Chocolate Diapers

Jake and I walked to the grocery store a few weeks ago. The list, administered by Amy, was simple:

• asparagus
• milk
• bread
• tomatoes
• PENIS!

The last piece was my contribution, if you couldn’t figure that out. Whenever Amy leaves a written list of anything lying around—eulogy notes, for example—I add PENIS! to it.

Back to our walk. I spent the first leg programming my boy.

Me: M-I-A-M-I

Jake: Fight! Fight! Fight!

Me: C-A-N-E-S

Jake: Canes!

Me: We got some Canes over here…

Jake: Woosh! Woosh!

Me: Good boy.

We entered Dominick’s.

“Wow! We go grocery store!” Jake said and exploded with curiosity. From his stroller, his little hands pointed everywhere.

“Wazat Daddy Davit?”

“That’s a Starbuck’s.”

“Wazat Daddy?”

“Cookies.”

“Jakey eat it?”

“No. You’ve got your pretzels.”

“Wazat?”

“That’s a scooter for people who can’t walk.”

“Man riding can’t walk?”

“That’s right.”

Jake turned to me and held out an opened hand. “How come man can’t walk?”

“I don’t know. It can be any number of reasons.”

His expression became more perplexed, bordering on concern.

I sighed. “Maybe he has Polio or diabetes. Or he fell off his roof.”

Jake pointed elsewhere. “Wazat?”

“Paper towels.”

“Wazat, Daddy Davit?”

“Tampons.”

I crossed everything off the list except for PENIS!, and we checked out at the self-service section. I put the groceries in the little basket under the stroller, and we walked outside into the hot, dense air.

For several minutes, Jake played with and gnawed at a box. I thought nothing of it, and kept going. A little later, I snapped out of my aloofness. What is that box? Where did it  come from? Did Jake pull something out of the stroller basket?

I walked to the front of the stroller and saw that Jake was playing with a box of cake mix. Jake had stolen it.

I stole a pen from a gift shop in Marco Island when I was twelve. Jake shoplifted at two. The sun beat down on us. He looked at me with squinted eyes and smiled.

“Hi,” he said, and I laughed hard.

For the rest of the walk, I tried figuring out just how in the hell Jake so easily stole the box of cake mix. He must have simply and swiftly swiped the it from his stroller. Holy shit, the stealth!

Amy also laughed when I told her. It tired explaining the transgression to Jake.

“Jake, you stole something.”

“Jakey stole it,” he said with a wide smile.

“Stealing is illegal.”

Jake’s new affect is to laugh while talking. “Yeah-haha,” he said.

“I’m glad you think stealing is funny,” I said, not angry in the slightest.

“Stealing so so funny-hahaha.”

“You’re a thief.”

“Jakey feef-hahahaha.”

“How does that make you feel?”

He shrugged and smiled.

“You’re proud of this?”

“Ah ha.”

“You’re a proud thief.”

Jakey pwowed feef. Bake cake?”

“No. I think the right move is to return it.”

Amy brought it back, and her story drew laughter from the employees. Jake stayed home.

Jake is 2, and while I have tried many times to traumatize him, he seems to just roll with it and be happy. I’ve determined that he’s incorruptible, and his short-term trauma memory plays to my favor.  Still though, I’ve had to make sacrifices and reign it in a bit. I’ve cut back my cursing around him by 10 percent, but as he can’t read, I express it in other ways (See Figure 1).

He also mistakes my deviance with playing when I do this: 

And this:

And this:

Jake understands tone. He knows when I’m serious and when I’m not. Should I say with a smile and giggling voice, “I’m gonna gobble your feet!”, and pretend to eat them, he laughs because he knows I’m being silly. But when he takes off toward the street and my heart free falls, and I yell, “Get back here!”, he knows I’m sincere and mad. Jake believes everything I say in a serious tone because why would he imagine his father lying to him? I took note of this early.

Sometimes, all I want is to eat string cheese. I love the way it peels into perfect sizes. It always hits the spot as a snack before dinner. I don’t like sharing it because it won’t hit the spot then. And who shares string cheese? Jake interrupted my spot-hitting recently:

“Jakey eat it?”

“No.”

“Jakey eat it the stwing cheese?”

I sighed and tried to reason. “Come on. It’s only this big.”

“Jakey eat it?”

“You can’t,” I said sternly. “It will kill you.”

Amy glared at me until my insides hurt. But next time I ate string cheese, he asked for some, so clearly he wasn’t scarred.

When Jake graduated to people food, he was eager to try everything (Still is). He watched me use Tabasco Sauce back then and asked for some.

“Oh no,” I said. “It’s too spicy.”

“Too picee.”

“Right.”

Soon, he’d be begging to try our food even after he was fed when it was our turn to sit down to dinner. He wanted Amy’s pasta one night, and she said the sauce was too spicy, and he understood and quit the begging. And so we continued the harmless white lie, telling Jake our food was too spicy, so he’d leave us the hell alone while we ate. Again, I took note. What neither Amy nor Jake knew was that the wheels were spinning in my head, and I had hatched a master plan.

