California Breedin

We Hold Hands in Parking Lots, Too

mrskennedy — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Every night at bedtime I pick out four or five books to read to Jackson before he falls asleep. He has approximately 40,000 books so it's easy to keep it fresh for the people. I normally choose something old, like a Golden Book; something TV-based, like a Scooby Doo mystery; a Calvin and Hobbes anthology; and something nonfiction/educational. So the other night we climb up into his bed and I show him what we've got to work with: The Taxi That Hurried; a short and colorful story based on the movie Surf's Up (read by me in the voice of The Dude); Revenge of the Baby-Sat; and Children Just Like Me, a book put out by UNICEF about ten years ago to show privileged First World kids that families who live in mud-brick jungle houses fortified with cow dung, or in tents in the desert, or in post-Soviet apartment blocks, all have the same dream: to be warm, dry, and loved, and to ride their pet dinosaur through a black hole.

So we're in his bed and I say to Jackson, "What do you want to read first?" and he points to the girl on the far right of the top row on the cover of Children Just Like Me and says, with an uncanny amount of corny, hushed Drake-and-Josh-meet-Lindsay-Lohan awe, "SHE'S TOTALLY HOT."

My six-year-old son thinks a girl is totally hot. There might be an extra T in her hotness, I can't be sure, and neither can he, he can't spell. She's neither "cute," nor "pretty," nor "refreshingly winsome" -- no, the teen-speak he's appropriated now requires him to express admiration for a member of the opposite sex using the equivalent of "Hubba hubba!" and asking me to show him how to do that Bugs Bunny thing with two fingers in his mouth (you know, a wolf whistle).

Here are a couple of things that I'm sure of. One is that kids imitate sexuality before they actually understand it. The other is that if you're blessed with a kid who has no latency period, who has been in love with girls since he first laid eyes on one his own size, there's a fair amount of wincing involved as you watch him build his vocabulary d'amour.

And verbals are just the half of it, you should have seen him strut along the sidewalks of New York City, plugged into an iPod Shuffle and bobbing his head along to ZZ Top. "That boy's got his pimp roll down," said Jack with not a little admiration as we walked along behind, noting Jackson's somewhat amateur but nonetheless highly committed swagger. Of course, despite all the glimpses of grown-up I catch in him every day, he still waits for us at the corner, and when his dad says, "Buddy, I need your paw," he reaches up to hold hands when we cross the street. It's sweet, of course, but he knows we'll kill him -- and then we'll ground him until his hair turns white -- if he doesn't.

Anyway, that girl in the book who he thinks is hot? She's French and she lives in a castle and her family makes wine, so no, the book isn't all Third World lifestyles and witchetty grubs for dinner. What's funny to me is that immediately after reading all about Little Miss "My Favorite Food is Duck" we make an effortless switch over to that delightful little egomanic, Calvin, and his nemesis, Susie Derkins.

Fortunately for the both of us, Susie's hotness isn't in question, nor her unambiguous morals, thus allowing us to reassert the childish innocence of bedtime for a little bit longer.

Do They Take Virtual Money at Vons?

mrskennedy — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:32:00 GMT

Oh, hi! Sorry I haven't been around much, but all my time has been sucked into that black hole of a Web site: Webkinz. If you have a child between the ages of six and nine your life, like mine, is potentially worth nothing more than how much KinzCash you can earn to help your child to feed and furnish the lavish rooms of his or her fluffy virtual Webkiz pets.

It all starts innocently enough, as these things do, with a trip to the toy store. "What a cute little beagle/leopard/chihuahua/red-eyed tree frog!" says your child/mother/sister-in-law. "Oh, I just get this as a treat for [your child's name here]." And $12.95 later, the pet is sitting next to your laptop looking at you expectantly as you register her at webkinz.com, print out her birth certificate, and go have a look at her unfurnished virtual room. Next thing you know, little Pouncey Paw has a $1,200 TV, a $400 bathtub, Wizard's Den wallpaper, and a prancing elephant fountain next to her bed. (Kindergarteners are eccentric decorators, it's true.)

My problem is that I've become a wee bit obsessed with one of the games you can play to earn KinzCash. (This Wikipedia link explains the whole phenomenon much better than I.) I don't want to earn money mining for jewels or answering first-grade-level science questions, or go to the clubhouse and play Connect Four against some kid in Florida. That kind of small-mindedness will earn you $15, tops. No, Color Storm is where the big bucks are at.

