Shit. I don’t have any rainbow sprinkles.
My child’s teacher had graciously texted me earlier in the day – “Are you doing anything for his birthday in class tomorrow? If not I will probably do something for him!” In all the planning for his birthday party that Saturday, I had completely forgotten about bringing cupcakes to school. “Yes, I’ll bring cupcakes!” I would not have time to grab them from the store or bakery the next morning because of my schedule, so I had cake mix and frosting delivered to my door and made them after the kids went to bed. I went to frost and decorate them with some rainbow or otherwise birthday-ish sprinkles – but there were none in the pantry.
My choices were remnants of Halloween, Christmas, Easter, Summer, and Valentine’s day sprinkles in those canisters that give you like 5 different kinds of sprinkles in one container. I don’t love any of these, I thought. None of them could really pass as “birthday sprinkles.” Ok – but what if I mix some of them?
I pulled what I had and started dumping them into a bowl. Black and orange jimmies from Halloween, lime green, white and blue ones with some white stars from summer, red and green dots from Christmas, and pink, purple, and white dots from Valentine’s Day. It didn’t look bad, actually. This would do.
I sprinkled them on top of each chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting for my chocolate-loving boy, and felt satisfied with my very last-minute work. My child had birthday cupcakes and he would feel special. And all those little moments of buying special sprinkles, of stopping long enough to bake something, of enjoying a sprinkled cookie with the kids, had actually left me the perfect mixture with which to decorate these last-minute birthday cupcakes.
To all the parents trying their best – remember the sprinkles! It’s not the big-bang moments of parenting success that matter. It’s all the little moments throughout the year that will add up to just enough.
