Saturday, November 23, 2013

The Best Reason of All

A long time in coming, this post explains my hiatus from blogging. Our sweet baby, Leo, was born at the end of April this year. He, like his sister before him, was yearned for, after many losses, and joyfully welcomed with open arms and hearts. Being pregnant with him was nothing like Dina's pregnancy: we knew from the start he was here to stay because Dina explained to us she dreamed an angel told her that I would have a baby. From that day on (around the time of conception), we did not worry. If hours went by with no movement from baby, I would close my eyes and somehow I could see a little boy, with a shy-smile, sleeping. When we finally decided on his name, mere days before his due date, he was born the following day.
Dina loves her little brother so much. We feel so blessed to have both of these beautiful children in our lives.
The past seven months have been a whirlwind of wonderful. Dina is in primary school (school in the Netherlands starts on a child's 4th birthday) and she brought in cupcakes along with her baby brother in June to introduce him to her class. Let me bring this back to cake for a bit:
In the Netherlands when a child is born, friends and family come to visit and the snacks served are called beschuit met muisjes, roughly translated to biscuits with mice. The muisjes are candy coated anise seeds, good for breastmilk production and sold in adorable pink-and-white or blue-and-white. The muisjes are cute and tasty and the round, dry, packaged biscuits are less so. For these cupcakes to be served at school (four to six-year-old kids), I used shorty cupcake wrappers from HEMA with the star theme (our choice for Leo), and topped the light blue frosting with blue and white muisjes, to celebrate the birth of Leo.

Dina handed out the cupcakes to her class, and her teacher got to hold baby Leo.
Over the past seven months, Dina has loved holding her brother, although lately he has been a bit more on the move and tougher to hold for very long!
During this time I've been baking, and many posts are in the mixer, so to speak, including a wedding cake!
Cake is love. Most especially when celebrating the birth of a child. Happy Birth Day, Leo! We welcome you!