I haven't been this obsessed with a game since my boyfriend let me borrow a floppy disk with Tetris on it. Or, wait, there were the years lost playing Shanghai II: Dragon's Eye, way back in the twentieth century. You can see the level of gaming I inhabit. Not for me, the Zelda marathons of my online friends; no, give me a line of simple, hypnotizing, storyless blobs and I will destroy my arrow keys to connect four of the same color so I can watch them disappear with a little *blop* sound effect. It is with Color Storm that I can earn, like, $150 in KinzCash and keep Jackson off my neck for at least half an hour. I know, I know, the point is for HIM to be doing it, not me, this is all wrong, I should be WORKING.

Jackson is going camping for a few days next week with his dad. "Who's going to take care of my Webkinz while I'm gone?" he asked in a panic last night. Dude is going to have like $100,000 when he gets back. And a mom who needs glasses and a wrist brace.

Thanks for the free wireless, New York!

mrskennedy — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 23:48:00 GMT

On our first night of vacation in New York City we walked to Cafe Loup for a nice dinner. We'd last been there six years ago, when Jackson was still residing, rent-free, inside of me. We weren't too sure how out-of-the-womb and ambulatory Jackson would do in a grown-up restaurant, as we never go out when we're home in California, so we made him a deal: he could have dessert first and then we'd stop at McDonald's on the way home. Well, he could barely believe his good luck, having been born to a couple of suckers like us. So while he nibbled at his plate of cookies, looked out the window, flirted with the hostess, and then quietly played Kirby on his Nintendo DS, Jack and I had a terrific dinner.

Then we all went home and took off all our clothes and laid down and tried not to move. Cold showers were useless as hot water was coming out of both taps.

But yesterday, as we were walking through midtown at rush hour, after having taken Jackson to his first theatrical production (The Lion King, OMG HE LOVED IT), the heat wave broke:

First, we bought ourselves three umbrellas. When we realized that we were all soaked to the ass, we took shelter on the library steps and badgered Jackson into sharing his daily ration of street food:

When the weather briefly let up we blithely grabbed the wrong bus downtown. When it ejected us eighteen blocks from our destination the sky was black, the rain splashing from the curbs in drenching comedy bucketfuls, the lightening cracking straight over our heads, and Jackson was trying to decide whether to panic or say What the hell? and hightail it to the cab that Jack had used his black magic to summon. Once home, we bolted inside, stripped off our sopping wet shoes and socks, and vowed never to leave the apartment again.

An hour later, we were back at Cafe Loup. The owner, Ardis, greeted Jackson by name at the door. Jackson shook her hand and for his polite behavior received a Shirley Temple, on the house. He ordered a cheeseburger from Julian, our waiter, and when he got tired of waiting for Jack and I to finish eating he went outside to talk to people on the sidewalk who were peering at the menu posted by the door to tell them that they should come in and eat.

Ardis eventually went out and got him -- I'm not sure she wanted a six-year-old on the sidewalk shilling for her -- then she brought over some tape and scissors and cut out the drawing he'd made on the tabletop so he could take it home for grandma. Then I slipped him a little cash so he could pay our bill.

Jackson loves New York, and I think it loves him back.

Up and Away

mrskennedy — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 00:28:00 GMT

We're taking Jackson on his first trip to New York and as usual I've done no advance preparation. I know that children are allowed to live in New York City, and that during the winter months they're sequestered in large brick buildings called "schools," but what happens to them in the summer months? Do you just hand them a wrench, point to the nearest fire hydrant, and say, "Be home when the streetlights come on"?

Or do you hastily buy a magazine in the airport and say, "Look, sweetie! The Museum of Natural History has an exhibit called, "Dragons, Unicorns, and Mermaids"!

Child: "I don't really like dragons."

You: "Oh."

Child: "But I am interested in mythical creatures."

You: "How OLD are you? You can't even read yet and you're all Look at my fancy vocabulary!"

Child, humiliated: "I'm sorry."

You: "Don't let it happen again. Here's a wrench."

Kidding! I would never humiliate my child, I'll leave that to society and his first couple of girlfriends*.

