Happy Birthday, Jake!

We celebrated Jake’s seventh birthday on Saturday with a pool party at Kris’s house.

Once again, Sophie created the cake—with Mom’s help, of course. This time she made cupcakes—each one frog-faced. (Frogs are Jake’s favorite animals.) The cupcakes were so adorable. The frogs had red-hot eyes, red-licorice-whip mouths, and Fruit-by-the-Foot tongues. Each frog had so much personality. Each was a distinct individual.

“I dyed the cake green,” Sophie giggled in a proud-yet-shy sort of way. She was going over her process with us, generously giving away her trade secrets.

When Rob and I arrived at the party, Kris and Phil were still working on putting up the zip line, Jake’s main birthday present.

“We’ve been working on this for 16 hours,” Kris sighed. “It’s going to be so dangerous. I predict an emergency visit to the dentist before the end of the weekend.”

Jake couldn’t wait to try out the zip line, which ran down a steep hill between two pine trees, over some dagger-like stumps and brambles. Kris was talking about building a sand pit to land in and padding the trees with sheets of foam. But Jake just wanted to ride. He was running around in his bathing suit, his cheeks flushed with heat and anticipation. He kept yelling, “Mommy, can I try it now? Mommy, can I try it?” Then he’d get mad and pout. He’d cross his arms and say, “Do you even want me to try my zip line ever?” Jake can be somewhat of a drama queen.

Finally it was time for a test run. Jake had to climb to the top of a 12-foot ladder in order to grab the pulley. Then he went flying as Kris stood nearby screaming. (He looked so tiny and all his ribs were showing as he hung there in the air.) He narrowly escaped slamming into the pine tree at the end of the cable.

“All right, that’s enough of that!” Kris cried when Jake lost his grip on the pulley and fell face-first among the pine roots. With a rueful laugh, she muttered to Phil, “Sorry you just wasted the last two days working on this.”

In the end she was convinced to let Sophie and Jake ride a few more times before we started our traditional pool games. As the kids rode, the four grandparents on the sidelines were all kind of shrieking and yelling conflicting advice: “Hold on tight, Jake!” . . . “Put your knees up!” . . . “Let go! Let go! Don’t hit that tree!”

We played volleyball in the pool, boys against girls, and every time the boys’ team scored Jake would yell, “In your face, ladies!” He kept referring to us as “ladies” and blaming us for everything.

“What’s the hold-up?” Rob asked when Jake was screwing around, delaying the game.

“It’s the ladies,” Jake replied, rolling his eyes. I was wearing my Raving Rabbids T-shirt in the pool (I always wear a T-shirt over my bathing suit), and the kids could not get over my coolness.

“Boy,” Bunny said, “Leslie sure picked up some street cred with that T-shirt.”

I am a huge, very out-of-it dork and have basically never played a video game in my entire life. And yet I have the T-shirt. (Rob gave it to me.) I’ve got to wear it more often because it makes me much more popular.

After our volleyball game, we played Sharks and Minnows. Kimels are notoriously poor swimmers (we have underdeveloped arms), so Kris, Bunny, and I (the Kimels) spent most of our time being “it.” I am indeed the worst swimmer of the bunch, and there was a hilarious moment when, as a minnow, I jumped into the shallow end in the most spastic, panicked way, then proceeded to try to run through the waist-deep water to get away from Kris, who was the shark. It was the most ridiculous scene. Kris was chasing me (incredibly slowly), and I was screaming and flailing, running in slow-motion as if through glue. I was moving clumsily at a truly glacial speed. The chase went on and on, it seemed. Afterwards, I was hanging on the wall, panting, saying, “Gosh, that was so scary.”

“Why did you try to run?” Rob asked. “Why didn’t you swim?”

“Have you ever seen me swim?” I said.

Kris said, “The funny part is I barely got you.”

“Ah yes,” I said. “It was a good contest. We were well matched in terms of our lack of ability.” I was still panting. I said, “I thought I’d never make it to the other side.”

Rob said, “It was kind of like a slow-motion nightmare, huh?”

We played Categories next. Kris was it, and her category was “Rides at Disney World.” She was supposed to hang on the wall opposite the rest of us, facing away from us. If she guessed the ride we had chosen, we had to start swimming and then she had come after us and try to tag us before we got to her side of the pool. She guessed Matt’s ride first, and he dove in and escaped her by swimming along the bottom in the deep end. Then he popped up safe at the wall. “Geez!” Kris moaned. “What are you, some sort of merman? I mean, what are you, a halfway decent swimmer?”

Kris kept cheating, guessing a ride, then whirling around and glaring at us.

“Hey, you’re not supposed to look!” Rob said.

Jake was so jazzed for Kris to guess his ride, even though your whole strategy in the game is to pick a thing that’s difficult to guess. Jake was shouting, “Mine starts with a J, Mommy! Mommy, mine starts with a J!”

Kris rolled her eyes. “Is it at Disney World or Universal?” (The kids just went to Universal a couple of weeks ago.)

“Universal!” Jake shouted.

“Jake!” Rob said. “Do you have to yell everything in such a high-pitched tone?”

