LaLa, Meltdown, Easter Eggs & Bunny Cake

Rudy went to deer camp this weekend with Mr. L to gather firewood and do some other work stuff around the camp. Since we were both deer camp widows for the weekend, Mom came up to see Caleb and me. She got here Friday afternoon and left this morning. We went to dinner on Friday night and then came home to put on our PJ's. She and Caleb went to bed pretty early. I watched a movie and finished the invitations for Caleb's b'day party. (I'm so proud of the invitations. I designed and made them myself and I just love them!) Mom let me sleep in on Saturday by taking care of and playing with Caleb. When I got up, we had a little breakfast and played some more. We tried to get Caleb to take a nap, but he never went to sleep. We finally gave up and went to Target. After meandering through Target for a while and getting everything on our list, we went over the mall to get Caleb some jeans at Children's Place. We left the mall and headed across the street for Jackson's birthday party at Chuck E Cheese. Before we went in, Caleb and I had a talk about being a good listener and not crying when it was time to go. Mom dropped us off and went to do a little kid-free shopping. We went in and said hi to the Lyonses and wished Jackson a happy birthday. Then we played a few games until they called for Jackson's party to start. We went over to the table and I was calculating times in my head. I decided that Caleb had time to have one piece of pizza before we were supposed to meet Mom outside. I didn't take into account that the pizza would be too hot for him to eat and we wouldn't have time for it to cool and for him to eat it. The whole situation blew up on me: no nap + excited about being there + having to leave early = one angry almost-3-year-old. Whew! I haven't seen Caleb throw a fit like that in a very long time and I've never had him throw one of those in public. I was so embarrassed. He screamed and kicked and even hit me in the face a couple of times before I managed to get him out the door. I know that's an everyday occurrence at Chuck's - but it's just not a common thing for us and it's certainly not acceptable. He was still screaming when we got to the car and screamed all the way home. Mom offered to take him outside when we got home, but he wouldn't leave my side. We talked about what he did wrong and he apologized. I also apologized for asking him to leave early, but explained that it was what we had to do that day. We decided that taking some time to chill out and watch a movie would be the best thing for him to do. He agreed and watched part of Cars before dinner. After dinner, Mom and I took him outside to play in the backyard for a little while. I came in while they were playing and got things ready to dye Easter eggs. When they came in, we dyed our eggs. We've never done that before and he thought it was pretty cool. Once we got the eggs in the dye, we started working on our real family tradition: the bunny cake! Mom and I have been making the bunny cake at Easter for as long as I can remember. We've missed a few years along the way, but I have a picture of the cake that we had on my first Easter...32 years ago! Caleb loved helping with the mixer and (of course) licking the beaters. We let the cakes cool overnight and decorated them this morning.