It’s hard not to feel crushed by the state of the nation right now. I thought the news cycle would have to make room for something besides the Coronavirus eventually, but I didn’t expect it to be anything like this. It feels heavy. For those of us that are parents, we have been asked to figure out how to homeschool our kids. Now they have pressing inquiries about race. And death. How do we protect them, inform them and help them through a period of time that is so scary for us? Tough stuff. But, at the end of the day, this is what it means to be a parent. You are a teacher, and you are required to teach the lesson at hand, whatever that may be.

Like the parents around me, I have been forced to rise to the occasion. But today, I’m taking a break from teaching tough lessons and enjoying the simple pleasure of Eve’s 4th birthday. Let me tell you, I have never been so excited for a kid's birthday in my life. Except, of course, for each of my children’s “0” birthdays, when I was pregnant and simultaneously super excited to meet each of them and also to evict them from my body. Today is our first quarantine kid’s birthday and it’s been so nice to have it to look forward to. Eve’s birthday is already my favorite because she’s the only one of my children who was not born in the winter. I hate trying to figure out where to have winter birthday parties, worrying that after all of the planning and excitement leading up, snow will prevent people from coming. I love that a June birthday can (not right now, but usually) be celebrated at the park with friends, pizza and cake, which is just as fun, but not nearly as much work (or money) as most winter alternatives.

Normally, planning a kid’s party along with all of the other stuff we have going on is sort of exhausting but right now, a birthday is a pleasant diversion from everything on the news, the endless cycle of work, homeschool, cook, clean, work and never being sure what day it is. Not having to plan the logistics of a party is a gift to me, and I deserve it. After all, I carried these babies, pushed them out into this world, stayed up all night with them (and still do sometimes) and have loved them to the max ever since they were each just a little ball of cells.

We aren’t having an elaborate celebration this week but it feels like a birthday should. We’re celebrating four years of Eve, the funny, sweet happy baby who, unlike her siblings that all think they’re teenagers, remains a baby at heart. Who said to me just yesterday, “When I get as big as you, I’m going to drive the car like you, be a mom like you, and I’m going to sleep in your bed with you!” Haha.

This little girl has brought me endless hours of joy, millions of hugs and kisses and all the smiles in the world over the last four years. She wants to be an ear doctor when she grows up because whenever she goes to the pediatrician with an ear infection, the doctor makes her feel better. She also wants to be a policeman but not a policeman because she is not going to be a man. So, she wants to be a policeman-woman. I’m sure she can be anything she wants to be. I’m looking forward to all of it.

She wanted an Elsa cake, of course. We actually have an Elsa doll, but she gave herself an unfortunate quarantine haircut and was a bit too tall for this dress anyway. So we used our tried and true legless dollar store “cake doll”. She has truly taken one for the team and we love her dearly. I wanted this cake to taste amazing so I turned to King Arthur Flour for both the cake and the frosting. The kids all love chocolate, especially Eve so I knew the cake had to be chocolate. I used this recipe for the cake and this recipe for the frosting.

The frosting is Italian buttercream. I favor it over American buttercream made with butter and powdered sugar because it pipes like a dream without being too sweet like American buttercream. Italian buttercream is made with beaten egg whites that are cooked through by pouring a very hot sugar syrup into the beaten whites and allowing the mixture to partially cool before adding in cubes of butter. The cooked egg whites provide the frosting with its stability as opposed to the large quantities of powdered sugar that give American buttercream its structure. This end result is a frosting that is smooth and rich without being cloyingly sweet. It takes a little more time to make this type of frosting but it’s totally worth it. If you want to try it, check out this step-by-step tutorial which is super helpful. Below are a few photos of the cake in process. Is it immature of me to find doll-cake-in-process photos funny? They never cease to crack me up.