Anyway, on the other, the travel plans -- my husband grew up in New York, I'm sure we'll find lots of fun, legal activities that minors can be smuggled into.

* At six years old my son appears to be really, really straight. I just felt like I needed to say that.

Party, Part II

mrskennedy — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 16:45:00 GMT

Apparently it's my destiny to fly through parenthood by the seat of my pants. Ooh, there's a surprise. I've never once made a plan that stuck, or visualized a glorious future for myself-in-five-years and watched it blossom into fragrant completion. I just make it up as I go along, but Jackson's birthday this year took the cake.

Cake! Ha ha! The day before his birthday I strolled into the grocery store. There was no one at the cake counter. I rousted a guy from the deli counter who gave me the distinct impression that he'd had a very long and unstimulating day. Deli Guy found Cake Guy in the back, and Cake Guy informed me -- I detected apprehension in his body language, he lowered one shoulder and ducked his chin -- he informed me that that there was no one on duty who could write "Happy Birthday Jackson" in icing on a pre-made cake, and (pugnaciously narrowing his eyes) such a person would not be available until Friday, the day after Jackson's birthday.

The guy had a good read on me. I was steamed. I stalked out to the parking lot and called another branch of the same grocery store. They were so uninvolved as to not even be answering the phone at 5:45 p.m. on a Wednesday. Well, thank Juicy Fruit for the Internet. I remembered that Norm had left a comment on my blog the other day mentioning a not-quite-nearby-but-close-enough bakery that fulfilled last minute requests such as mine. I called them. The girl on the phone gave me ten different options for icing, filling, and what ethnicity stripper I wanted trapped inside, and she promised they'd have it done by noon the next day.

The next morning I was all, Uh, honey? Do you have to work today? Jack looked at me with another in a series of astonished expressions that told me of his long years of having to suffer my shortcomings as a cook, maid, personal assistant, pole dancer, and Democratic party presidential nominee. Jack owns his own company so his daily schedule can accommodate my whimsical disasters. Fortunately, he had anticipated the need to cover for me, and whisked Jackson off to Costco to buy bulk Hebrew National hot dogs, stale buns, and a 300-pack of paper napkins. Why do I keep forgetting Costco exists? Oh, yeah, because I hate it. It's full of crap I don't need and yet every time I go I come home with $200 worth of Orowheat bread and pesticide-encrusted asparagus and 30-packs of hormone-laden skinless chicken breasts that I can't fit into my freezer. I hate Costco.

But whatever, Jack and Jackson picked up the cake while I went to my shrink, wrapped presents, picked up some beer and ice, and made it back in time to greet Jackson's one birthday party guest. ONE kid from Jackson's class was not off spelunking the nasal cavities of Mt. Rushmore, or battling sharks off the Great Barrier Reef, or whatever it is kindergarteners do on vacation. Also, Jackson's one friend could only stay for 45 minutes because his mom had to pick up his sister from horseback riding lesson. Yay, I rule at party planning, too.

Fortunately, we were having the party at the neighborhood pool, and the neighborhood pool was full of neighborhood kids who were only too glad to help us eat hot dogs and Doritos and last-minute cake. It turned out a couple of them had actually been paying attention and showed up with presents for Jackson, too. And then there was me -- "Hmmm," I said to myself, "everyone wants to eat cake now! Uh, I guess that means there ought to be some candles to blow out! " (Why was there was half a box of birthday cake candles in the junk drawer left over from last year? Why did I remember they were there? I guess if you have a brain that works on half capacity, the other half is available to be filled with Willy Wonka. I mean Jesus. I mean Willy Wonka.)

Afterward, we set all the kids loose on the grass with some mild explosives -- you know, those little things that pop when you throw them on the sidewalk, and those other things that explode and shoot confetti -- grocery store-grade fireworks. Then a few of the big kids came back and watched an Argentina vs. Somebody soccer match on TV, and played Nintendo, and left me alone so I could watch "John From Cincinatti" in the bedroom with a shot of tequila and the girl who popped out of the cake. She's trying to earn her masters in social work.

Anyway, there was a huge mess in the living room the next morning, but in the midst of it all sat one bossy six year old demanding that I put "Mr. Robato" on his new iPod Shuffle. Yes, these are the sacrifices I make as a parent. Putting up with my son's relentless affection for Styx. BEFORE I'VE HAD COFFEE.