Since every single freedom I enjoyed prior to April 18, 2008 has vaporized, I needed something in order to hang on. For my survival, I decided to give myself creative license as a father. A lot of it. Which meant I could just make shit up. Consequently, now everything is too spicy.

We took a walk in Libertyville as they worked on our car, and I just didn’t want to stop at another Goddamn park.

“Go to park?” Jake asked.

“No,” I said. “The park is too spicy.”

“Come on,” Amy said to me.

“The park is too spicy!” I demanded.

I didn’t want Jake to play with my Palm Pre.

“Jakey hold it?”

“No. It’s too spicy.”

Nor did I want to get up from my lying down position to play music.

“Jakey listen to Yaydee Gaga, Bad Wohmance?”

“I don’t want to listen to Lady Gaga. Too spicy.”

Now Jake just curls his lips and turns away from me. He totally knows I’m bullshitting him.

I’m comfortable with all this. What am I supposed to do, tell him the truth? Parenting wouldn’t be any fun.

Amy and I just returned from our fifth-year anniversary trip to Seattle, the Oregon Coast, and Oregon wine country.

But you’re unemployed.

I know. Thank you.

How could you go on a trip?

Easy. We boarded a plane, and it took us to our destination.

But, but…

But nothing. We planned the trip a long time ago, and we weren’t going to cancel.

We went away for a week, and when people asked me if Jake was coming, too, I said,

“Of course he’s coming. Why wouldn’t we take him on our fifth anniversary trip? The thought of sleeping in nauseates me. I would cry if I missed changing his diarrhea diapers. Receiving 100 percent of my wife’s attention would just suck. Not schlepping Jake from vineyard to vineyard and tasting room to tasting room while not entertaining him between fast sips of Oregon pinot noir, would be a FUCKING CATASTROPHE!”

No, Jake did not come with us.

We flew first class, which was something like 712,000 miles each, but we had the miles. No Jake + traveling first class to the Pacific Northwest = the recipe for the best vacation ever.

I flew first class once by mistake when I was 14, and I was upgraded to business class on a flight home from Spain because I was food poisoned (When you’re in Madrid, always place your order by saying “buen cocinar” or well done. Otherwise, they will serve you raw chicken with its vagina still attached.) That was pre-9/11 when you could buy a coach seat and get upgraded by simply asking.

I haven’t had the privilege of flying first class as an adult, so I decided to act like a condescending asshole. When they announced that they were now boarding first class, I looked at all the sad bastards still sitting and said,

“Yeah, not second class.”

Once seated, I sipped  a Bloody Mary and shook my head at the lowly coach passengers doing the walk of shame to their seats, waving my drink at them.

After my Bloody Mary, I ordered a glass of wine. It was 8:30 in the morning. We took off, and they served us an underwhelming breakfast on a small tray covered with a sheet of foil. Right about then, I noticed that my seat wasn’t very large.  There were free drinks, but no cool amenities like our own T.V. screens that slickly slid out of the top of our arm rests, or anything mutli-media for that matter.  Hmm, I thought. Small meal and average sized seat. Yep, we were flying coach from 12 years ago. At least we used miles. Only a shithead would pay for a first class ticket.

Our trip was fantastic, and Seattle and Oregon are beautiful, progressive societies with the freshest food and the best wine I’ve ever tasted. Being there made me forget that places like Newark and Indiana exist.

But a weird feeling came over me.

I missed Jake. We’ve gone away without him a few times, and I was happy to see him when we returned, but I’d never been away from him for seven days. By the fifth day, I didn’t just miss him, I wanted him to be with us. By the seventh, it felt like I had been away for a month. Not on vacation for a month, but away from my son for a month. Don’t get me wrong, I had a memorable vacation, and Jake, who stayed with Grandma and Pappa, was happier than a tapeworm eating intestines, but I missed a week of Jake’s life, and that is a long time during the insanely rapid development of a two-year-old.

My father-in-law brought Jake for the ride when he picked us up at the airport. He looked older, I shit you not. He even sounded older when he said,

“Hi Mommy Amy. Hi Daddy Davit.”

We’ve only traveled with Jake to see family. I used to  think it was stupid to take a small child on a destination vacation. What a waste, right?  How could a two-year old appreciate Maine, Maui or Paris? I’m over it, and we already decided one day soon we’re taking Jake to Portland.

And if we have enough miles left, we’ll fly first class again, and Jake will drink his first Bloody Mary.

On the Friday before Father’s Day, I lost my job, and Chocolate Diapers had nothing to do with it. In an instant, my nine-to-five, half our income, and my livelihood were gone. I’ve been unemployed before, but not since I’ve been a father, so this was, in addition to being upsetting, kind of strange.

After the tears and the bat-to-the-face shock subsided, Amy said that now I could spend more time with Jake.

It occurred to me that I’d never spent a full day with Jake, just the two of us. I had run errands with just him, and we had our weekday afternoons and Sunday mornings when I didn’t voluntarily pass out on the couch, but never a father-son day. Amy is off Wednesdays and calls it her Mommy-Jake day. I tested the idea with Jake while he and I (not passed out) sat on the couch Father’s Day morning.

