Cake for Kait... and play ball!

Thursday...

Kait holds up one finger, as if saying: I'm 1!


Now, take a closer look...
Actually, she'd dipped her finger into the cake (mm... mm), eyeing it the moment I set it down in front of her! Good thing, good girl she didn't try and grab the whole plate (as happens, every now and then)...


What worked, what did not: Managed to try this simple milk-free, butterless, and eggless recipe for the cocoa-flavoured cake for the first time, with a little help from the boys (took lots of coaxing though, but every bit of help is appreciated). It was quite tasty and would have been fine on its own. But I'd thought marrying it with the upsidedown plum (from another recipe out of a magazine) would be a good idea and fairly straightforward. Kait loves the summer fruits -- plums, peaches, and nectarines, and she's into blueberries, too, though I'm holding off strawberries, and eggs, cow's milk and dairy products because of her eczema. In fact, I'd cut up more plum for her to eat, as a distraction, to buy time for the preparations. Now what I realised too late was the plum needed a longer baking time. Anyway, the cake was still very edible, and all eaten up by the next day, but...

It's not all about the cake...
The funniest part was when Jon and Ben went so off-key singing falsetto, and yet kept on singing with so much gusto, from Happy Birthday to God's blessings to you... Vern and I got a good laugh out of it! And for how very stressed he is over the schoolwork to be finished -- and that makes two of us, we certainly could use the chuckles!

Kait was singing aaaaahhhhh along with the brothers to the birthday song (above, left), and she was still licking her lips in the picture on the right!

And the best part for Kait... It must have been the bit of fun playing outside, after dinner. I had made a simple chicken soup, Chinese style, with noodles, that all of us, including the birthday gal, slurped up readily. And I'd like to think the speed with which they ate had nothing to do with the brothers wanting as much time there was to ride their bikes and skate scooters, before the sun was already setting earlier, and the weather, getting cooler!

Dressed up for her birthday, nowhere in particular to go (Vern needed to get on with his work, so we did not eat out), but that doesn't stop Kait from having a ball just playing outside...

Clockwise, from top: I got the ball... Saved ... and... Look out, I'm fierce!!!

And yes, the gungho girl will dig sand -- like Ben, or roll in the mud -- like Jon, if I let her!

(I was the one playing ball with Kait, and just snapped these pictures).