But There's Cake!

Today, well technically yesterday, was such a long day.

We were up again last night and into the morning with Xander. He woke up screaming and scratching furiously. We couldn't get him calmed down until we took him out into the living room to play with his toys. Ross and I are both starting to wonder if he's experiencing nightmares. I only wish I knew what he would be so frightened of and how to ease it. The poor kid doesn't need nightmares on top of the pain he's already in.

It was nearly 7:00am before I got him back down to sleep. Ross had gone to bed around 2:00am, so when he woke as I was coming to bed, I told him to take the monitor and let me sleep. Go figure... Xander ended up sleeping until two hours after I woke up at 10:30am!

Ross had his D&D game today, so it was just Xander and I for most of the day. I tried to keep Xander awake to shift him back to his usual schedule, but he crashed at about 6:30pm. Frankly, I was relieved. He'd been a total bear for most of the time after Ross left. I was just settling in for some knitting, after tidying the living room and kitchen, when he woke up. He only had half an hour of sleep. His mood wasn't any better after his nap... until I whipped up a couple of French fries to share with him. Apparently the mounds of food he had eaten all day were not the right foods. *sigh* He played relatively quietly until Ross got home.

After dealing with a surprise blow-out diaper moments after Ross got home (Welcome home, dear. Hehe.), I put Ross in charge of Xander. I scrubbed up and tackled the first round of test cakes. Tonight was just the baking step. I'm using my tried and true chocolate cake recipe from the side of the Hershey cocoa tin, but I had to test out cooking times for various sizes of pans. I usually bake in nine inch rounds, but I'll also be adding six in rounds and mini bundts to the roster... and I wasn't sure how long they all would need to cook. Looks like the six inch rounds take five minutes less time than the nine inch and the mini bundts I'm using for the smash cake take five minutes less than the six inch. That should be simple to remember.

I'm looking forward to practicing with fondant and decorating tomorrow. I'll try to take lots of pictures to share.