“Jakey,” I said. “Daddy doesn’t have a job anymore, but the good news is that we can spend more time together.”

He nodded slightly.

“You know how you have Mommy-Jake Day? Well, tomorrow is going to be Daddy-Jake Day!”

Jake handed me the remote without making eye contact. “Watch Sessie Elmo,” he said.

We started the next day by returning a mattress cover to Bed, Bath and Beyond. We came home and played in the basement, and Jake told me that,

“Mommy so so pretty. Daddy so so bald.”

“But am I also so so pretty?” I asked.

“No.”

“I’m just so so bald?”

“Ah hah.”

“So you’re saying being bald and pretty are mutually exclusive?”

“Yes.”

We took a trip to Costco for another return and waited in line with a man in a shirt and tie with a Blue Tooth in his ear—clearly on his lunch break— furiously scrolling his Blackberry. I tried a little too hard to pretend that I wasn’t unemployed. I began making shit up loud enough for Mr. Blackberry to hear.

“Isn’t this nice having the day off!” I yelled at Jake. “I’m so glad I’ve accrued enough PTO to have a day like this! I have to write SEVEN proposals tomorrow.”  I shook my head at Mr. Blackberry,  an engaging gesture that I understood his world. He just frowned at me.

You can’t just return something at Costco and leave. For a moment in the liquor section, I lost myself, casually grabbing a bottle of Macallan 12, which costs $40. I came to before placing it in the cart.

That’s right. Got to be more cautious now.

I put it back on the shelf. We bought nothing, and instead of stopping somewhere for lunch, we ate free samples of Swedish meatballs, Kirkland tortilla chips and hummus, Home Run Pizza triangles, Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookies and Flinstones vitamins.

When we got home and went on a walk, Jake inquired about mushrooms sticking out of our neighbor’s grass.

“Jakey eat it?”

“No, you’ll hallucinate.”

“Hawoosnate.”

“Right.”

Before putting Jake down for nap, we did our customary rocky rocky time on the glider. He understands when we tell him that the babysitter is coming or that we’re leaving town or that we’re taking him to the doctor. I wanted to discuss my situation more, but he was being silly.

“Daddy is unemployed,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said laughing.

“Is that funny?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it going to be funny when we have to sell your crib and use food stamps?”

He went to sleep, and I filed for unemployment benefits and started applying for positions. Amy, ever the planner, got the ball rolling the moment I broke the bad news to her. She updated my profile on Monster, CareerBuilder and Indeed, and created job alerts. Lists of  good-looking corporate communication opportunities waited for me in my inbox, and friends were reaching out to their contacts on my behalf. I made good progress while Jake slept, and suddenly, I felt a little better. Jake woke up in a good mood, and that lifted me even more. Then he headbutted the shit out of me.

Amy and I discussed ways we’d need to cut back until I got a new job: fewer dinners out, babysitters maybe once a month, scale back daycare from three to two days a week, cancel Netflix and our wine club membership. I knew the wine club would be nosy, and when they inevitably asked why I was canceling, I’d tell them it was none of their fucking business. The call went like this:

Me: I need to cancel our membership for now?

Girl: Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. May I ask why?

Me: I lost my job.

Girl: Oh no. Are you doing okay?

Me: I am. Still kind of shocked, but I’m hanging in there.

Girl: Well, I’m sure you’ll find something soon, and you can always rejoin when you’re ready.

Me: Yeah, it’s still so new. I didn’t see it coming at all. It’s really tough to swallow.

Girl: Okay, well…

Me: I guess I’m kind of a stay-at-home dad now, which isn’t so bad because I get to see more of my son.

Girl: That’s great. Well, when you’re ready, just…

Me: At least now the job market’s better. A year ago, I would’ve been screwed.

Girl: Yeah. Okay well…

Me: So it looks pretty promising, you know?

Girl: Yep. Okay, have a good day Mr. Telisman.

I showed her.

Having been in this awful place before, I knew I had to quickly establish a routine, otherwise I’d drown. Like I would at work, I’ve been setting daily agendas:

• Apply to jobs
• Follow up with my network
• Update Linkedin profile
• Dishes
• Laundry
• Marinate chicken
• Swim

I’ve been operating from our home office, which Amy and Jake have decorated for me.

There is a silver lining to all this. There are a lot of neat jobs out there, and they seem to present bigger and better opportunities. Also, I’m really enjoying this time with Jake. I may never have this opportunity again. Jake is succeeding in wrapping me more around his finger. I don’t yell as much, and when he says he wants a sucker candy for breakfast, I give it to him.

I wouldn’t wish unemployment on anyone except the people who bestowed it upon me. That and scabies. It damages your self-worth, and that horrible moment when they tell you you’re out creates a new trauma for you. It’s enough to crumble you. But things are looking up for me. I have three interviews scheduled, and everyday I find job postings that excite me. I’ve got momentum, and I’ve got Jake.

I take one look at him, and I need no other motivation.