“What?!” Jake cried (even more high-pitched). “What, Rob?! Rob, what did you say?!”

“Nothing,” Rob mumbled, smiling into the water.

“Mommy,” Jake cried. “Are you even going to guess? Are you, Mommy? Mine starts with a J!”

“Jaws!” Kris cried, and she swam after Jake. Of course, he escaped. He’s had basic swimming lessons.

Rob always likes to do impersonations of Jake. (He loves how small yet loud Jake is. He finds it a hilarious combination.) So he started crying in a high-pitched tone, “Mine starts with a T! Hey, mine starts with a T, Kris, and it’s at Disney World, and it makes everyone in your family sick so you’ve probably never even been on it! Mine starts with a T!”

“Teacups!” Kris cried. (Kimels get motion-sick on anything that spins.) And of course Rob got away no problem. He can swim passably.

We had pizza and frog cupcakes on the deck, and Jake opened his presents. He got a kickboard from Mom, and Bun and I gave him books, which he didn’t even look at, of course. (I would have done the exact same thing when I was a kid.) Dad gave Jake this great game, Jishaku, which uses shiny hematite magnets for playing pieces. The goal of the game is to place your magnets onto the game board without letting any magnets connect. Sophie, Jake, Rob, and I played a few rounds. It was really fun!

Jake was being really loud, throwing his weight around on his birthday. He wouldn’t let Sophie have any of his birthday candy.

“No, Sophie!” he cried. “It’s mine!”

Sophie was being very mature. She just shrugged and giggled. “Can I try on one of your Silly Bandz?” she asked.

“No, Sophie!”

“Oh, well,” she smiled at me. “It was worth a shot.”

Later I was talking to Dad about mountainmint, rambling nervously, promising to bring him some for his yard. I was repeating myself and making up facts, talking in circles, going on and on in my awkward, socially inept way.

“Stop talking, Leslie!” Jake cried. I guess somebody needed to say it.

“Geez, Jake sure is being bossy on his birthday,” I said.

“Stop talking, Leslie!”

Kris had filled a huge bucket with water balloons, and when Jake wasn’t looking, I armed myself. Bunny joined me. It was so great. Bun’s a strict elementary-school teacher and doesn’t usually put up with any tomfoolery. But now there she was, holding the bottom of her shirt out like an apron, filling it up with water balloons. We got ready to ambush Jake, that tiny dictator. He came around the corner of the deck–yelling, of course. We started pegging him. Well, Bunny was pegging him. I kept missing. In the heat of the moment, I always spazz.

“Hey! That’s not fair!” Jake cried. “I don’t have any ammo!”

“You better get some then,” I said.

Jake drenched Rob, who had just put on a dry shirt.

“All right, it’s on!” Rob cried.

Pretty soon everybody was involved in the game. Sophie took to storing water balloons in her bikini top, which was quite funny. Nobody held back. Matt and Rob were throwing water balloons as hard as they could, so we all had big red marks where we’d been hit. Matt, who is usually so cautious, had a brilliant idea. He took the giant bucket that had once been filled with water balloons and put it in the pool. Then he put Jake inside the bucket and let him bob along. The bucket kept listing and Jake kept almost knocking his head against the pool edge. Luckily Matt was there to catch him.

Kris was so mad. She kept yelling, “Jake! Are you going to tip over and then be caught in that bucket? Are you going to drown, stuck in that stupid bucket?”

He finally capsized completely and Kris was yelling, “Swim! Swim! Get out of the goddam bucket!”

Matt looked on sheepishly. Jake had no trouble getting out of the bucket. But he kept wanting to get back in, and that was the problem. He thought he could jump off the side of the pool into the bobbing, listing bucket. Matt kept trying to quietly discourage him. Then he strolled over to Kris, who was cleaning up the deck, and said quietly, sheepishly, “Uh, you may want to hide that bucket. . . .”

Kris rolled her eyes. “Gee, you think so?”

Matt is so funny. He’s usually the most careful, cautious person in the entire world (very concerned about fire hazards, etc.), but somehow he had started this whole business with the bucket.

“Jake,” Kris yelled, “if you touch that bucket again, you’ll have to go inside and go straight to bed!”

So Jake started playing with the hose instead. He accidentally squirted it all over my purse, which was fine because I had left my purse in a sketchy place, in the bushes. He flooded my purse, but I didn’t care. I was standing around shivering, eating potato chips, and then he blasted me with the hose. I can’t tell you the force that was coming out of that ordinary garden hose. It was like being blasted with a fire hose. He blasted me off the deck and back toward our parked car.

“All right, that’s it. We’re leaving,” Rob called merrily. (It was time to go anyway.)

“Bye, Leslie,” Jake called sweetly.

“That’s a great way to get rid of pesky house guests,” I laughed. “Just blast them away with the hose.”

“Bye, Jake!” Rob called.

“Bye, Jake!” I said. “Happy Birthday! I had a great time at your party!”

“Next time you get more loot, bring it to me!” Jake chuckled. He’s always working on his comedy, honing his craft.

“Oh, you like those books?” Rob teased. “You want more books?”

“I want gold,” Jake replied, chuckling again.

Kris was rolling her eyes in the background. “Bye,” she said.