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.