Railroad crossings used to make me anxious because I hated getting stuck at them. As I’d approach, and suddenly the lights would flash and the barricades dropped, I’d feel like a complete loser.

“Goddamn it!” I’d yell and watch the train roll by.

In that moment I questioned every decision I made leading up to that point:

• Why didn’t I leave the house sooner?
• Why did I waste time tying laces when I could have worn flip flops?
• Did I really have to stop and feed Jake?

Sometimes reckless thoughts enter my mind. Hmm. The barricades are down, but the train is a good 100 yards away. I should go for it! I’m sure I’d make it, but I wouldn’t want the train to honk at me. It’s like getting yelled at when you know you’re wrong. And if I didn’t make it, I’d be killed. So there’s that.

There’s a crossing on West Lake Avenue near my house where I get stuck a lot. That it’s so close to my home makes getting stuck more aggravating, especially when I have a code brown.

A neat thing is happening though. I don’t mind getting stuck anymore. In fact, when I’m with Jake, I look forward to it. He loves trains, and the glow in his face when he hears and sees one is simply indelible. “Kids make everything better” suddenly isn’t an entirely bullshit statement.

What used to irritate me has changed into a bonding opportunity.   On Tuesday, I turned onto West Lake and hoped for a train. Sure enough the lights flashed, the barricades dropped, and the cars in front of us stopped.

“Jakey!” I beamed. “A train is coming!”

He smiled widely. “Wow! Train. See it!”  It was a long cargo train.

I turned to my mesmerized son. “This is cool, isn’t it?”

“So so cool,” he said.

The train continued, and Jake craned his neck and said something that sounded like “go kart.”

“Go kart?” I said.

“Go car,” he said. Then for clarification, “GO CAR.”

I got it.  “Oh, you want the cars to go?”

“Yeah.”

“So we could get close, and you could see the train better?”

“Yeah.”

“But if the cars go, they’ll get hit by the train.”

“Ah ha.”

“Do you want that?”

“Ah ha.”

“You want cars to get hit by the train?”

“Yes.”

“There will be bloodshed. Do you want bloodshed?”

“Yes.”

“Body parts will be strewn about. Do you want that?”

“Ah ha.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”   I did nothing, and my disappointed son continued to crane his neck and command the cars to go. I let him down.

Perhaps seeing an androgynous human being at a bus stop would cheer him up. After the train passed, we came to a stop sign, and that person was waiting for the bus.  Claudia or Claudio—we’ll call said person—wore jeans and a polo shirt, had curly hair, some boobs and a soul patch. I studied the person more and mumbled, “What is that?”

“Womanman,” Jake answered jubilantly.  He pointed and repeated himself, “Womanman.”

Niceties first:

• Over Memorial Day weekend, we attended a beautiful wedding, watching the last of my un-hitched college friends get married.
• We visited dear friends and family.
• I brought Amy to my high school in the Bronx and reconnected with teachers and administrators whom I haven’t seen in 18 years.
• And I ate perhaps the best slice of pizza I’ve ever had.

Everything else was horrible.

We knew ahead of time that it would be a whirlwind of a trip, fitting in all of the above in three days. But I, the optimist, found comfort in the fact that we would not be flying with Jake or waking up with him. That mattered little. Our hopes of relaxation were dashed by the chaos, heat, filth and shitness that is New York City.

After being solicited by nine unlicensed and over priced vigilante drivers, we took a real cab from LaGuardia Airport that had no air conditioning. Fifty dollars and an hour of screech and go later, we checked into our claustrophobic and dangerous Columbus Circle hotel room. While inside the room, I felt like I was in the trash compactor scene in the original Star Wars. The walls weren’t closing in, but I had no reason to believe there wasn’t a garbage monster living in the blue carpet. The beds (Yes that’s plural, because why put one fucking bed in a tiny room?) had wooden frames with jutting corners as sharp as spears. Each time I moved, one of the corners jabbed my shin.

At least we had a view of the place where junkies come to die.

Walking the steamy, rank streets of the West Side, I couldn’t avoid a corner where someone wanted me to buy something. Peddlers peddled anything: bus tours, homemade postcards, shirts, electronics, shawarma. Ice cream trucks called Mr. Softy stopped in the middle of the street (the middle of the street) to feed amorphous Ohioans.

Great city planning Mayor Bloomberg. After dissolving term-limits and declaring yourself Absolute Monarch, did you get everyone together and say, “Men, let’s turn this city into the largest flea market in the world!”? 

I wanted to bring our luggage down to the streets to see what we could sell, but there wasn’t enough time.  Say what you will about Chicago politics, but Mayor Daley doesn’t put up with that shit in the city. Our streets are clean. Repressed Amish teenagers on their Rumspringa can stroll Michigan Avenue unapproached by some pushy vendor trying to sell them picture frames.

Still, I kept trying to like New York. I lived in the Bronx as a teenager and loved taking trips into Manhattan. I romanticized New York City as the creative center of the world  where the greatest opportunities lay. Even on this trip, I found myself awed by Broadway, the Carnegie Deli and the global headquarters of major corporations. But to call this place the greatest city in the world is absolute horseshit.

