Countdowns

Sunday, October 24, 2010

The Art of Babies and Diaper Cake Construction

Dear Secret Blogiary,

I decided that the Sunday Supper posts are going to have to be put on hiatus for the time being. It isn’t that I didn’t like doing them, but it has been overwhelmingly busy on the weekends lately and with Nano just around the corner and Thanksgiving and Christmas racing in behind, I am feeling stretched and stressed already.

Instead, today I worked on making a diaper cake for my BFF Rose who is due in December. If you don’t know, a diaper cake is a “cake” made with baby supplies: cloth diapers, receiving blankets, hooded towels, socks, washcloths, toys and other essential baby material. You can see some really gorgeous examples at Rattlecake and if I had really wanted to save my sanity and some money, I would have ordered from them instead of attempting one on my own. But...well, I never once claimed to be rational.

Diaper cakes are expensive to make especially when the person for whom you are making it is an eco-friendly vegetarian and registered for only 100% organic cotton everything. I would go that route too if I could afford it. I also found out she is going with the au naturel diaper option so a diaper cake is a perfect gift!

The girls and I had too much fun at Target picking out the baby gear needed to go into the cake. It is hard to imagine now that my girls were ever as tiny as the baby clothes we saw! I ended up spending way more money then I had wanted, but I was able to completely justify it by clearly and slowly explaining to Mister W (again) that Rose is an Only Child and I am her BFF, which means, of course, that I will be Little Baby’s Only Aunt and therefore I am allowed to spoil the snot out of Little Baby.

Nyah.

After unloading all the bags onto the dinning room table, Little Sis reverantly touched every item with a single finger as if they were sacred talismans. She oohed over the tiny booties and gave the rattles a timid shake. She looked at me and asked when I was going to give her a little brother or sister. Mister W gave me “the look” - the one that said "HA! Have fun explaining that one to her and oh by the way, she'll also want to know where babies come from, because you know that'll be the next question" - and walked away from the table.

Oh. Boy.

That is a story for another day, but I explained that Mommy was happy with just two shiny pretty girls even if they were from Outer Space! That prompted giggles and the subject was easily diverted.

We went back to the cake and looked over the instructions and started unwrapping everything and rolling diapers up. We rolled up the first dozen and wrapped a thick ribbon around it for the “top layer.” Then we started rolling receiving blankets and towels together and as we reached for the last towel, we realized we had forgotten an essential piece: The Diaper Pins!

We secured the “bottom layer” with a ribbon temporarily and then tried to figure out how to get all the goodies inside. Little Sis played with the baby face clothes trying to roll them up to look like flowers like in the picture from the directions. Big Sis debated the merits of stuffing the toys and rattles into the top rolls or unrolling the whole thing and rolling the toys up inside.

As I stared at the cake, all I could think about was how I would ever get this thing shipped without it falling apart. We played with it for a few more minutes until Little Sis, frustrated that she couldn’t make wash cloth flowers wandered off to play on the computer and Big Sis started hinting that it was close to suppertime.

So the cake is on hold for right now. Once we get diaper pins I am sure the whole thing will come together effortlessly.

Right.

Well, at least the blanket I made is done.

No comments:

Post a Comment