Carolyn wants a ladybug cake for her birthday. This morning I was doing a bit of cleaning up after breakfast, and she dug out one of my Wilton books and declared that she was going to find her ladybug cake. She looked through all three that were on the shelf, and then said, “Mommy, do you know where the ladybug cake is? Because I looked and I can’t find one anywhere!”
I’m amazed by the changes in her grammar recently. Just in the last few weeks she’s been using much more sophisticated syntax and more complete (and correct) sentences. It’s fascinating to me how the human brain acquires language – in less than three years Carolyn has learned an unbelievable amount of vocabulary and grammar, just from absorbing the world around her. She can recognize upper and lowercase letters, understands that those letters can be put into certain sequences to form words, knows how each letter sounds, and is starting to sound out words. She’s even starting to write somewhat recognizable letters. It’s pretty cool.
And the ladybug cake? She’s right, there are no pictures of ladybug cakes in my Wilton books, but really…how hard can it be?
I wish I could have caught on video all of her commentary as she flipped through the books. “Look, there are lots of ghosts and they have a gingerbread house!” as she was looking at a picture of a haunted house cake. “Oh, there’s the Cheese Man, and he has a cake with cheese on it and is eating it all up!” for a picture of a SpongeBob SquarePants cake. “Oooh, look, a Cinder-grella cake!” At least I have a few backup possibilities if the ladybug cake doesn’t work out!
I did ladybug cupcakes one year for a friend’s daughter. I think a cake would actually be easier. Just use a circle, draw a line a few inches down straight across for the head, then a line down from the middle of that, like making a T on the cake, that would separate the wings. The hardest part, I think, was using almost all of my red coloring to get the frosting actually red and not a dark pink.
Language acquisition is amazing to watch – must be more so when it is your own child — I just work with very young children.
I am sure you’ll be able to find a ladybug blueprint somewhere for a cake!
I think Spongebob looks like cheese too. :-)