When the mugginess causes my balls to stick to my leg, I expect the greatest city in the world to be air conditioned. Except for our hotel room, where we spent the least time, nowhere—restaurants, drugstores, cabs, buses—provided air conditioner. It’s like a thing in New York, and it was intolerable.

Call me overly utopic, but I think the greatest city in the world should try to contain vermin. After dinner one night, we grabbed dessert at the famed Magnolia Bakery in a posh West Side neighborhood. There wasn’t space to eat inside (Shocker!), so we stood on the sidewalk lined with small trees that sat in beds of mini bushes. A mouse scurried out of the one closest to us to snatch a crumb and returned to the bushes. Okay, I thought, big cities have mice. At least it wasn’t a rat. Not one second later, like a digitized special effect, up to 30 mice zipped out.

“Oh Christ!” I shouted and jumped in Amy’s arms.

Even more disturbing, the mice hung around; they weren’t afraid of people. Does Chicago have mice? Yes. Are there terrifyingly plump rats. Absolutely. Do they brazenly hangout in front of Alinea, Tru and Roy’s? No, because we have alleys. We don’t pile our garbage in front of our businesses. We give a shit.

Our flight was scheduled for 4 p.m. on Tuesday, giving us enough time to visit Fordham Prep in the early afternoon. We were food, alcohol and heat fatigued, but we had enough energy for one final event. We arrived, I shook hands with the alumni relations director, and Amy got a call from American Airlines that our flight was cancelled due to weather. But there was a chance we could go on standby for a later flight.

“But it’s sunny here, and it’s sunny in Chicago,” Amy told them. Right, they said, but there was bad weather everywhere between. Of course.

We carried on with the tour of the school while trying to come up with a plan. Jake would be fine because he was with my in-laws. We’d have to make arrangements to miss work and to find a hotel in Queens for the night. We would have to cover the cost of transportation and the hotel. American Airlines is not monetarily responsible for what they term an “Act of God.” I wondered if I could make diarrhea on the face of Gerard J. Arpey, Chairman, President and CEO of American Airlines and claim it was an act of God. Arpey. What kind of name is that? Asshole. Fuck you.

We took a sixty dollar cab ride to LaGuardia from the Bronx to learn that all American Airlines flights to Chicago for the remainder of the day head been cancelled. Our only option to get the fuck out was a United flight that left Newark. We took a fifty dollar hour-and-a-half ride in a van shuttle thing with no air conditioner to Newark Liberty International Airport. We waited in line at security, placed our carry-ons in those bins on the counter, separated our ziplocked liquids, removed our belts and shoes, and the X-ray machine broke. I’m not FUCKING KIDDING. We put on our belts, shoes, repacked our carry-ons, walked to the next security area, nearly causing an insurrection as the TSA allowed us to cut the line.

Amy was livid, but I had nothing left. I just took it like a whipping boy.

“Let’s have a drink and a good dinner,” Amy said.

Naturally the terminal in this vomit of an airport had neither a bar nor any restaurants. We were determined, so we took a shuttle to the Continental terminal and found a pathetic sit down joint where a man who looked
like a down and out Vincent D’onofrio ate lemon wedges at the table next to us. We waited back at our terminal through two delays. I stared out the windows. Newark, like Northwest Indiana, is a place that shouldn’t exist.

Amy’s mom met us at our house at 10 p.m with Jake, but not before we got stuck at a railroad crossing waiting for two trains. When we leave him behind, I always fear he’ll resent us a little when we take him back home. Amy opened the door to her mom’s car, and Jake gave us a tired smile.

“Hi,” he said.

That was the best part of the weekend. Even better than the pizza.

I still haven’t accepted getting up with Jake on the weekends. Sundays weren’t meant for 6 a.m. I hate it. I curse God each time.

Baruch Atah Adonai fuck you.

Two years, one month and eight days into this, and I’m not used to it. Obviously, I should stop waking up with him if it makes me feel this way. But that’s too simple, and there’s nothing simple about parenting.

If parenting were simple then my reason for choosing Sunday morning wake-up duty would be working out better. My master plan was to get crazy Friday nights, sleep in Saturdays, and rely on that much needed rest to push me through Sundays. Instead, Amy falls asleep Fridays at 7, I stay up till 2 watching River Monsters on Animal Planet, I get drunk on Saturday nights, and I’m as good as dog shit Sunday mornings.

Even if he’s up, I don’t go into Jake’s room before 6:45 (Ooh, I’m such a fucking renegade!) When I open his door, Jake is standing in his crib, banging the top bar with his palm. He might as well ring a bell. I try to convince him to go back to sleep.

“Buddy,” I’ll say, “It’s not time to get up yet. Can you go back to night night?”

“Yes,” he’ll whisper, and I’ll fall for it. He’ll lie back down. “Night night.”

Right as my head hits the pillow again, he’ll resume banging the bar.

There’s a sentiment that these one-on-one moments are a special bonding time. I felt that during 3 a.m. feedings when Jake was an infant. But that shit’s old by now. At 6:45 a.m. on a Sunday, Jake cares only about milk and Sesame Street, and I care about squeezing in some extra zzz’s. I’ve actually pulled it off where I sleep an extra hour on the couch while Jake watches Elmo and plays.

