Normally Leroy Jethro Gibbs just forgot about his birthday. Where was the sense in celebrating to be one year older? Children would think it a good thing to be finally a year older but for an adult it just means loosing time. Nevertheless living with a three-year-old and a certain 33-year-old showed him that although he didn’t want to celebrate and be reminded other people want exactly that.
So after a lot of talking and two pairs of brown puppy eyes he accepted that this year would be different, that this year there would be an acknowledgement of his 47th birthday.
Tony took the day before Gibbs birthday off so he and Lily could work on some surprises.
Deciding that a cake would be the least, he raided Gibbs cook books to find the perfect torte. Although he wasn’t a really good cook, Gibbs was always the boss in the kitchen and he could hardly boil water, but he couldn’t imagine that baking a cake would be that difficult. So he started to get all the required ingredients together which resulted in the first big mess, because the flour box wasn’t really closed and it rained on the floor.
“Damn it!” Tony exclaimed and put all the other things on the bench, while trying to find dustpan and brush. He had once seen one of these sets somewhere in one of the kitchen cupboards " he was sure of it. “Well than I’m cleaning it when I am finished.” He thought while getting the eggs out of the fridge.
As soon he got the bowl and the scale he heard his daughter behind him.
“Can I help you daddy?”
“Sure pumpkin!” Tony answered, while getting her a chair to stand on.
He read the recipe and got two of the eggs.
“Can I put them in?” Lily asked excited.
“Okay but carefully and no shell, okay?”
“Yes, daddy, I know that!”
He gave her the eggs and started with the melting of chocolate. As soon Lily saw the big brown pieces she let go of an egg and tried to get down of her chair.
“I want some choclate, please. Can I have some?”
“No Lily, it’s for the cake. We’re doing a chocolate cake and we need all of it.”
“But I want some choclate now!” Lily started to scream.
Tony turning around to his daughter nearly slipped on the mix of flour and egg on the floor.
“No Lily!” he answered while grabbing for the bench to hold himself up.
The little toddler poked out her tongue and ran to her room.
“Great!” Tony thought while walking to the bowl and started to get the shell out of it and put a new second egg into the mix. When he was walking to the fridge to get the milk, he smelled the burning chocolate and jumped back to the stove to save the brown fluid.
A while later everything seems to run smoothly again. The dough was finished and smooth, the chocolate was saved and Tony stirred it slowly under. As he was filling everything in a cake tin, Lily was standing next to him again.
“Can I get choclate now please?” she asked while he was putting the tin in the oven.
“Well, we have to wait for an hour while the cake is baking and than we can go to the supermarket to get some chocolate, okay?” Tony tried to appease his daughter.
“Rweally?” she asked while sitting down on the floor and starting to play with the floor and egg mix.
“Yeah!” Tony answered without turning in her direction and started to fill the dishwasher. Just as he was cleaning the bench he got a look at Lily from the corner of his eye and turned around really fast.
The ingredients from the floor were now also in Lily’s hair, on her clothes and in her face.
“Lillian Sophie DiNozzo! What the hell are you doing!” he exclaimed while trying to get his daughter out of the mess.
“I was cooking!” she answered and tried to put her sticky fingers in her mouth.
“Don’t eat that! It was on the floor!” Tony grumbled while pulling her to the bathroom.
“I don’t wanna have a bath!” Lily shouted with interlaced arms.
“Yeah, well you should have thought of that before you played in that mess.” Tony answered angrily and tried to get her out of her clothes without getting the sticky stuff on his own clothes.
After a big fight while washing his daughter and redressing both of them " although Tony could avoid to get the dough on his clothes, ensured the following bathing fight with his daughter that he was looking like a wet dog.
When he finally returned to the kitchen he noticed that the cake was already burning a little bit on the top so he hurried to get it out of the oven and started to cover it with lots of chocolate icing. Afterwards he had to clean the benches again because Lily threw a tandrum as he promised her to buy choclate after the baking and he still was working in the kitchen although the cake was out of the oven “for a long time already, pal” (Tony didn’t know were Lily always took up those phrases) and the icing was dripping next to the cake while Tony turned to his daughter to calm her down. An hour later the kitchen was back to its clean normal state and the two DiNozzos were in the car to the next supermarket.
The next morning the cake surprise for Gibbs drowned in an early call because of a dead marine in Norfolk and Tony wondered why he went through this whole work for nothing and decided that next year he would support Jethro’ wish in just forgetting about birthdays.
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