Moto pizza.
Like most almost-3-year-olds, Nicolas loves pizza. Specifically, he loves a personal pan cheese pizza with added black olives delivered on a motorcycle by Domino’s. He calls it “moto pizza” just like we did in the D.R. where we ate entirely too much pizza of both the “oven” and “moto” varieties.
So, it was no surprise when he requested cheesy circular objects as the meal choice for his birthday party.
It sounded good to me. My plan was to keep the celebration incredibly low-key. Just a small group of his closest friends (who I’ve collectively dubbed the “preschool mafia”), a few classic games, a pizza lunch followed by some semi-homemade cupcakes, and a couple party favors for everybody to go home with. I’m just not ready for the sometimes over-the-top parties that come with life overseas.
Nicolas’s nanny and I started our prep early in the week so that it wouldn’t be a last-minute rush. We made our list to divide and conquer; she’d get the house in good order and I’d take care of getting cake mix from the commissary and borrowing a stand mixer from a neighbor to make some frosting.
We were doing pretty well until Friday afternoon. After a busy week that was perhaps a bit more scheduled than I had accounted for, I hit my wall around 2pm. And even though the mixer to borrow was only a block away, I couldn’t bring myself to rally enough to get it. I decided to phone it in. Rather than box cupcakes with homemade buttercream frosting, Nicolas was going to end up with whatever I could find at Theo’s Patisserie and Chocolatier. I Uber’ed myself a tuk-tuk and headed over to the high-end pastry shop in hopes that I’d find something even remotely suitable for a three-year-old’s birthday. The whole cake pickings were slim by the time I showed up, but I was able to WhatsApp two options back to the house where Ms. Mary confirmed that Nicolas would prefer the fancy Belgian chocolate to-do over the equally fancy blueberry cake.
I managed to make it home 20 minutes later despite a lost-in-translation tuk-tuk ride that absolutely could have been avoided if I had stuck to using Uber rather than just winging it with a cash fare.
So far the plan had only had one minor deviation and I was feeling pretty good.
Knowing that Saturday would come too soon and that she had been dealing with a headache all afternoon, I sent Ms. Mary home a little bit early. After all, we were on target. Nicolas and I would hang some streamers and make balloon bouquets before Joe got home. Any last-minute things could wait until morning.
At 9:59, veggies and fruit were washed and ready to be cut, the coffee pot was on, and Ms. Mary was set to make masala chai for anybody who wanted it. All was going according to plan.
The doorbell rang at 10 on the dot and Nicolas welcomed his first guest in. We all laughed when Nicolas’s other friend and nanny arrived a few minutes later with both a gift and a surprise container of homemade waffles. (The entire crew loves these waffles but Nicolas’s special fondness has become a running joke.) We declared “waffles for snack!” and everybody happily dug in.
Things were still going swimmingly around 11:00. Pin the Tail on the Donkey proved to be a bit too advanced for the crowd, but everybody was happily playing and getting excited for pizza lunch.
Joe placed the order via the app at 11:10 but noted that it appeared to not go through. Odd, we thought, especially since the charge had. Not much later (and on the third try after two Hindi-only speakers), he was informed by a central call center in Bombay that his order hadn’t gone through but would be pushed manually to the local store. Given that the rep repeated it correctly back to him, we figured we’d be OK. Fifteen minutes passed without the confirmation text that she had said would most likely be sent. And then thirty-five with no pizza.
At 11:45ish, I started to conjure up Plan B while Joe hopped on his motorcycle to visit Domino’s himself. At noon, just as the kiddos were starting to show the tell-tale signs of hungry bellies, Joe texted that our local store was closed. There would be no pizza.
I broke the news to the kids (and adults): pizza was off but we had plenty of veggies, fruit, and freshly-heated naan to make P.B. “sandwiches.” Plus, Ms. Mary had had the foresight yesterday to cook up enough dal makhani and rice pilau to feed the nannies plus have leftovers.
Joe got home just as we were dishing up and told me that the trip had been worth it just to see a Zomato delivery guy angrily banging on the door and yelling phrases in Hindi that Joe only knew from watching Netflix crime dramas.
It all turned O.K. despite my momentary freak out that it wasn’t going to. Small kiddos (aside from my own) and a couple big siblings happily munched on what was on offer. And thanks to Ms. Mary making more food than we thought we’d need, even the adults got to have a decent lunch.
Plus that fancy-shmancy cake? It was pretty delicious.
When all was said and done and the last guest out the door, I asked Nicolas if his party had been good. “Yup,” he replied before turning his attention back to his new PlayDoh set. I have to agree.
(But I’m still half-expecting Domino’s to show up with a party’s worth of pizzas. Stranger things have happened here.)
