The Boy Turns Nine.

It is absolutely insane to think I am the mother of a nine year old. But regardless of my inability to feel my age, my oldest kid did turn nine yesterday.

It's both easy and hard to remember how difficult he was as an infant. By two weeks old he was diagnosed with reflux (funny how I forgot about the projectile vomiting) and treated with two different medicines once twice and the other three times a day. He slept propped up in his car seat next to our bed or in the swing so that gravity would help the acid stay put.

It was miserable and at times I swore to never have another kid again. (See, this is where the Universe laughs).

He's the kid that broke me into parenthood, spiraled me into a Brooke Shields type of PPD and single handledly amazes me each and every day. Alex is such a wonderful boy, though he has his less-fun moments at times. For his birthday this year he asked for two things; Civilization V (a pc game) and a chocolate cake with mint.

I couldn't refuse either.

The cake is my basic go-to chocolate sheet cake recipe that I have scribbled on a paper so I can't remember where it came from. I don't usually do chocolate frosting so I searched for an easy recipe and found this then added some peppermint extract -real not imitation- to the mix. The Andes got frozen and mashed up with a mortar and pestle.

For someone that doesn't like toothpaste flavored chocolate, I do really like this cake.

We almost had a serious dilemma when the sparkler candles he picked out had melted into a single lump on the kitchen windowsil. Note to self- wax in a hot window = bad. We managed to scrounge nine non-girly candles out of the junk drawer and salvage three of the sparkler candles from the hardened gob.

Now I have a whole year to get used to having a kid in the double digits. I'm so not prepared for pre-pubescence.