I’ve been unsuccessful the last two Sundays when I needed it most. Two Saturdays ago, Amy and I had a great night. Since we moved into our house, we’ve been threatening to get a babysitter, walk to the town center on a warm night, get drunk and stumble home. Well we finally did it! Except it wasn’t a warm night because May 15 is actually November 21 in Chicago. We sat at the bar and drank ass-kicking margaritas and ate chips and salsa. Stoned on the tequila, we went next door and had oysters and fried calamari. I also had a beer, which in hindsight—and by hindsight, I mean 6:45 the next morning—wasn’t a good idea.

I thought Jake might be super and sleep past 8, but he started moaning at 6:15. I didn’t get him till 6:45 (Ooh badass!). Hazy and hungover, he led me downstairs, I poured his milk, turned on the T.V. and dropped on the couch. I mouthed the words to the all too familiar PNC Grow Up Great and Beaches Family Resorts commercials that precede the Sesame Street program, as I fell back to sleep. A minute later, Jake climbed on my balls, stomach and chest and sat next to me.

“Cuddle?”

“Okay, but Daddy’s gonna go back to sleep.”

I woke to Jake dropping his sippie cup on my head and milk spraying my mouth. He’d gone into the kitchen to play with his toys. A minute later he was back, and he was bored, which meant I was fucked. He stood in front of the T.V., dropped his hands to his sides and sighed repeatedly like Al Gore when he debated George W. Fuckface.

“Fine,” I said, getting up. “Jesus Christ.”

I was in the same place at the same time last Sunday, except I had a red wine hangover, which was more forgiving than the tequila. Still, it was no picnic. Jake smiled brightly when I opened his door. Picture the sight: I’m wearing only my boxer-briefs with my sickly legs and my titties and fupa hanging out. But he was happy to see me. I took my place on the couch again, aching for just 20 more minutes of sleep. Right next to me, Jake pressed the button on the ear of his Hallmark dog, playing the song:

And they call it puppy love

Ooh, I guess they’ll never know

“Do you have to do that now?”

He pressed it again and again and again. I took it away from him and stuffed it under my pillow. I closed my eyes, and he operated his Deere truck, cycling through all the loud sounds it makes. I moved the truck somewhere inconvenient for Jake. I’ll try once more, I thought. I stretched on the couch and my eyes shut. From his toy area in the kitchen, Jake opened every container, and it started raining toys. Matchbox cars crashed to the floor. Books thudded. Crayons and markers rolled. And that was that.  I got up and washed the remaining dishes from the previous night’s dinner.

I started with the red wine glasses.

We should just let Jake drink out of a normal cup, like the rest of us. Sure, he’d spill more, but he still manages to leak milk, staining everything that was pristine before he crowded our lives. Our couch constantly looks like bare-back prom night. Same with the carpet, chairs and our dining room table.

FUCK YOU sippy cups! Fuck your stupid name. Fuck how hard it is to clean you. And fuck the way you let milk congeal.

I do the dishes more than Amy. She disagrees, and she’ll be mad that I’m saying so. But I simply do, even though she has a way of making me doubt this. It plays out like this: I’ll have washed the dishes three nights in a row, and on the fourth night toward the end of dinner, she’ll say, presumptuously,

“Thanks for doing the dishes tonight.”

“Um, I’d say it’s your turn by now.”

“I’ve done them every night this week,” she’ll say.

“What? No you haven’t. I have.”

“No you haven’t.”

Like a Jew donkey, I’ll do them again because I can’t prove it. I’m going to set up a tri-pod in the kitchen and tape myself washing the dishes. That probably still won’t be enough evidence.

Back to the sippy cups. In some ways, Jake is becoming more cooperative. When he finishes his milk, he puts it in the sink himself. If he finds a cup from earlier in the day, he’ll say,

“Old milk. Jakey put in sink.”  Then from the living room, I’ll hear shattering glass and plates. Jake doesn’t simply drop the cup in; he fastballs it and walks away from the wreckage.

Cleaning sippy cups makes me angry. You can’t just place them face down in the dishwasher like normal cups or glasses. You must first irrigate them of their festering mung (more on that in a minute), then deconstruct them, separating top, straw and body.  Emptying the dishwasher sucks as it is, and disrupting your rhythm to reassemble the sippy cup makes it more of a bitch. The straws don’t help. Those crafty little bastards like to slip to the bottom of the dishwasher, making me crawl inside to find them. It’s not worth it, especially when you’re dealing with milk.

