"Artoo Come Back Here At Once!"

Let me just start right off my saying that I would like to come back in another life as Jack. This kid picked the right two suckers for parents. Let's just say there isn't a playmobil rescue vehicle to be found in the tri-state area. Oh and we're *ahem, Roberto* is building him a tree house (with a fire pole and a zip line!). I can't help myself. It started before he was even born. "Oh no, I don't need anything new, when I can buy this super soft organic onesie with teensy tiny green stripes for my fetus!" "Who needs to go to the gym when you can burn calories shopping for star wars legos, and superhero I Can Read books?" I overdo it. I know this. He's spoiled. But he's not rotten. Not yet. I swear.

We had his birthday party on Sunday. It was awesome. Toddler mayhem. Wait, are they still toddlers at 3? He seems like a kid now. I guess I have to stop calling him the baby. I have to stop saying: "SSHHH! The baby's sleeping!" And: "It's in the baby's room, I'll get it." sniff, sniff.

I told Jack on his birthday that the day we brought him home from the hospital, I took him right upstairs where we both fell asleep, him on my chest. It was sunny and warm in the room. Because we had just moved in we didn't have curtains yet. I had hung sarongs in the window for privacy and so the light was warm and pink. The short drive home had tired us both out and we slept like that for a good hour or two, neither one of us used to him being outside. I think about that nap all the time when I see his powerful little legs running down the sidewalk in front of me, or watch him "breakdancing" in the living room with Nipper Knapp." That little man was the size of a loaf of bread, and he napped right on me."

Jack likes to hear about how he cried when he was a little baby, "boo hoo hoo", but he's not interested in how small he was. My dad used to tell a story about the way my butt would leave a little wet mark on the seat of his truck after we'd drive home from Lucy Lachance's pool when I was a kid. And the little butt mark would only be "this big" and he'd hold out his thumb and index finger to indicate an impossibly small space, like he couldn't believe it. I can't believe Jack isn't that my little rump roast anymore. He's a small boy who keeps telling me, that soon "he's going to grow into a big man".

Ok, enough weepy mess making. The party. Pizza was consumed, presents were opened, a Darth Vader piñata was smashed to pieces. But one guest sadly did not make it out alive. Weeks ago, Jack told me he wanted a pink R2D2 cake. I was all for it. But then the hate mail began. How could I do that to Jack? How could I do that to R2? I would never be forgiven! The shame would be unending! I caved. It would be blue. It would be funfetti. The head would be silver, and OH MY GOD WE DON'T HAVE ANY SILVER FROSTING OR SPRINKLES OR ANYTHING! Nipper did a last minute Williams Sonoma run on Saturday night. He's an enabler. I decorated all the pieces after Jack went to bed Saturday night and then put it together a few hours before the party.

Everyone ooh'd and aah'd the cake when they came in. I had done it! Baby Big 3 wants an R2D2 cake? Hush little baby don't say a word, mama's gonna buy you a...

Did I mention it was kind of a hot day?

The kids decorated Star Wars cookies, and raced around the house. The tidy ones neatly lining up Jack's trucks like a car show. The messy ones dripping icing on the rug. All of them high on sugar and the sound of their own voices. It was great.

We were outside enjoying the post piñata melee, when my neighbor Anna came out with a soft but mournful look on her face. "I have something I regret to inform you. R2D2 is dead. Well, not dead entirely. Your mother sacrificed her shirt, and propped him back up, but, well, you'll see".

I raced into the house to do damage control. NOT THE CAKE! He had warmed up and his buttercream frosting had gotten slicker than gulf of mexico (too soon?). I should have put him in the fridge, but he was four layers high and on the cake tower it would have meant taking out a shelf, and people, I'm just not much for that kind of you, know, planning.

I examined the "blood on the wall" that Smacksy described as "very Peckinpah". I thanked my mom for putting him back together. And just as we were laughing about the whole thing, I heard a sickening wet sucking sound from the kitchen. I turned to see through the dining room door just as R2D2 LAUNCHED himself off the counter onto the floor. It was just too much for him to go on like that. His life was never going to be the same. We've ruled it a suicide. No way it was an accident with the trajectory of the fall of the counter, and the distance he covered, landing miraculously in the middle of the kitchen floor. R2D2 quit on us. We ate him anyway.

French Skinny suggested next time I use a dowel, then later sent me an email apologizing for suggesting a dowel while poor Artoo lay bloody on the floor. Love her!  I was worried that Jack was going to be upset when he saw this sad cake coming at him with a frosted up 3 candle lit. But he grinned like a fool as everyone sang Happy Birthday, and happily told his Nana it was the best cake ever as he shoveled sugar spoonfuls into his mouth.

Happy Easter Bunny Cake! It's a tradition!

To look at me today, in my pink frosted man cave, quilting organic cotton doodads, you'd never suspect my Sid and Nancy like adolescence. Imagine me, 15, shaved head, pierced nose, sullen face, smoking a pack of newports a day (classy), wearing knee high red doc martens that between you and me, I thought looked spectacular with the orange lining in my flight jacket. Cute. I was really mad, but I still like to match! (Pictures, please. I know. But I'm in Palm Springs, so I promise to upload really mortifying pictures of me, fat, bald, and chain smoking when I get home) 

Sid and Nancy. Ick.

The Easter that I was 16, not the brightest day in my family's history I stayed out all night taking mescaline (for the first and last times) with some friends. This was probably 10-15 minutes before I was shipped off to boarding school. But that's another story. I showed up around 10 in the morning, after everyone had gone to church. My mother was in the kitchen preparing the meal for the day. She'd probably been worried sick. When she saw me walk through the door I'm sure she was furious. But all she said was "go clean yourself up and come down here and help me get ready."  It's been decades (not that I'm old enough for decades to have passed) since I've done drugs, or smoked cigarettes (ok, maybe there were a few sneaky cigarettes). But I DO continue to try to match my boots to my jacket. Old habits...


