...

 

 

4)     But there was nothing we could do to stop it ...

 

 

5)     And it got worst ...

 

 

6)     By February there was no hair left ...

 

 

Other things worth mentioning:

Emma agreed to let Alex sit next to her.

 

Emma discovered the joy of eating frozen fruits (still frozen) instead of waiting for them to defrost to put them in our smoothies.

Alex had his first “solid food” 2 weeks ago. I had enrolled his beloved “Mamie” as my faithful helper and to take videos of this milestone; it was really cool and hilarious but Alex was unimpressed. He didn’t seem to dig bananas (Nor pears) at first but now he’s getting really good at making a mess of his cereals ;) Here’s unimpressed Alex:

Speaking of milestones ... Alex can sit! Ok so he does tend to fall flat on his face after a few minutes, but still!!!

Also, it turns out I’m not bad at making cupcakes! I made red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting for Valentine’s Day. Unfortunately, I didn’t really like the cream cheese frosting but it didn’t matter because at least the red velvet cake was delicious, and they looked pretty good.

I also had little helpers!

After the cupcakes, I figured I should continue baking things I have never baked before. Turns out I’m also not bad at making banana-chocolate chip-oatmeal cookies!! They’re not as pretty as my husband’s cookies but they were so good that I’m ashamed to say how long it took for me to eat the whole plate… oops!!

And finally, my favorite picture of the Week : Emma and her godfather “representing”