Happy Birthday to my baby!

He is no longer a baby. He is 14 years old today. Much to his chagrin, I (aka the not ‘fun Mom,’ aka the ‘bad cop’) got him an electric razor for his birthday and that pair of slippers that he snooped and found before Christmas. (Couldn’t return them because what are the odds of finding another pair of Men’s size 14 slippers?) Oh don’t worry, he got something fun too. Anastasia (aka the ‘fun Mom’, aka the ‘good cop’) got him a wireless controller for one of his video game systems.

Now just a short trip down memory lane. My son is a good kid, really he is, but when he was younger he was quite mischievous. When he was 5 years old his father and I were at my company’s holiday party at Navy Pier, while both kids were at Grandma’s house. Just before dessert was served I called to find out how they were behaving. My daughter answered and said that Grandma was asleep and her brother was gone. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE IS GONE?” (I swear everyone in the Grand Ballroom heard that.) “Go wake up Grandma, NOW”. Grandma comes to the phone, has no idea what’s going on, then starts searching every nook and cranny of her apartment, the front stairs and the back stairs. He’s not there. I tell her to keep looking and I call the police. I tell my husband (now ex) and we head for the parking garage. My ex doesn’t drive, so here I am driving and on my cell phone on Lake Shore Drive (practically hysterical), in winter, trying not to speed and end up sliding into Lake Michigan.

The police send a squad to Grandma’s house and several more to canvas the neighborhood. My ex takes the phone and calls Grandma back, ‘are you sure he isn’t there?’. Big help. I drop my ex at his mother’s apartment and I begin driving the neighborhood. (Because those 6 police cars just might miss a spot.) After a couple rounds of the neighborhood I drive home and meet a police officer at my house. He tells me they haven’t found him yet, but they have every squad out looking.

I decide on my own to check the outside of our property thinking that even though it is cold, maybe he is hiding in the gym/slide or found a way into the garage, or something. Maybe he was scared by the police and if I look, he’ll come out. (Because I'm Super Mom and have better detective skills than the Chicago Police force.) After I crawl under the gym/slide and come out, I see something. One of the jealousy basement windows is missing, another is broken and something is hanging out of the window. I call for the officer and his flashlight and find a pair of black boys jeans hanging out the window. I break into a run and run around to the front of the house, up the porch stairs and scramble to get my key in the lock. I open the door to find my son in his tighty whiteys, kicking back in front of the television watching Saturday Night Live, eating a bag of potato chips. I grab him and just about squeeze the life out of him and fight back tears. The officer steps in, sees him there and tells me he’ll call it in. After the officer leaves I have a talk with my son.

Me: Why did you do it?
Him: Didn’t want to be with Grandma anymore, she’s mean (Grandma was also a ‘bad cop’).
Me: How did you do it?
Then he proceeds to tell me his exact route (racing across a major highway at 10pm at night) from Grandma’s to our house and how he got in through the window head first, leaving his pants stuck in the window.

Two years later I get a call from the kid’s park summer program, my son disappeared, they’ve called the police. My heart stops again, but I’m thinking back to what happened earlier and I’m praying that he’s just up to something and someone hasn’t snatched him. I tell them to be sure to have the police check my house and his father’s apartment. I leave work early and agree to meet the police at the park. Just as I begin talking to the park director, he gets a call from the police, they found him at his father’s apartment. The park director gives the phone to me and the police officer tells me that my son broke into the apartment through an unlocked window, what did I want to do? Did I want them to give him a ride in the back of the squad, the full treatment? YES! So they give him a ride in the back of the squad, as if they were arresting him for breaking and entering. My son swears they handcuffed him, but I think he is just embellishing the story. The police bring him to the park and one of the officers takes him aside for a chat, explains that they are releasing him to me and that if he ever breaks the law again, he WILL go to jail. My son gives me that smirky smirk thing he does when he’s all proud of himself and he’s in trouble.

This photo was probably from his 2nd birthday. The kid still loves to get all dressed up. Before winter break we had our annual meeting at his school and funny how he suddenly didn't have any clean clothes other than his dress shirt and dockers. His teachers were impressed, he just did his smirky smirk thing, thinking he put one over on the teachers. We had our meeting and everything was fine. For some reason every year he thinks he's in trouble when I have to go for 'the annual meeting'. This year he had to attend because they require 8th graders on up to attend.

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