I don’t drink milk because I don’t like it, and I’m not a gentile. Milk worries me. I’ve always found that a liquid kept at room temperature remains a liquid.  That’s not the case with milk. Milk curdles. In sippy cups, milk curdles badly. Cleaning those sippie cups is the worst part of parenting. Changing a messy diaper, even if it’s baby rrhea isn’t as gross. You expect shit to smell like shit. You don’t expect sippy cups with old milk to smell like cadaver asshole. Okay, I’m using license. I don’t really know what cadaver asshole smells like. What I do know is that I’ll twist open the sippy cup, and the smell of regular ole’ asshole is released. You know what I’m talking about. You have days where you’ve neglected your bad place in the shower, and depending on how you sit throughout the day, you notice the not-so-fresh odor wafting from underneath. It’s disturbing that this takes place in our kitchen sink where we, you know, stack dishes that we eat from. The goopy, stinky milk drains into the garbage disposal, which simply farts the stench back up whenever I use it.

We’ve moved Jake from whole milk to one percent to skim. I think the next move is water. In a regular cup.

Abraham was commanded by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Big fucking deal.

I’ve been forced to make a greater sacrifice. I’ve stopped listening to the Howard Stern Show with Jake in the car, and I usually drive with Jake in the car. If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll agree with what I’m about to say. If you don’t listen to the show, I hope to enlighten you. And if you like Eric and Cathy, I hope your genitals catch fire. I really really do.

I’ve listened to the Stern show for 12 years. I loved it on regular radio, but it improved exponentially when he moved to Sirius. I don’t listen for the porn stars or lesbians. I like hearing their stories (and Sybian rides), but that’s not the draw for me. What I enjoy most is the style of interview that Howard conducts and the unintentional show within the show that emerges during his interactions with his staff. It’s simple for me. Celebrities with loads of skeletons in their closets get pitched softballs by Larry King, Jay Leno and Oprah. But when Martha Steward comes on Howard, she admits to using a vibrator. When there are no guests, I can listen for hours as Howard busts Bababooey’s balls or impersonates his yiddishkeit parents. When I ordered Sirius, I began loving traffic. I’m not kidding. Getting stuck in the Kennedy Expressway clusterfuck gridlock suddenly felt like a blessing.

But it is an uncensored show. Very uncensored, and Jake is simply repeating too much. He is ahead of the curve. Our weekly Babycenter.com email said that our new two-year-old will start stringing words together. Well, he started that a while ago, and I’d rather he say sentences like, “Daddy is so so cool” than “Let’s fuck some whores!”

My decision to pull the plug is a little late, but not too late. Jake had this to say while I changed his diaper last week:

“Big truck outside.”

“That’s the UPS truck,” I said. “They deliver all your toys.”

“Ash hole.”

“What?” I said, smiling.

“Ash hole.”

Then there was the incident during Rocky Rocky, which is our bed time ritual where we rock Jake in the glider. On this night, he wanted Amy to sing to him.

“Five little monkeys jumping on the bed,” she sang. “One fell off and bumped his head. Mommy called the doctor and the doctor said…What did the doctor say, Jake?”

“Booshet.”

“What?”

“Boo shet.”

“Did you hear what he said?”

“Yeah,” I answered and left the room hurriedly.

I didn’t want it to escalate. My friends with older children told me the day would come when I’d have to turn off the radio, and I’d brush them off, clearly in denial. The day came on Monday, and it sucked. It’s second nature for me to turn on my Sirius the second my car starts. Stopping what is rote just feels wrong. The first two days, I felt very agitated and panicky like a meth head in rehab. One day at a time, I keep telling myself. Today is better.

In the end, Abraham didn’t have to carry out his sacrifice. An angel stopped him and gave him a ram instead. I made good on my sacrifice, but it hasn’t gone unrewarded. I settled for the CD player on Monday, which played a Pearl Jam show I saw in 2006. Jake loves it. “Mo Pearl Jam,” he says.

That’s pretty cool.

On April 18, Jake began the third year of his life. Yes, I know he’s two, but that means he’s completed two years of his life, so now begins the third. I think so. Right? Anyway, I wanted to take a moment and reflect on what he’s accomplished in two years.

It’s gone by very fast, but we have documented the stages in Jake’s baby book, on video and in Chocolate Diapers. I can sum up everything Jake has achieved in one word:

Nothing.

It’s been three years, and Jake has nothing to show for it. He doesn’t have a job, he’s never won a contest, and he hasn’t cured heart disease. He’s grown and gotten older, and that’s about it. Sorry, but I don’t count existingas a societal contribution. Can he recite his ABCs? Yes. Did that save any shrimp dying in the BP oil spill? No. Does he now play in the basement by himself? Yes. Did that stop Bret Michaels’ brain bleed? No.

Nonetheless, I’d like to share some of our favorite moments in the last year.

Koh Koh Kahn Kahn

At some point in February, Jake developed an African dialect. Wednesday is Amy’s pseudo day off from work, and she usually calls me from the car while running an errand with Jake. Normally, Jake would say “Hi Daddy” and tell me he loves me. One day, the conversation changed.

“Hi buddy,” I said.

“Hi Daddy.”

“Jakey, what did you eat for lunch?”

“Koh Koh Kahn Kahn.”

“What?”

“Koh Koh Kahn Kahn.”

“What the hell is that?”

“He’s been saying it all day,” Amy said. “I have no idea what it means.”

“Koh Koh Kahn Kahn!” Jake yelled in the background.