Jackson told me to post this for you

mrskennedy — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 17:24:00 GMT

toothpastefordinner.com

party party party

mrskennedy — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 14:51:00 GMT

I'm finding it ironic that I'm supposed to be writing for a parenting site but I can't find time to do it because my kid is ON MY JOCK ALL THE TIME.

Yay, it's summer vacation!

I suppose I should have thought ahead, activity-wise, and put him in a camp. (That looks sort of wrong now that I've written it down. Put the children in camps! Coloring the American flag and stapling it to a drinking straw will make you free!) But the fact is, what with my father's sudden departure for the pearly gates last month, all the stuff I "should" have been doing for the last six weeks just went kablooie. Also by the wayside? Planning Jackson's birthday party. Oh, let's see, that's two days from now, isn't it? How many kids have I managed to invite? Uh, two. Shit.

You know what, though, he doesn't really seem to care, thank Dora. As long as he and a couple of friends can do cannonballs in the pool all afternoon, or go scream their heads off at Chuck E. Cheese, we'll be good. I think we're all still recovering from last year's trauma, when I invited 3,000,000 children to go to the beach with us and half of them ended up with black eyes and crying. Because of a fatal miscalculation on my part, when renting one of those bounce house things for the kids to jump around in -- please feel free to learn from my mistake, but when you have a birthday party for a five-year-old and a bunch of twlelve-year-old boys show up? You have a choice. Either get the five-year-olds out of the bounce house or roust the twelve-year-olds. I don't care who's disappointed, just do it or you'll have a whole lot of twisted ankles and broken arms to explain at pick-up time.

Also, don't invite the sneaky kid who'll crawl under the picnic table and raid your box of carefully prepared goodie bags. Otherwise you'll have some disappointed tots at the end of the party, and most of them will be girls who their mothers put in sweet little party dresses that they were instructed to keep clean, and for whom a tugging match with a bigger, greedier boy over a bag of cheap noisemakers and confetti poppers is an exercise in futility without adult intervention. And believe me, I spent a lot of that party intervening. My voice was hoarse for two days.

LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES. I BEG OF YOU.

From here on out our guiding light is this: you can invite as many kids as you are old, plus one (you). So technically it would be a party of seven this year, but like I said, I dropped the ball. Jackson was sick and missed those crucial last three days of school, where I could have cornered some other parents and figured out who was going on their family vacations when. Oh, hell, I bet it's too late to order a cake from the grocery store, too. Great, now I need to go round up some partially-hydrogenated Betty Crocker mix and raid the party store for Transformer toys to stick into the icing. Oh, shit, and he needs some presents, too. FUCK.

I need an assistant.

Dental Maintenance Thursday

mrskennedy — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:09:00 GMT

It seems to be boy maintenance week. We had Haircut Monday, and today was Staving Off Tooth Decay Thursday. Jackson's dentist always admires how calm he is in the exam chair. I take credit, I've been pinning him down and goading a toothbrush around his mouth every night since he turned two. He's been flossed into submission. And terrorized by Beastmaster Eden's Tales from the Dental Crypt.

Like many raised in the land of subsidized high-fructose corn syrup, my childhood was full of needles and drills and Sno-Balls from the 7-11. A normal snack in my family was a bowl of buttercream frosting spread over Saltines. Like a peasant from the Dark Ages who didn't understand the connection between sex and pregnancy, I lacked the vital mental connection between my romance with Bazooka Joe and having three new cavities at the every check-up. For a long time after I moved away from home, even after I was a grownup going to work and paying bills in a city far, far away, I'd still wait until I went home to visit my parents so I could go to my old childhood dentist and let him pack my teeth with "silver" fillings. When he retired, I was so seized up by the idea of finding a new dentist -- someone my parents hadn't carefully chosen and weren't paying for, oh my god -- that I simply stopped going to the dentist for like ten years.

So, yay, suddenly I woke up and I was 29 years old and about to have enough root canals to buy my dentist a Porsche.

I vowed that Jackson would be spared this preventable brand of misery.

This morning I watched him climb into a booster dental chair and start chatting with the doctor. He sat back and crossed his legs in a jaunty fashion, at the ankles, tapping his Merrils. So relaxed, casually asking the dentist what all those cute little tools are for, without a tooth-related care in the world. The threat of gum disease is still a decade away; braces are just a glimmer in our insurance agent's eye; and I'll be brushing his teeth until he's thirty.

