Dear Mom,

Today is Mother’s Day, and,  just like birthdays, I never really understood how special a day it was until I had my own kids. It’s not about breakfast in bed or preschool craft projects or a card Dad bought and I just wrote my name on because I was too busy planning how to best get into trouble with my friends to remember which Sunday in May was supposed to be for you. It’s about saying how much I appreciate everything you did for me.

Thank you for all the homemade cookies and for never telling me I probably shouldn’t eat another one because I needed to be thin to make people like me.

Thank you for reading to me and for doing funny voices when we read The Hobbit. You were a better Gollum than that guy in the movie ever was.

Thank you for being so strict, because without your rules and boundaries I might have grown up too fast.

Thank you for telling me it was OK to change my mind if I didn’t want to be a marine biologist anymore after I went to college, because Holy Cow did I NOT want to be a marine biologist anymore after I went to college and it was such a relief to switch majors without worrying you’d be mad.

Thank you for showing me what a good marriage looks like – it’s amazing you and Dad are still so strong even though you got married at 22.

Thank you for being excited when I told you I was engaged, even though I was only 22.

Thank you for totally agreeing with me on every detail of my wedding and for laughing at mother-daughter pairs who fought over things like flower arrangements and plated appetizers.

Thank you for coming to help when I had my babies – I honestly don’t know what I would have done without you.

Thank you for being an amazing grandmother to Evan and Caroline and for always respecting my parenting choices.

I’m sorry for all the times I made you worry, the times I yelled at you, the screaming and crying and throwing myself on the floor (both as a toddler AND as an over-dramatic teenager), the broken curfews, the secrets I tried to keep, and that time I stopped speaking to you (even though I don’t think you even knew about it). I had to be a mom to understand how much your children can hurt you and how much it means to hear them say they didn’t mean to.

Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for being my mom.

Love, Your Daughter,

Suzanne

We suffer from a chronic case of good intentions but no follow through around here. So many plans, so little actually going places and doing things. But one of the nice things about having memberships at Mystic Seaport and Mystic Aquarium is we can go whenever and stay for however long we want. Baby having a fit? Time to go! Weather gets bad? We’ll come back some other day! Crap-ton of people who don’t understand how to not stand around yapping in the middle of the walkway and make me want to scrape out my own eyeballs with an ice pick? The walkway will still be there on a weekday! I can keep my eyes! Which is good, because they are usefully to me!

So on Saturday we celebrated yet another day of nice weather by taking Little Evan to see the boats. BOAT BOAT BOAT BOAT BOAT BOAT. The Seaport is a really nice place – especially on days like yesterday when it was practically deserted – but it is definitely a TWO PARENT ACTIVITY. There’s nothing like hundreds and hundreds of feet of open, non-guard-railed waterfront with a 6 or 7 foot drop into the river to keep you on your toes, especially with a toddler who wants to be AS CLOSE TO THE BOATS as possible.

You have seen boats advertised on television and on the Internet, but can’t find a legitimate platform to search for a boat ?  Try searching at Zeboats it features lots of boats currently for sale on the market in your area. Good tip, do  some research before purchasing a boat. You can find out everything you need to know by visiting their website.. They are always open to questions and will be glad to discuss the details of their product with you. So if you are ready to buy a boat, go ahead and check it out.

Including the boats that do not actually belong to the Seaport but are just docked there by people who own giant boats and probably wouldn’t appreciate a 2 year old showing up in their cabins shouting “HAI! HAI! BOAT! MAMA! DADA!” in their faces. So it takes both E and myself to watch him and still remain an appropriately responsible distance from the stroller so no one reports us for child abandonment.

And hey, we were in public! So everyone wore clothes.

On Little Evan:

Shirt – Gymboree, last season
Pants – Gymboree, this season
Sandals – Old Navy

On Mama:

Shirt – Goodwill, tag says ELLE
Jeans – Target
Sweater – Gap, purchased on clearance in 1998
Earrings – Gift from my sister, purchased in Costa Rica
Giant sticker on my boob – Member entrance sticker for the Seaport. Classy.

Shoes – Target, 50% off! I’ve been eying these for MONTHS, trying to decide if they were worth $20 or if I should wait for them to go on sale, as all Target shoes do. I waited. Now I’m just sorry I didn’t buy them in the other colors.

Also, if you look closely you can see my totally gross toenail on my left foot. Little Evan threw a bottle of carpet cleaner at me in the store and it landed right on my nail. It bled for hours and now it’s all blue and gray and black and it’s totally going to fall off. AREN’T YOU GLAD I POINTED THAT OUT TO YOU?

On Caroline:

Romper – Gift, tag says Hartstrings
Leggings – BabyLegs
Socks – Who the hell knows, hand-me-downs

More pictures from our fun day:

These swans are building a nest right on the main waterfront. They’re going to be really sorry when the seaport gets busy in a few weeks. But it was super cool to watch!

Little Evan steering the Amistad. Yeah, the one from the movie.

Hanging toddlers over the edge of giant scaffolding! Good times!!

I think Caroline might be interested in starting solids sooner rather than later. And for the record, NOT PEPSI. Lemonade.

Why yes, I DID dress my baby in a nautical themed outfit for the Seaport. Also, the amber teething necklace is once again working like a CHAMP, as evidenced by the happy, silly baby.

