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My 5th child is having a birthday soon. She will be 6 years old. A month ago she told me she wanted a tea party and a Barbie cake. The kind with the doll sticking up out of the cake skirt. I've made many and not been overly fond of the task. The girls love the result, so I do it. I asked Katie about her birthday dinner this week.

"So, what do you want mommy to make for your birthday?" I ask.

"Potatoes, mashed potatoes, fries..." she begins, lisping at every "s" through the newly  formed gap in her front teeth.

"Potatoes and mashed potatoes?" I stop her. Wow, my kid really is Irish.

"Yeah. You know, the potatoes that are round and then you cut them and they look like half  moons?" she lisps.

"Oh. Mommy's roast potatoes?"

"Yep. Potatoes, mashed potatoes, fries, chicken, weenies and a Ariel cake." she finishes,  whistling away.

"Weenies?" I say, with a raised eyebrow and a smirk.

"Yeah," she giggles "that's a funny word for those."

"It sure is, " I say "You mean the little hot dogs in barbecue sauce?"

"Yep!" She grins her near-toothless grin.

"What about the chicken? What kind?"

"Just the regular chicken that we get ... with the legs." Katie tells me.

Another raised eyebrow, "Roast chicken?" I ask.

"Yeah."

"OK. I thought you wanted a Barbie cake."

"I want a Ariel cake like at the store where Erin got her dolphins. There was sprinkled muffins and plain muffins," she motions with her hands, showing me where the muffins sat next to one  another, "and then the Ariel cake." I backtrack mentally trying to figure out where she means and decide it doesn't matter. Her cake is somewhere at a grocery store bakery.

I wanted to make her the Barbie cake. I hate making the Barbie cake. It's a lengthy and  tedious process involving wrapping Barbie's head in plastic and that somehow is just wrong  to me. I was all for it, though for that adorable tow-headed-hazel-eyed-nearly-toothless grin. If it takes an Ariel cake, bought at the store without loving hands having fashioned it, so be it. I'll still be the one on the receiving end of that grin.