X-ray images of Jackson's teeth popped up on the computer moniter in front of us, soon to be replaced by a calming screen saver showing a loop of a fish tank containing all the species depicted in "Finding Nemo." The dentist wore grape-flavored gloves and cleaned Jackson's teeth with fruit punch-flavored polish, then filled two mouth trays with raspberry-flavored fluoride gel, which Jackson was instructed to keep in his mouth, without swallowing, for sixty seconds. At fifteen seconds his eyes were watering; at thirty, he was actively gagging; and at forty-five he threw up.

"I feel much better now," he said brightly, unpinning his bib and sidling toward the doctor's treasure chest (a cardboard box from which he chose a set of green plastic vampire fangs).

Then came the fun part!

Thirty minutes later we were back at home and Jackson was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and, as a treat, drinking part of a can of caffeine-free diet Coke. Then he came up to me and said, "My stomach feels really weird."

I immediately Googled "fluoride poisoning." (Believe me, in my world, upset stomachs can lead to irreversible death.)

"Drink this milk," I said, pouring him a glass, as instructed by Wikipedia. "It will slow the absorption of any fluoride you might have swallowed and help your stomach feel better."

Ten minutes later I asked him how he was feeling. He let out a gigantic, disgusting wet burp.

I smelled mint. "Bleah, holy cow, did somebody give you a Mentos or something?" He'd been in the other room with some neighbor girls updating their Webkinz wishlists.

He pulled a wad of gum out of his mouth and showed it to me. "What's a Mentos?"

"Never mind."

It's a wiser parent than I who can diagnose a belly swollen with carbon dioxide.

The Last Good Kiss

mrskennedy — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 16:31:00 GMT

Every summer my husband, Jack, tries to convince our son, Jackson, to let us shave his head. I don't know why Jackson never goes for it, half the boys in our neighborhood have a quarter inch of fuzz on their heads all year round and they look great. They also probably have no choice.

For better or for worse, we let Jackson have the final decision when it comes to his appearance. I had the freedom to wear whatever the hell I wanted when I was his age, and I had a ball getting dressed in the morning. (I had a special fondness for orange knee socks and making a ponytail stick out over my left ear.) Accordingly, some days Jackson walks out the door sporting the cunning pajama top/Yankees t-shirt/Texas Longhorns cap ensemble:

During the school year, I'm usually the one who grabs his clothes in the morning and combs his hair before shoving him out the door with a piece of toast in his hand, but now that it's summer, anything goes. Which means that so far (we're only on the second day of summer vacation) he's chosen to spend most of the day in his underpants. I made him get dressed yesterday before his haircut, though.

That's Franco. He likes to give Jackson what's known as The Handsome Cut. Franco has a little barber shop on Victoria Street in Santa Barbara; you pay a membership fee and after he cuts your hair he'll give you a glass of good scotch and a fine cigar. Jackson declined the cigar yesterday, but he got Franco's last Hershey's Kiss out of the big glass jar on the counter next to the stash of Playboy magazines.

Letter of the Week

mrskennedy — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:23:00 GMT

From the June 10, 2007 New York Times:

Nanny Knew Best

To the Editor:

Re “A Nanny Nightmare? Living Without One,” by Liesl Schillinger (Books of Style, May 27):

I was born in London in 1924 to middle-class parents. The custom in those days in England was to hire a well-trained English nanny (with excellent references) to raise the children. My mother was a dedicated and valuable community volunteer but insecure in her role as a mother.

My sister and I adored our nanny and I believe I am a much more confident and contented person because of her dedicated and experienced care. I doubt if my insecure, anxious mother would have been as successful. But my parents’ marriage was a loving one and they were devoted parents and grandparents.

When Nanny died I felt her loss very deeply; when Mother died at 77 a few years later I was saddened, feeling as if I had lost a really good friend. I have always wondered whether Mother regretted (or realized) that in my heart Nanny was my “real” mother. Consequently, my husband and I did not have nannies for the children. I guess I was selfish and did not want to share their love.

