As I mentioned earlier, James staged a standoff when he woke up from his nap this afternoon by refusing to leave the neutral territory of his crib because it would mean surrendering his binky (or as he calls it, "ginky") for the very last time. He woke up at 3:30 at sat there for an hour, staring into space and refusing all offers of George books and animal crackers. I would peek in on him periodically and confirm that he hadn't violated the neutral boundaries of his bed. I used the time to write my first blog of the day, and to make pizza dough in the bread machine. Anyone who follows my blog knows that I don't have much luck with cooking ventures, so I was very careful to follow the recipe exactly. At 4:30 I looked in again and he was sitting in the same position, but with a basketball under his right arm.
"James," I asked "did you get out of bed."
He looked up at me with an expression of profound guilt and whispered through his binky "...no..."
He was out of bed and the binky surrendered shortly thereafter.
I wasn't looking forward to taking the binky away tonight. It doesn't really bother me, and I thought it was a bit of a raw deal that I should be the one to enforce the policy on a night when J was going to be away. It's been a long time, though, since I've had to deal with any major tantrums, and J generally has to be the disciplinarian while I waltz in at the end of the day with treats and retain Most Favored Parent status. I asked "Is this the right night to be doing this?" but in the end I agreed to be the one who would suffer James' displeasure and take the binky away.
Once he gave the binky up I attempted to do my practicing for the day, which was spectacularly unsuccessful. Between James knocking over all of the music on my stand twice and insisting that he play along with his own trumpet ("I wanna practice TOO!") I didn't get much done. Oh, well. It's hard to practice and be the sole childwatcher at the same time. I had a student coming at 6, so I wanted to make sure that I could time my practicing, dinner prep, and the necessary cleanup all right. We read a few books while I took breaks, and I even got a big container of pizza sauce made. I was practicing again when James came in with J's recipe box and dumped the entire stack of index cards onto the floor, after which he began sorting through the brightly colored green ones.
Oh well, I thought, I'll have to clean that up afterwards. A few minutes later, he came up to me and tugged my arm. "Daddy, wanna make GOOkies." And sure enough, he had the recipe card for chocolate chip cookies. I'm not quite sure how he did that. Maybe he learned to read while he was in the tent.
Just then the timer went off for the pizza dough, and I went to check the bread machine. This is what I found.
I have no idea how a recipe so closely followed could turn out quite badly, but if we've learned anything in this blog over the years, it is certain that I am completely incapable of making a pizza.
I decided to order a pizza and wings. I would have $25 coming in from my student and I had coupons. I printed a coupon off, and told J what I was going to do. It was now nearly 6:00, and my student was going to be arriving soon. I needed to clean up, get the pizza ordered as close to 6 as possible (so that it would still be hot when we picked it up after 6:30) and get the tent torn down. James protested the tent going down, but when he laid down in the middle of it I just kept on taking the tents down, and I think he could tell that I meant business.
I called Pontillo's at 5:50 and ordered a large cheese pizza and a dozen wings, and they said it would be about 25 minutes. I told them they could hold off on putting that in since I couldn't pick it up till 6:35. Then I stopped, thought for a moment, and looked at the calendar on the white board. My student wasn't coming at 6, they were coming at 6:30.
"Hello, this is Pontillo's Brighton."
"Hi, I called just a second ago and ordered a large pizza and asked you to wait to put it in?"
"Yes?"
"Sorry, please put that in as soon as possible. Can it still be ready in 25 minutes?"
"Yeah, that's no problem. I'll have them get started on it."
I figured that since it was less than a block away, I could get down there with James and at least get him set up with some dinner before my student got there at 6:30, even if I had to wait until after the lesson to eat. He certainly wasn't going to make it much longer before he needed dinner, and I didn't want to have to go out again once it was dark and freezing out.
We finished cleaning up the living room, and at 6:10 we put on shoes and coat and made our way out to the car. The traffic where we live is really terrible from 5-7 pm every day, and it took us about 5 minutes just to get halfway up the block to where the pizza place is. It's easy walking distance, but I didn't think I could carry back a pizza and James and make it back in time for the lesson.
We went into the store and I told them I was there for a pick-up. They asked for my name, and the clerk said he didn't have anything under Roy. They asked for my phone number, and they didn't have anything under that either. They asked whether I'd called the right location, and I confirmed that I'd called the Brighton location on Monroe Avenue. They asked what I'd ordered and I told them I had a coupon for a large cheese pizza and a dozen wings.
"We don't sell wings by the dozen."
"No, I have it on the coupon right here."
I pulled out the Pontillo's coupon. And at that exact moment I realized I was in a Salvatore's.
It was now 6:25, and James and I raced back to the car to drive home, him begging the entire way "Daddy, I wanna EAT. Wanna EAT, Daddy. Wanna EAT."
We got into the house about 30 seconds before my student, and I was just finishing up a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for James when they came in the door. James got it all over his face and talked animatedly to my student's father (mostly about Curious George) while my student played duets, and then I felt the back of my chair being pushed repeatedly. I waited for my student to finish his etude, excused myself, and put on Curious George Christmas on the laptop in James' bedroom. I heard him laughing a few times, but he didn't come out and bother my student's father anymore. (He'd wanted him to come back to his bedroom and read George books while they were at the table.)
When my student left, I finally had the $25 in my pocket and the coupon ready, and James and I put on shoes and coats again and drove down to the 12 Corner Plaza in Brighton, to get our pizza from Pontillo's. I was sure I remembered where it was, so I didn't get directions before we left. We turned around once, and then turned around twice, and then I looked up direction on my phone. The directions led us to a pizza place, but it wasn't Pontillo's. At 7:35 we finally showed up at Pontillo's, picked up our pizza, and drove home.
James read a George book to himself at the table while we ate, and I didn't even try to take it away. That pizza was DELICIOUS.
At 8:00, I let him finish watching the last 10 minutes of Curious George Christmas and sat with him beside his bed as he sang along with the songs. We changed his diaper, brushed teeth, and he got into bed. And then the maelstrom hit.
I WAN' GINKY!!! I WAN' GINKY!!!
"No, James, tonight you're going to be a big boy and sleep without your binky, just like we talked about earlier."
"NO, GINKY!!! I WAN' GINKY!!!"
It was maybe 10 minutes of this before J arrived back from work. She listened in the hall for a few seconds, then shook her head and said "Are we sure this is the right night to do this?" I don't remember quite what I said to that, but the long and the short of it is that James is sleeping peacefully with his binky, we are all full of pizza, and we now know that it is a Salvatore's, and not a Pontillo's across the road from us.
And I still am yet to successfully make a pizza on my own.
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