As I regress Jake develops faster. Too fast it seems for his own good. He’s getting cocky and becoming a bit of a show-off. Until last week, Jake counted only to three.

Then Tuesday I opened my palm, and he counted to five. I stuck my other index finger out and he got to six then seven and eight. I made him repeat it, and in an instructional, over-confident tone, he said,

“One, two, free, four, fie, six, seven, eight!”

“Yay!” I said and clapped for him, but he turned away from me, essentially thumbing his nose, and played with his fake kitchen. I gave him another chance to not be rude, and again after effortlessly counting to eight, he shunned me after I congratulated him.

Still, being the better man, I was excited for Amy to hear Jake count. She walked in, and Jake ran to his mother like he always does, and after the fuss, I held up my fingers, and Jake cleared his throat and said,

“One, free, four, six, seven eight.”

Amy started insanely clapping, but I pointed in his face. “Ha! You messed up! Not such hot shit now are you?”

Amy hugged him anyway, and he reciprocated and showed her gratitude.

Jake also thinks he’s a much better dancer than he really is. Every night before dinner, Amy plays the same Goddamn playlist on her iPod—I tell her we might as well move to Best Buy. He needs to hear the choo choo song first, which is the Glee version of “Don’t Stop Believing” because to that toddler brain of his, the intro sounds like a fucking train. There are more Glee songs, Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA”, and “I’ve Got a Feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas. I remind Amy that we have a boy, but it’s no use. It’s no use.

We tell Jake to dance, and he becomes a chicken that crumps. With arms. Crumping is an urban style of dance created by an idiot, where people walk by inattentively as kids flail their arms and legs and sometimes fall. So Jake the crumping chicken, bobs and pokes his head, shakes his arms and legs, and magnificently trips over his little Caterpillar truck. Then he’ll pop up and do it all over again.

Then there’s the repitition of words:

As I’ve told you, Jake is a sponge, but sometimes our sponge struggles. For example, he pronounces the thing he makes rainbow doodie in as “diapeh,” sounding like a Frenchmen. When he calls Home Depot, “Hem Dipoh”, he sounds hearing impaired. And somehow guitar is “See-hie”, which he says with such fervor that all I hear is “Sieg Heil!” 

My sponge, the National Socialist.

Sometimes his word association is spotty at best:

He knows that the President is named Obama. We’ve shown him pictures on magazine covers. But when Murray on Sesame Street was interviewing people about the letter R. Jake didn’t seem to give a shit about anyone until Murray got to a random black man with short hair, wearing a tie.

“Obama!” Jake yelled.

Other unfortunate times, he gets it just right:

Last weekend at Costco, an elderly Asian couple doted on him. Sitting in the gigantic Costco shopping cart, Jake demonstrated his trademark flirtation, cocking his head to the right and smiling shyly.

“Hi!” The woman said.

“Jake, can you say one of your words,” I ask innocently, which was a mistake.

“Penis,” said my son. Amy and I looked at each other.

“Pencil?”  The woman said. I think she truly didn’t understand, but I was fine with her bailing me out.  However, Jake     corrected her.

“Penis.”

“Oh,” she said with a nervous smile.

“His mom taught him that,” I said.

Amy admonished that I need to stop encouraging such language.  I got defensive, but then I remembered my conversation with Jake before we left for Costco. I asked him if Daddy has a big penis.

“No,” he said without hesitation. I shrugged.

He continued. “Mommy no penis. Mommy ah-gina.”

Most of the time I soil his mind:

On her day off, Amy recites A,B,C’s with Jake. When I’m with my son I teach him the sexually transmitted diseases, and it’s pretty shocking how easily they come to him. Here is a transcript of the birthday message we left for my dad.

David: “Say happy birthday, Zadie.”

Jake: “Hapee beaudae Ziti.”

David: “Say AIDS.”

Jake: “Eeds”

David: “Herpies.”

Jake: “Hoepees.”

David: “Chlamydia.”

Jake: “Kwa-mm-deeya.”

David: “I love you.”

Jake: “I wadyoo.”

I feel a little ashamed. Jake should have learned this at least a year ago.

If you’re thinking of flying with your toddler, do this instead: Go to your kitchen, find your rolling pin and pound your balls until you count to fifteen. It’s less painful and you might even become infertile!

Most of my family lives out of state and because of that, we have to fly to see them. And because of that, I hate my family. Fucking assholes. We visited Miami last month, which meant  schlepping Jake to airports and on airplanes.  You can’t win, because whether Jake is good or bad, the experience still sucks.