Zelda Ruth Harris

Toronto

I think this letter is just fascinating, and not just because it trips my anglophilia switch. I have zero experience with nannies, but it's kind of a thrill to be reminded that there was a time in recent history when it was expected that a paid caregiver would raise your children and there would be little accompanying cultural uproar. And that the beneficiary of such a system chose to do the opposite with her own children acknowledges the bittersweet contradiction at the heart of modern, middle-class baby-havin'. All in three short paragraphs. Bravo, Zelda Ruth Harris of Toronto, Canada. Bravo.

Good Lord, My Son Has a Lot of Stuff On His Bed

mrskennedy — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:50:00 GMT

Pillows, for instance.

Jackson has, like, fourteen pillows on his bed. The other day I said to him, "You know how many pillows I had on my bed when I was your age? ONE."

He hugged me with pity. "I'm sorry, Mommy. Here." He let me hold the fluffy pink heart pillow I gave him for Valentine's Day. It helped. A little.

Of course, I'm the one who bought him all those pillows. He's an only child, we let him co-sleep for a couple of years, and now the only way to keep him in his bed at night is to throw fourteen pillows, nine stuffed animals, and a dog in there with him. It's less lonely that way, sort of, if you turn sideways and close one eye.

Occasionally, just for fun, I try to explain to him how when I grew up we were middle-middle class, but as my father worked his way up we became lower-upper-middle class. This got me into a better school, but somehow it never translated into more pillows on my bed.

I think my parents taught us to be embarrassed by excess and luxury. The most decadent thing they ever spent money on was airfare. After my father retired from his career of selling office supplies, they went to Europe a few times. Not first-class, but my father always trusted his own taste, and his taste was for whatever was day-old, two-for-one, or half-price after 5:00 p.m. So our family vacations usually revolved around a sixteen-hour, straight-through, non-air-conditioned drive (with me lying on my sleeping bag in our car's the back window, waving at truckers) from Denver to grandma's house and back again ten days later.

One year we were outside of Lincoln, Nebraska, when my mom fell asleep at the wheel. I was nine, I was sitting on my dad's lap in the front seat letting him read Farmer Boy over my shoulder when all of a sudden we veered from the fast lane into the grassy median that divided us from oncoming traffic, hit a small rise, and were flying through the air. When we landed we burst all four tires. We had to spend two nights in Lincoln while the car got fixed, us kids happily swimming at the hotel pool. That's also how I ended up seeing Funny Lady, a movie I liked that I never would have been taken to otherwise, as our family's taste in film ran more toward exploding car chases than musical comedy. Maybe everyone had had enough excitedment with flying cars that day.

Anyway, this summer, I'm thinking about introducing Jackson to the exquisite torture of the long-ass car trip to Grandma's, Santa Barbara to Denver via any number of desolate, 115°F landscapes. A torture mitigated by the Nintendo DS, the portable DVD player, and the iPod. And air conditioning. And the comforting presence of pillows, stuffed animals, a dog, a cooler full of mildly caffeinated beverages, and me, his mom, whose long-distance driving stamina was built on never, ever experiencing another long moment of airborne disbelief.

WWDOBD?

mrskennedy — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 15:35:00 GMT

Last night my husband, Jack, and I went to a last-minute "Let's Eat Lasagne and Watch the Last Episode of the Sopranos" party at which our son, Jackson, was the only little kid. I'm not sure where my head was during the brief invitation-acceptance phase of this party, except that I must have thought something like, "He's almost six! He'll entertain himself!" This is an unfortunate tic I have that started the day after Jackson was born and I kind of just assumed that if he was hungry he'd go to the kitchen and make himself a sandwich. Yeah, so kids? They're more time-consuming than I'd originally thought.

Jackson had fallen asleep in Jack's truck on the way to the party, and when we got him inside he was groggy and suspicious and clinging to my neck like an orphaned chimpanzee. This made drinking champagne and making sparkling conversation a challenge, so I carried him into the TV room, dumped him on the couch with his stuffed penguin, and said, "Stay right here. I'm going to get you a Coke."

I know! WHY NOT JUST GIVE HIM A SNORT OF BLOW, MOM? Listen, if we'd been at home he would have had a healthy snack and all the time in the world to sort himself out, but we weren't. I needed him to get his act together and half a shot of caffeine and high fructose corn syrup would get him over the hump.