It continued the next day when I picked up Jake from daycare.

“Who did you play with today?”

“Koh Koh Kahn Kahn.”

“No shit?”

By now, Jake practices brevity.

“Jake, who’s on your shirt?”

“Koh Koh.”

“What do you want for dinner?”

“Kahn Kahn.”

I suppose ”Koh Koh” and “Kahn Kahn” are contractions for Koh Koh Kahn Kahn. Maybe Koh Koh is to Koh Koh Kahn Kahn as Gitmo is to Guantanamo Bay.

I asked Jake and he said,

“Yes.”

But Jake won’t tell us the meaning of Koh Koh Kahn Kahn. Instead he stonewalls.

“What does Koh Koh Kahn Kahn mean?”

“Koh Koh Kahn Kahn.”

“Okay. What about just Koh Koh? What does Koh Koh mean?”

“Koh Koh.”

“What does Kahn Kahn mean?”

“Kahn Kahn.”

It’s the frustration one feels when looking up “prognosticate” only to learn the definition is “The act of prognostication.” Thanks Noah Webster. Asshole.

So we just go with it. I’ve even created a song to the tune of a bell tolling in the new hour:

Koh Koh Kahn Kahn

Kahn Kahn Koh Koh

Jake sings with me.

Me: Koh Koh

Jake: Kahn Kahn

Me: Kahn Kahn

Jake: Koh Koh.

Wiping Me

I am guilty of sharing too many bathroom stories on Chocolate Diapers, and here’s another. Jake just loves following us to the bathroom to soak up the sights, sounds and smells. Perhaps we brought this on ourselves by reading the book Everyone Poops to him every night. It’s second nature by now to observe Jake staring at me at my basest condition, crumbled on the toilet making excretion. But Jake is developing. The wheels are spinning, and he desires to make every moment purposeful. I definitely know my son, and he demonstrated that he knows me a few weeks ago. He somehow sensed I was finished going to the bathroom. He tore off a piece of toilet paper, neatly and just the right size, folded it and tried finding a seam to, uh, wipe me.  First I stopped him, and then I laughed.

“Oh my God,” I said. “How do you know to do that?”

Bad Haircut; Still Handsome

Jake’s last haircut didn’t go as planned. We take him to the same place in our neighborhood because they normally do a good job. A new person cut his hair this time, and she fooled us into thinking that she wouldn’t cut his hair too short. Jake entered with a raggy but cute mop-top and he left as Brandon Tina, Hillary Swank’s transgendered character in Boys Don’t Cry. Even worse, his hair grew in fucked up, still short on top but strandy on the sides. All I saw when I looked at my son was the Amish kid from Witness. We didn’t keep our feelings secret. We told Jake he had a bad hair cut, and he would repeat it.

“Bad haowcut.”

Amy thought fast to preserve his self-image.

“You have a bad haircut,” she said. “But you’re still so handsome.”

“Bad haowcut. Still han some.”

And it stuck. When I brought Jake to daycare that Monday, the daycare lady remarked,

“Look how short your hair is!”

I turned to Jake. “Bad haircut, but…”

“Still han some,” he said affirmatively.

Missing the Mark

Amy’s been acquainting Jake with the toilet to prep him for potty training. The problem, though, is that he’ll lie about needing to make pee pee or poo poo. He’ll say he has to go, and Amy will rush to put him on the toilet, and he’ll do nothing. I was in our room, and after not peeing, Jake stopped by, naked, to say hello. Jake always enters a room running, and he runs with his legs only, while his upper body flails. When he’s naked, it’s really cute. He’s not sure how he feels about his penis yet. He stared at it, and walked slowly, guided by it. He got to our bathroom and peed an unimpressive weak stream—like a dog and an old man—on the base of our toilet and the towel we step on following our showers. He still asked for a treat, which he’ll get when he actually goes in the toilet.

Speaking of Potty Training

Now I’ll turn to the road ahead. In the year 3, all I can see is all that I dread: potty training. I mean this sincerely. I don’t want to ever potty train Jake. The idea of taking him into a public restroom sickens me. I’m retching as I write this. Delivering the mail in a public restroom isn’t beneath me. But I have a way. I will patiently wait till I find the magic stall, and there’s always a magic stall. When I was out one Thursday night in college at Coconut Grove, midnight-arrhea smacked me far away from a decent toilet. I didn’t even consider the horrible bathroom at Murphy’s, where I was drinking. I ran many blocks to the bathrooms by the Coco Walk movie theater, and the toilets were splattered, and I didn’t settle. I was close to panic, but I remembered the Mayfair, the swanky hotel across the street. I strolled calmly into the lobby, though desperate inside, and found a pristine men’s room.

If Jake is potty trained, and he has to go, he won’t wait for the Mayfair. He’ll have to go now, and the single toilet restroom at Potbelly won’t be pretty. He can just shit in his self-containing diaper, where I can change it in a familiar, clean environment.  And he can do it at 7, 8, 9, 10. I’ll work with Pampers to start a new line of diapers for lazy fathers.

And for not being potty trained, he’ll get a treat.