On our flight to Miami, Jake was a champ. We woke him at 5:15 a.m. to catch our 7:30 flight. Jake fussed a little bit, understandably so, but once he shook off his disorientation, he was pretty damn pleasant. And his pleasantness continued through all the insufferable bullshit steps required to get to your gate just to wait while sitting in those cracked, gray vinyl seats.

As we approached the security line, I struggled to accept what lie ahead of us.  Jake was comfortable in his stroller, and my shoes felt nice on my feet. Pretty soon, I knew we would have to collapse the stroller, remove Jake’s jacket and tiny sneakers and empty the contents of his diaper bag. And that’s before we must surrender the valuables we keep tightly protected in our pockets. Oh, and our belts, too.  We do this frantically because there’s no other way. We told the business travelers behind us that they could go ahead.

“Please go in front of us,” we said apologetically, “This is going to take a while.”

“Thanks,” one said. “Got two little ones of my own. Been there, done that.”

Yeah, but you’re not doing it now. Fucknut.

This process would be easier to swallow if it made us safer, but we know it doesn’t when there are shoe, toupee and tampon bombers boarding flights. Go figure they’d slip past the TSA flunkies, who it seems, do nothing but giggle and shout at each other with one eye on the monitors.  I’m convinced they are watching cartoons and not the contents of our carry-ons.

We strapped Jake back in his stroller—which marked the third time in 30 minutes that we restrained him after freeing him—and walked to our gate. We settled into a spot, and I released Jake again. I followed as he ran through the terminal. He stopped in front of an attractive flight attendant.

“Hi!”

“Well hello sweetie.”

I laughed. “Come on bud.”

She looked at me funny, her expression translating to: He’s this cute and you’re the dad?

“I get that a lot,” I told her.

Jake continued running and told me periodically what he was doing.

“Wunning!”

Not once, but always he’d slow down in front of large crowds rolling their carry-ons or walk through, not around two people having a conversation.

We kept Jake occupied on the flight. You have to, and you must have back-up and variety. He drops a crayon and it rolls to the back of the plane, you must have 10 more. He doesn’t want dried blueberries, you damn well better have dried strawberries. And so on. I packed my carry-on with magazines and a book to catch up on my reading. Then I snapped out of my fantasy and remembered quickly that I wasted my time packing those items because it’s impossible to do anything self-entertaining when you fly with a 20-month-old. A family of three with a girl around 5 sat next to us and slept the whole flight. But I made sure to raise my voice every time I spoke and woke the father a few times.  30 minutes after takeoff, Jake began to fuss, and I thought fast.

“The DVD player!” That was one of the times I woke my neighbor.

Amy ordered Elmo DVDs and brought headphones, and it held Jake’s attention for a good 20 minutes. During that time there was turbulence, the kind that gives me that awful uncontrollable feeling where the plane haphazardly soars then plummets. I couldn’t relax, so I couldn’t take advantage of the free time. Jake was amazingly impervious to it all, just glued to Elmo.  When the turbulence stopped, I opened my Esquire, and Jake tore the cover off and removed his headphones. Jake wanted to color.

“Maybe Daddy wants to draw you a picture,” Amy said.

I drew a blue penis and a man getting shot in the head.

When we pulled into the gate, our fellow passengers showered Jake with praise for being such a good boy. I thought they were laying it on thick. He should be a good boy. No one calls me a good dad for not beating my son. He certainly wasn’t good on the return flight to Chicago.

We boarded the plane after Jake took a three-hour nap. On our first flight, Jake was a little fidgety at best. Now he was bat-shit hyper, and no one was going to tell him to sit down.

“Jake,” Amy pleaded. “You have to sit on your tushie, so we could put your seat belt on.”

Naturally he stood, and when I forced him down he screamed. The woman across from me on the aisle looked hopefully behind her, the universal gesture of Get me the fuck away from this baby.She would do that a lot during take-off. I tightened Jake’s seat belt and buckled my own. I turned around, and Jake had Houdinied the belt over his shoulder. Amy tried adjusting it, but Jake broke loose, and jumped on the floor in front of his seat. This occurred during our ascent. I always use this time to say a small prayer, asking God to give us a safe flight. Instead I growled at my son.

“Jake, get up here!”

“No!”

I grabbed him, but the fucker did his move and collapsed to the floor. We scooped him up and buckled him again. The ascent wasn’t over, so I tried talking to God.

God, please give us a safe…

“Come on Jake!”

He was upside down in Amy’s lap, kicking her in the face. The woman next to me kept searching for seats.

“You could have mine,”  I wanted to tell her. “After I jump off the plane.”

