Kaci and her jungle cake.
Brett and her three-little pig cake
My mom made the houses out of small food chopper boxes. The straw house is pampas grass, the stick house is pretzels and the brick house is Hershey bars.
Good Mom cupcake - finally.
I'm melting, I'm melting ...Not that my mother didn’t try to make me more domestic. She enrolled me for a couple of years in the 4-H food project. But the sifting of flour and the scraping the tops of measuring cups for precision was, well, boring.
Nevertheless, on the eve of my twin daughters’ fifth birthday this month, I told my husband I just wanted to be Good Mom.
Good Mom is like soccer mom except she goes a step further. She writes about her good deeds for the world to see.
On blog sites, she tells about her little misses in cute dresses. She jabbers about her baby’s first spit up, first steps and first words. She calls her children sweet pea and pumpkin.
She’s a frequent user of Facebook, uploading photos of her children at ballgames, fairs and school. If that wasn’t enough, move over to the new social site Pinterest where she shows off her crafty side and very neat and orderly side – along with those wonderful rainbow pinwheel cookies and bunny rabbit cupcakes.
This mom documents everything in baby books. She might not wear heels and pearls, but she does have fresh-baked cookies in the cookie jar. She remembers to check her children’s book bags for homework when they get home from school instead of shortly before bedtime.
I try to do all these things. Yet, I seem to fail at it terribly.
I took this to heart as my daughters’ birthday approached. They had celebrated their birthday with family the weekend before with my more skilled mother and mother-in-law making the cakes. My mother-in-law created a jungle theme complete with pond and trees for Kaci. My mom, saying that Brett shouldn’t be denied her wish for a Three Little Pigs cake despite mine insistency that it would be a lot of work, showed up with a double-layered red velvet displaying three boxes turned pig houses. She made one using pampas grass to create the house of straw and another using pretzel sticks for the house of sticks. The third - a Hershey bar-laid brick house – she topped with a red licorice roof.
The masterpiece would make any soccer mom Pinterest addict jealous.
Knowing my skills and with the need for treats to take to preschool on the big day, my husband suggested we buy icing.
But then, I said, I wouldn’t be Good Mom like the other Good Moms. I saw a Cookie Monster cupcake on Pinterest. I vowed I would accomplish the feat. I hadn’t looked at the directions, but it didn’t seem too difficult.
The strawberry-cake-mix cupcakes would be the easiest to accomplish. The next day, I whipped up my mother-in-law’s icing mix, borrowed her icing utensil squirty thingy and got to work.
It seemed to be going fine at first. The squirty thingy made hair like Cookie’s hair. I put on the marshmallow and M&M eyes and stuck a half a chocolate chip cookie in his mouth.
Then, my husband and I watched as the cookie fell and the icing melted.
Cupcake after cupcake turned disaster. Finally, we decided to stick the icing in the freezer – mixed a drink and waited.
About a dozen of the 24 cupcakes turned out looking like that cookie-loving monster – for the most part. I dropped them off at preschool with a sense of accomplishment.
I’m a little closer to being Good Mom. The question is what to try next from the other Good Moms on Pinterest. How about Ultimate Pretzel Crusted Peanut Butter Cookie Candy Brownie Bars?
Brett and Kaci hold their cupcakes before preschool.
This was sent to me by my friend, Kathy Hanks. No worries. I'm not taking mine to Washington, D.C. next week ... :)
Lihue, HI (KITV) -- A Hawaiian mom says she was humiliated when asked to prove her breast pump was real at an airport.
The woman says she was flagged for additional screening at the Lihue Airport Wednesday because of her electric breast feeding pump.
She claims agents told her she couldn't take the pump on the plane because the bottles in her carry-on were empty.
"I asked him if there was a private place I could pump and he said no, you can go in the women's bathroom. I had to stand in front of the mirrors and the sinks and pump my breast in front of every tourist that walked into that bathroom. I was embarrassed and humiliated and then angry that I was treated this way.
When the bottles were full, she was allowed back on the plane.
The TSA is apologizing, saying the agent made a mistake.
The agency released a statement, saying in part: "We accept responsibility for the apparent misunderstanding and any inconvenience or embarrassment this incident may have caused her."
The TSA recently changed screening procedures to allow women to carry breast milk onto planes without testing it.
However, breast pumps may require additional screening.
