Elmo Cupcakes

I must admit, I did not come up with this idea on my own (see this website for my original inspiration) but I did tweak it a little due to lack of supplies and what I thought would work better. N loves Elmo, although mostly from books and little from the actual Sesame Street. So we're throwing him an Elmo party tomorrow for his second birthday. I decided to make these cupcakes myself just to see if I could. (I'm not very artsy and I'm definitely not a good cook).

I made the cupcakes out of red velvet cake.

For the eyes I took kitchen shears and cut large marshmallows into thirds. (I originally looked for Necco wafers for this step but couldn't find any, anywhere.)

For the nose you need orange gumdrops. But they don't sell just the orange...

...so I picked them all out and gave the rest of the bag to the hubby.


You also need black decorating gel, black licorice and red sprinkles. And red food coloring.


Sierra waiting patiently for me to drop something. She eats licorice, BTW.


Take white icing and add enough red food coloring to get a good red icing. I pretty much killed an entire bottle of food coloring and still only got a really dark pink.


After icing the cupcakes heavily, add enough red sprinkles to finish the red coloring and give Elmo his furry look.

Place two marshmallow thirds on top for the eyes with a gumdrop for the nose.

Then use your black decorator gel to make the pupils on the eyes. I started using the gel for the mouth as well, b/c I couldn't get the licorice to "smile" enough. (Elmo looked kind of perturbed.) However, I started running out of gel and was forced to use the licorice. With Robert's help, it works best if cut into a thin, thin strip and curled around your finger for a moment before placing on the cupcake.

He's going to be so excited! What do you think?

When to stop being a baby?

Robert and I are struggling with N right now being very attached to his paci. We keep it mainly for nap times and bedtime, but lately he's been demanding to keep it in after he awakens. I try to put my foot down about it but I've been struggling with work/fatigue/housekeeping/etc etc to fight him over it. This morning was the last straw.

He refused to sit in a chair to eat breakfast, wanting instead to carry a banana around with him and take out the p-a-c-i in between bites. After battling to get him to eat half a banana in a chair in the kitchen, he immediately got down and screamed for his paci. (Which I had hidden, although not well, on top of the refrigerator.) I just got angry at this point, took the paci and cut the rubber part off with a pair of scissors. Hmmm, want to guess what happened at this point? Total meltdown ensued...

I'm tired of this battle over the pacifier. When he wakes up at night with his paci on the floor, he cries and cries until I get up and hand it to him, thus ruining my sleep at some point most every night. If he gets hurt or falls down, he asks for it IMMEDIATELY. I really don't know how much he gets it at school or at my mom's, but at home it's a constant struggle.

Am I being too hard on him? Should I let it go and let him be a baby longer? He's fixing to have his second birthday and I'm afraid he'll be that kid I see at 3, 4, 5 years old with a binky still hanging out of his mouth. Eww. Any suggestions on how I can handle this or get him to let it go?

(BTW, I have more paci's other than the one I had Robert cut up this morning. An emergency stash. Do you think I'm attached to it more than he is??)