Before the situation completely unravelled, we set up the DVD player, and finally a respite. I actually did a little reading, and they came by with the drink cart. I got club soda and cranberry juice and put the cans and cups on my tray. We knew Jake was finished with the DVD player when he flung his headphones at my tray, and like a bowling strike, knocked everything down. Some spilled on the woman who hated us.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “He did it.”

“It’s okay.”

Versions of this behavior continued until, mercifully, we landed. The pilot announced the temperature was 20 degrees. I told Amy to go ahead with Jake and I’d get his stroller.  I had only a light jacket, and I shivered in the freezing jetway for 15 minutes.

I didn’t mind at all.

For Dorothy Messinger

Jake came up big for us; he was clutch. Two weeks ago, Amy’s grandmother, Dorothy, passed away, and the morning after we heard the news, I had one message for Jake: At the Shiva, you need to be on. Bring your A game.

On the way to daycare that morning at a stoplight, I turned to Jake.

“Great Grandma Dor is no longer here,” I said. “Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re going to be at Grandma and Poppa’s tomorrow and Wednesday.”

“Gama, Pappa.”

“Right. And I need you to cheer everyone up. You have to be silly and crazy, okay?”

“Yesth.”

If only Jake could take direction like this all the time. Family and several family friends—even friends of ours—attended the Shiva to offer support and remember Dor. Comfort food arrived all night in the form of bagels, premium deli spreads, and delicious cookies, brownies, pastries and cakes. But Jake was the star. He was the greeter, the dog walker, the kitchen door closer, the lap runner, and the comedian.  Before the rabbi, a cousin or colleague could embrace either of my in-laws, they were met by Jake at their knees.

“Hi! 

And that made the visit easier.

More difficult than grieving was keeping up with Jake, which was just as well. Jake had at his disposal a Willy Wonka display of food and a Pee Wee’s Playhouse surplus of toys. Yet he was most entertained by the kitchen door, which when open allowed for easy passage of food into the dining room. Jake had other plans. It was important to him to close the door a lot.

“Jake, we have to keep the door open,” Amy and I said 20 to 30 times each.

When he wasn’t shutting the door on a tray of rugelach, Jake ran laps through the dining room, living room and kitchen. I was content to let him fly, but he’s at that height where he can smack his head into dangerous things like corners, drawer handles and hip bones. So we trailed him, and sometimes I would lose him among people’s legs, but he didn’t get hurt (until later when he banged his chin on the coffee table on Uncle Scott’s watch. Oh snap, I just threw Uncle Scott under the bus.).

I took a rest in the family room, and I heard Jake upstairs spazzing with laughter and squeals. He was zigzagging through the house, leash in hand, walking Simon, my in-laws’ Yorkie Poo. It was an image you’d see on one of those goofy work posters tacked to a cubicle. Or now a Shiva, I suppose.

Jake wowed people with his vocabulary. On the second night, a late wave of people arrived, and they asked for Jake. We were changing the entertainer’s diaper, and when Amy brought Jake downstairs he screamed, “Penis! Penis!”  I wasn’t embarrassed.

Watching Jake lift spirits gave me a great business idea. I told my mother-in-law that I was going to get rich pimping out my son to work Shivas. The bereft could book him, and I imagined myself as his manager taking calls and creating his schedule.

“I’m so sorry that Uncle Morty got hit by a bus then a Prius then a bicycle. When does the Shiva begin? 6 p.m. on the 17th? Actually, Mr. Telisman will be coming from a Shiva in Lake Bluff, so better make it 6:25. Yeah, I didn’t know Jews lived there either.”

Jake shined, and he started even before the Shiva. We weren’t sure how he would behave at the funeral. Would he be scared of the cemetery? Would he sit still? He was perfect. Jake sat solemnly with us at the small plot at the cemetery in Rockford, two hours from Chicago, where Dor raised her family. In that moment, he was an old soul not frightened, not sad, but simply observant. It’s as if he knew. Ironically and kind of comedically, it was an adult not Jake, making noise. Across the street an elderly neighbor yelled at who I presume was her husband or love interest.

“Get in the fuckin’ house, ya bastard!”

Jake did have some outbursts, but they were better timed. In her eulogy, my mother-in-law told a funny story, and after we all laughed, Jake shrieked. Jake also pointed at the pile of soil at the grave site.

“Baghee,” or garbage he told us and the rabbi.

Amy told me she was sad that Dor and Jake didn’t really get to know each other except for visits to the nursing home in her final year and a half. They were robbed of quality time, she said. Will he even remember her?

On the first night of Shiva, Jake took a rare break and let me hold him. We looked at a picture taken of Dor when she lived on her own.

“Gama Doh,” he said. “Buh bye. Night night.”

Will he even remember her? He already does.