 So for those of you out there who might be wondering if your teenager has in fact been replaced by body snatchers, they'll be fine...
Someday...
Maybe...
Mostly.

Every year for Easter my mom would make this bunny cake. Apparently. I don't remember. I think I was high on something. Ok, lots of things. She made it every year. I wasn't high for all of them, but enough that when she brought up the bunny cake a few years ago when Jack was born, I was all:

"Huh?" 

And she was all:

 "You know the bunny cake I made every year for Easter. With the coconut frosting. It was a big deal. You and your brother loved it!" 

I'm not sure but she might have also shouted:

 "IT WAS A TRADITION!"

Ok, so then I kind of felt bad. I mean I guess I did have a vague recollection of a bunny cake but I had stronger memories of stuff like the shoe boxes she would cut a slit in the top of, cover in tin foil, and pink and red paper doilies, the day before Valentines, so I'd have a pretty mailbox when we passed them out in class. And the times she would bring me breakfast in bed on my birthday. And how she never forgot that I loved cantaloupe, and my bagel toasted dark with the cream cheese ALL the way across it, not just in the middle. And the Brachs black jelly beans her mom, my grandma would eat by the bag full. She had a dalmatian named Romeo and she would share them with us, me and the dog standing by her side waiting for a treat. "One for you, two for me". Are you starting to see where all my clever crafty goodness comes from? 

A few weeks ago when we were in Target (stop it, I know) looking for LOL stuff, my mom stopped in her tracks, to which I screeched "DAMNIT WOMAN KEEP MOVING, I'M NOT COMING BACK FOR YOU!" or something like that. She had found a bunny cake mold. This one was new and improved. She put it in her cart. Her only treasure from that little hunt. She made it yesterday afternoon, and she and Jack will frost it today, although he was lobbying pretty hard last night, to eat "just a little bit today." 

Last night I went outside and hid easter eggs around the Nana's yard. There was a real bunny out there. Just hopping along. Maybe Jack won't remember the French lessons, or the fact that he had every single garbage truck toy mankind has ever produced. But I KNOW that he'll remember Nana's bunny cake. Good boys don't forget stuff like that. 

Happy Easter everybody. 

Heartbreak at 35,000 feet

SO I should have been writing little notes about this all week to help deal with my ever increasing anxiety, but I didn't. Mostly because I've been running around like a contestant on one of those game shows where they have to cram as many items in their grocery cart as they can before the buzzer. At one point this week, I thought, if I can get the laundry in the machine, the dishes done, my bag packed, Jack to sleep after feeding him something resembling dinner, and look at ALL of my mom's pictures from her trip to Scotland, Don Pardo will sing me to sleep. 


I should go back a minute. I'm getting ahead. A few months ago, Nipper Knapp and his writing partner, the delightful Andrew Newberg, were informed that two of their scripts had made it into the top 25 of the New York Television Festival Comedy Script Contest. Cool! We decided that he should probably go out, at least for the weekend, in case they won. Then we decided that maybe we should both go, and make it a fun grown ups weekend. Sans Jack. As in, me and Nipper Knapp alone in a big city for the first time since 2007. Sounds good, let's do it! 


Cut to last week, when an advanced schedule arrived in Nipper's email box. There were all kinds of official looking people, and talks, and panels, and mixey mixers, and hand shaking things that, we realized  maybe he and Andy should attend. So we changed Nipper's ticket so he could be in NYC for the whole festival. 


Our plan was for my mother to come stay with Jack at our house. She was going to be getting back from a trip to Scotland two days before, but said it would be fine, because she had planned to visit a buddhist nun at a monastery in Escondido, who was moving to France that very week. What? I know. That was really what she said. Which kind of makes her sound like a Wes Anderson/Angelica Houston type mom, which I guess she sort of is, only more kooky.  Ok, so Nana's coming. Mommy and Daddy are going away. No problem. 


Did I mention we have never left him alone? Except for one time on our Anniversary, we stayed in a hotel overnight in Palm Springs while he stayed at my moms. I don't know that he even noticed we were gone. Did I also mention that Nipper and I are the two softest people EVER? I know that lots of people leave their kids all the time. For work, for pleasure. But us Nipper Knapps, we're a tight group. You'll remember that we don't have jobs. So mostly are just together ALL THE TIME. 


We met a woman in the pool at that Palm Springs hotel, who was with her kids. She told us that she leaves her kids all the time. She said the only time she missed them was when she and her husband went to Bali for a month, when the youngest (who was only about a year old) was 6 months. Uhm, she couldn't even lift her head up on her own, and you left her for a month!!! My agent had to pry me out the house with a crow bar, and bribes, to go to an audition when Jack was 4 months old. And that was just across town. Ok, clearly, I judge. I just really like the kid.


So Nipper left Monday night. He was a little misty before he went, and I kept thinking "MAN UP", it's only a few days. Yeah, ok, whatever. I'm so callous. This morning, I said goodbye to Jack, kissed him too many times, smiled lots, so he wouldn't worry. I got into my car and SOBBED. I called Nipper, tried to leave a message. Called Sadie, tried to leave a message. But my messages were disasters. I cried on both of their voicemail's. OH GEEZ. Pull it together mama. God help me when this kid goes to school. 


I got this picture from my mom as I was sitting at the gate. She took him to the rosebowl pool. Looks like he's going to be just fine. Me on the other hand, I'll be the lady listening to Nico crying in seat 8A.