Dreaming of the day he can finally escape his horrible, mean parents for a life at sea.

Have you noticed we’ve been in a celebratory mood around here? I don’t know what could have possibly given it away, besides maybe my endless posts about Evan’s 2nd birthday. I just really love any occasion that involves a good party. And who doesn’t? Dressing up and eating delicious food are two of the greatest joys of life.

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Even though I spend the majority of my pre-party planning on crafts and decorations, I spend 75% of my money and day-of preparations on food. I love food. Food is the reason I have parties at all.

Here’s an overview:

1. Mini-cupcakes
2. Marshmallow lollipop
3. Cucumber sandwiches
4. Mini quiches
5.Swedish meatballs
6. Mini doughnut cookies
7. Hand-made chocolate truffles made by and shipped from my friend Erin
8. Caprese salad sticks
9. Fruit salad
10. Veggie plate
11. Cheese and cracker plate
12. CAKE

Now here’s the deets:

Leftover cake batter (because I had to TRIPLE the recipe to have enough for the cake but only needed a little bit of that 3rd batch) turned into mini cupcakes in polka dot wrappers topped with peanut M&M’s on a cake stand from BJ’s.

I came up with these on Thursday morning when I found marshmallows on sale at Target. I stuck them on sticks and dipped them in colored melting chocolate and sprinkles. The little stands are Styrofoam balls cut in half and wrapped in tissue paper. They were SO EASY and delicious and popular with the kids.

The cucumber sandwiches were the only thing we ran out of. It’s just Wonder Bread with garden veggie flavored cheese spread and cucumbers, but they are SO DELICIOUS. And I even used the secretly whole wheat white bread to make them a little healthier. The mini quiches are store-bought and my absolute favorite party food in the world. They have been since I was about 12, when I decided eating mini quiches automatically made me look both older and classier.

My mom used her grandma’s recipe to make Swedish meatballs and I used my awesome crafting skills to glue felt circles to colored toothpicks to make them fancy. One of us worked a lot harder than the other.

My friend Kimberly sent me a link to these a couple weeks ago when I mentioned I was looking for round food and I fell in love with them. I actually baked and decorated them last weekend and stuck them in the freezer. They defrosted beautifully and were both adorable and delicious.

This idea came from Amy at Soup or Salad Blog – tomatoes, piece of basil and cheese. I just picked up the little mozzarella balls from the salad bar at the grocery store and made my aunt assemble them for me. The cute little stand was from last year’s birthday party!

Even all my fruit was round, thanks to my mom’s mad melon balling skillz. Cantaloupe. watermelon, red grapes, green grapes, blueberries and black berries. You can also see the corner of my round veggie tray – cucumber, carrots and radishes cut into circles.

I didn’t get a close up of the truffles Erin made, but there were extremely yummy and also adorable – she somehow put colored polka dots into the coating. She did vanilla and strawberry for the kids and then orange liquor and Kahlua for the grown-ups. I ate the leftovers for lunch. And dinner.

And finally, my cake:

It is not as pretty as I had imagined. It also doesn’t have the precise color coordinated stripes of dots I had planned on before I realized the “20-25 minutes” it took to bake this batter as cupcakes was more like 50-60 minutes in large cake pans in my crappy oven. Then I ran out of batter and when I tried to make more I was a cup of sugar short. Luckily, my run to the grocery store didn’t end up ruining anything besides my plans to make the frosting perfectly smooth and delicately place all my jelly beans in exact lines.

You know who cared about the uneven frosting and the random dots? NO ONE. Not a single person, including me, cared that the cake didn’t look like it was from a professional baker.

The main reason is because it was DELICIOUS.

I ended up making it all from scratch, using recipes from I Am Baker for everything. The cake is white cake with buttercream frosting and lemon curd filling (the recipes are in those posts, but you’ll have to scroll for them – which shouldn’t be too much of a hardship because her cakes are GORGEOUS). When I test drove the cake as cupcakes last weekend they were perfect. When I tried to make it as cake it stuck to the pan and came out a little dry, but honestly, it was such an easy recipe I’m sure that was baker-error and I can do better next time. I kept apologizing for the dryness, but I may have been the only person who was bothered by it.

The frosting is like store-bought cake frosting, which I love but no one else does. It is very sweet, but the lemon curd filling tempered the sweetness. The filling was DELICIOUS. I should have cut each cake layer in half and done three layers of filling in each tier, just to get more lemon curd into each slice. I may have put lemon curd on toast for breakfast today. And lunch. And dinner.

2 year olds can blow out their own candles

The number of sweets in my house (all the baked goods combined with all the candy from the decorations) is EPIC. I need to have another party just to get rid of the food from my first party. But I heard from all the guests that despite the sugar overload their kids all slept REALLY well on Saturday night and spent all day Sunday talking about the “balloons!” and “ball pit!” at “Baby Evan’s party!” I call that a success. An extremely delicious success.

p.s. I need to add that NONE of the food would have gotten finished if not for my amazing family’s help. My mom and my dad and my aunt never batted an eyelash when I insisted they cut every slice of cheese into a circle or told them to ONLY use certain colors of jelly beans on the cake. They cut and slices and cooked and arranged so I could focus on my cake. Even E helped with the food when he wasn’t wrangling toddlers and babies. Thank you all SO MUCH for the help!