Ten minutes later he was on his feet and politely asking the host if we could turn on the air hockey table. Okay, so that worked! Parent hack! But who was he going to play with? My vague plan was still to cut him loose so I could try having one of those unheard of things called an adult conversation, but then I stopped and asked myself: "What Would D.O'B. Do?"

D.O'B. is an old girlfriend of Jack's who has repeatedly abandoned an entire room full of fascinating, available men to play Legos with my fascinating, available son. She is unabashedly all about kids, though she has none of her own. So as I stood in our hosts' TV room holding a big, sweaty glass of pinot grigio with Jackson looking up at me, waiting to see whether I'd park him in front of an out-of-the-way TV or treat him like he deserved to have fun like the rest of us, I felt like this could be another one of those little turning points in childhood where you remember the kindness of an adult who puts you first.

So we played air hockey AND jumped on the trampoline, and then the hosts' thirteen-year-old daughter came home from her volleyball team party and I quietly faded into the woodwork while Jackson followed her around like a puppy and left me alone so I could see a car roll over a guy's head. Afterward, Jack gave the daughter $20.00. We're going to call her next time we need one of those "babysitter" things? I've heard they're really useful.

Eggs

mrskennedy — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 02:25:00 GMT

Three weeks ago, when I told Jackson his only remaining grandpa had suddenly died, the first thing he said was, "But he left me some chocolate eggs, right?"

I guess it's normal to worry about stale candy when you're almost six and your mom has just broken some news and you're cautiously waiting to see if she's going to fall apart like she did last year when the dog got put to sleep.

The thing is, Grandpa knew how to push a kid's buttons. Back in April, he'd promised Jackson that the Easter Bunny had left some extra chocolate eggs around his house for Jackson to find, and that they'd still be here when we arrived, June 1.

Instead, June 1 ended up being the day of my father's funeral.

But when I'd arrived, by myself, at what is now just my mom's house, two weeks before the funeral, to help my brothers figure out which way was up, the first thing I did was look for Jackson's chocolate eggs. I found piles and piles of old newspapers and Mac Mall catalogs and unopened bank statements and my father's hoard of free Dairy Queen napkins and straws -- my brother, Tim, brought in a shredder just to cope with the stack of carefully saved but unopened credit card offers -- but no eggs.

I was fucked. Not just because Walgreen's would be long sold out of compromise half-price Peeps, but because my father, the Germanophile, had his secret connection who several times a year would smuggle in (I guess) these special chocolate treats from Germany called Kinder Eggs. They're a hollow shell of milk chocolate surrounding a two-inch-long plastic capsule that contains the pieces of a small toy that a child over three can put together. They're cute! They're not available in the United States! Thank you, FDA, for protecting those of us who walk around in a blissful cloud of obscurity believing it'd be a good idea to stuff a chocolate egg the size of a kneecap into our mouths and immediately choke on the delightful foreign toy contained therein.

So there I was with two weeks to score a bunch of German eggs and make a little boy believe that even though his grandpa was dead he did not forget to leave behind a little something special just for him.

It's too bad no one cares enough about Canadians to inflict a Kinder Egg ban on them. Sorry, Canada! Hope you don't die! I ran to e-mail jenB in Edmonton, Alberta (Canada) to see if (1) she was managing to stave off death by imported chocolate, and (2) she could score me some contraband eggs.

JenB is an Internet friend. We met through our blogs, I don't know how many years ago now: four? Five? We exchanged comments, then e-mails, and then we met in real life at the first BlogHer conference and were smitten. If there was ever an argument for the potential and actual goodness flowing through the tubes of the World Wide Web, Jen is it.

The day before Jackson arrived at my parents' house I joyfully opened up a heavy cardboard box containing two Cadbury Flake bars (delicious), something that looked like giant marshmallow bombs (my brother, Chris, was all over that), two pretty packages of cocktail napkins (just in case we had guests), a giant sack of Wine Gums (the mysterious attraction of wine gums continues to haunt me), and six GERMAN EGGS OF DEATH!!

I hid them all. For I am The Bunny's MINION.

The next day, after Jackson had not just found but escaped unharmed from the completely unsupervised consumption of six delicious, toy-filled Eggs:

Me: "Honey, are you still sad about Grandpa dying?"

Jackson: "I'm over it. Now I'm focusing on my birthday."