Jacob's 13th birthday & a charge of negligence

I plead guilty. How does a kid get to be 13 year old and never have had a banana split? We left home bright and early this morning to drive to Cloverfield, which is close to Indianapolis. Carly and Ryan's biological grandmother lives around here and she hadn't been able to make the trip to see the kids for almost 2 years. So we came to her.

After checking into the motel and swimming a bit, she took Carly, Wesley and Ryan to her house for the night. Jacob chose to hang out with me. We were going to go to a movie, but the nearest theater was 3o miles away and neither of us wanted to see anything that bad.

Instead, we went to Chicago's Pizza, where Jacob and I ate some great pizza and garlic bread. He ordered wings, but they were HOT. They pretty much went untouched. Afterwards, I told him we should find a place to get ice cream, since it was his birthday and we hadn't done anything really to celebrate it.

The Ice Box in Cloverdale was the ice cream spot in this happening little stretch of side road. As we were walking in, he informed me he had never had a banana split in his whole life. So he ordered one -- with hot fudge, chocolate and peanut butter toppings. He had big intentions of eating it all, but about three fourths of the way through, he hit the wall. As he started taking smaller and smaller bites, he wondered aloud at how competitive eaters do it.

He left the sad remains of his first banana split and we returned to the motel, where he headed for the Tums and then the bed. Now he's he curled up, making small moaning sounds every once in awhile and watching The Chipmunks on TV. A memorable birthday indeed.