My weekend: Miles walking, cupcakes & no sleep

Here's my weekend in one sentence: I got next to no sleep but I did walk 5 miles before emcee'ing the Cupcake Smackdown. To break it down, I'll address each part with the most important one first.

How the hell do I get Ryder to go to sleep? This kid is either a developing superhero who's power is never needing sleep or else he's been put on earth to be a torture device. Seriously, have a Guantanamo POW babysit for a weekend and in no time we'll not only know where to find Bin Laden, we'll have his cell phone number AND we'll know who killed JFK. Ryder's ability to stay awake has resulted in severe sleep deprivation for both Mommy & Daddy. Sanity must be saved. We tried the "cry it out" method. He'll scream until he's hoarse, pause for a moment and resume screaming. He is a happy boy unless you try to put him down for a nap. Then my sweet, playful babe turns into a hellspawn demonseed. He's perfectly content to live on a total of 6 hours of sleep per night while we are struggling to survive. Oh, but he'll nap if you're holding him. Only if you're holding him. The moment his back hits the bed, the couch, the quilt on the floor he's wide eyed and good to go. If he wants to continue sleeping, he'll cry voraciously until you pick him up again. Then he'll sleep 5 more minutes. Arrgggh!!! I want to burn my copy of On Becoming Babywise because it's been no help at all.

A much nicer part of my weekend was spent emceeing the Cupcake Smackdown 1.0. I was slated to be a judge but got pressed into emcee duties instead. My waistline thanks the organizer of the Smackdown for that good decision. I did eat one cupcake, a french toast one. It was frosted with either maple syrup flavored buttercream or perhaps a light cream cheese frosting and topped with candied bacon. Bacon!! I'm totally making these at home once we finish moving my kitchen stuff from storage. Need my blender for the frosting. The Smackdown was a huge success with approximately 1,000 folks attending. Exhausting and fun. You can see me, in a red shirt, standing on the stage in front of the windows in the very full bar in a pic on the blog Foodie is the New Forty. There's also a pic of the french toast cupcake.

I'm still training for the Rock & Roll Half Marathon in San Antonio. Not sure how I'll come up with the money for the entry fee. It's $90 until the end of the month when it goes up to $95. I just don't have an extra almost hundred bucks in the budget. At any rate, I did 5 miles with my more-faithful-than-me workout partner Stephanie Delk. Stephanie rocks, in more ways than one (follow the link to her website). She keeps me going when I'd like to lay down on the sidewalk or catch a cab. Or a bus. Or commandeer a private car by pretending my water bottle is a large grenade, anything so that I don't have to finish our route. It was humid and hot on Saturday morning and I was ticked that my heart rate monitor stopped working. Or at least we think it did, since it kept giving me a reading of 238 yet I was still upright, mobile and conscious.

Next weekend I have no plans. I'm going to try to keep it that way, too.