You live and learn

Spurred on by the (brief) spell of nice weather we've been out and about lots in the last few days and have learnt lots of things on our travels.

Moobles has learned how to scan shopping through the self-service till at the shop, she likes finding the barcodes and making the machine beep. She's been looking for barcodes on her books and toys, and I fear I may have to do a bit of research into exactly how a barcode is made and what it's for if Moobles current line of questioning is anything to go by!

Velcro Boy has learnt that if you cry "help! help! help!" repeatedly someone will come and rescue you while you're hanging precariously from the edge of your (tall) chest of drawers. Sadly, what VB hasn't learnt is that if you got stuck trying to climb down your chest of drawers from the top bunk the first five or six times, the chances are you're going to carry on getting stuck and should probably give up this dangerous occupation until your legs grow or there is someone in the room to airlift you off.

Gadget Man has learnt that he can move rather quickly when he hears VB shout "help! help! help!". So far he's had to jump out of the shower to rescue him and has managed to go from fast asleep to rescue mode in less than 3 seconds.

I have learnt that I really should aim lower when it comes to birthday cakes. We had a little family party for VB on Saturday and as tradition demands, I made him a cake. The last cake I attempted was meant to be the Mad Hatter's top hat, it tasted alright, but looked, um, dodgy. And Moobles is still bemoaning the fact that it didn't have Alice sitting on top of it almost a year on. So I decided to make Nigella's Devil's Food cake, figuring that if it looked awful, at least it would taste alright.

In order to make it a bit more VB friendly, I decided to make a marzipan Mike Wazowski, I really should know better! It turned out alright after a lot of swearing and "help" from small people. But much of the kitchen was coated in green food colouring, including Moobles who was attempting her own marzipan creation. VB also took the opportunity to cover the front room in cornflour, which was brilliant, because I didn't already have a tonne of things to do! Next year, I'm going to try and convince myself to just buy a plastic toy to go on top or maybe just buy a cake, it's got to be easier than making one!