Birthday Dinner

Tonight Braysen and I went out to dinner with my parents and my brother for my birthday. Because it was on a week night, Tony was at work. Braysen used to love the car and had no issues with being in his car seat. But for about the last 2 months, he has decided that he wants nothing to do with the carseat. His new thing is to try to sit up in it, while he is strapped in, mind you. So in short, he becomes very frustrated by the situation, (frustrated seems to be the perfect way to describe his personality overall right now) and ends up crying, screaming, whatever he can do that he thinks will get me to take him out. Car rides are awful, especially coming home that last river trip, when the poor baby decided to cry the whole way home, and only paused briefly when I got him take a 20 minute-nap.

Back to the point! I plopped his little butt in the car seat, and then hurried around the house trying to finish getting everything I needed so we could run out the door. I noticed that he is wasn't crying, he was actually very quiet. I checked on him, and found him like this:

I have tried every, and I mean every, toy that this kid owns to try to settle him down while in this car seat, and nothing works. He finds entertainment in his shoelaces? Are you kidding me?!

He was extremely entertained, that is, until he found out he couldn't get the laces into his mouth.



I usually like to try to pretend that it's not my birthday (birthdays just aren't fun once you're old), but my mom never lets me get away with it. After dinner we went back to my parents' to open presents. You may think this is pretty lame, but I was thrilled that my parents bought me a stand mixer! When we registered for our wedding, I thought it was a waste to register for one. It was very large, would take up a lot of space, and just seemed unnecessary. Sure, I loved baking when I got married, but never had anything that a hand mixer couldn't handle. Once I started really getting into baking my cakes, I found myself wishing I had a better mixer. It would save me time (which is precious now) from standing and mixing for long periods of time. I can now set the timer on this baby, turn it on, and then do something else. You have no idea how excited I am! I can't wait to start mixing the buttercream I need for next week. This of course was not the only gift from my parents, because my mom always way over-does it in the gift department. :) I also got some other stuff that I really needed wanted, but felt the need to blog about my fabulous new mixer.

I usually convince Tony to not spend any money on me for a birthday gift, but I really wanted some cake decorating supplies. In order to not feel guilty about buying the cake-goodies I wanted (I usually won't spend money to buy things I want), I told him I would just buy them and we'd call it my birthday present. So I was happy because I got what I wanted for my cakes, and he was happy because he felt like he actually got the chance to buy me a present this year! It worked out great!