friday was alex's last day of school. i have a tradition that on a kid's last day, i take the day off work, pick them up when they are released and we go out on a special father son/daughter adventure. last year alex and i rode the metro/subway down to the arch and went to the top. this year, i had initially planned on taking alex kite-flying for the day because he's been super keen on trying a new kite he got for his birthday. that was my initial thought but a rainy week dashed those plans. so late in the week i had to scramble to come up with some indoor options. this is what shook out.

alex likes sushi. or rather he has always liked miso soup a bowl of sticky rice with a bottomless dish of soy sauce. this year he actually ate and enjoyed a piece of sushi. it was an ebi (shrimp). he even asked for a second. during our lunch he told me that when i asked him where he wanted to go to lunch he picked sushi because he knew i would like it. i told him that was not what the day was about and he was supposed to pick where he wanted to go. he then told me that he just wanted to go to a place i wanted to go to because that would make him happy. he's too precious for words, even a father's words.



neither alex or i knew anything about speed racer. i've never seen a single episode of the old show and alex hadn't even heard of it. but what made this moment poignant was alex had never seen a movie in a movie theater. in checking the listings the day before it was really the only (age-appropriate) thing that looked worthy of a man's first walk down the dark aisle. other than being greatly distracted by all the video games in the lobby, alex enjoyed his first movie-going experience. we almost lucked into a private viewing but two other folks showed up for the 1pm showing. this prevented alex and i from kicking back like royalty and talking just as if we were in our own living room.



(this was an optional part of the plan given the weather but the clouds broke while we were in the movie making it possible.) my family spends a lot of time at the big city park near our home. this park houses the city zoo, a golf course, museums and lots and lots of green space. there is a complex waterway that runs through the park and there is a boathouse you can rent canoes or paddle-boats from to cruise through the network of ponds. whenever the kids see people out on boats they always ask if we can go and we've always answered, someday. this is because we are usually headed somewhere else in the park and it has never been our destination. on the way there alex kept asking what the next part of the adventure was and i kept responding that it was a surprise. after entering the park, every time we'd pass a place he'd ask if that was it. when i stopped the car in front of the boathouse his eyes lit up and he asked if we were getting a boat to go on the water. i told him that was the plan. i watched him in the rear view mirror as he excitedly looked out on the water and pumped his fist and said, 'yessss!'. that there is called 'price of admission'. being in the boat is way cooler than seeing the boats pass by because you get to wend your way through the various streams and you get to go under the fancy stone bridges and you get to paddle close enough to the sky-rocketing fountains to feel their mist and touch their jets. it was all rather spectacular until i told alex we had to turn back. he wasn't ready. not even close. and, he protested as much saying he wanted to keep exploring. i explained it was time and we had to meet mom, bella and anthony for a night event. slumping in the seat he said with great exasperation that it was still his day and his time.


and this is the unfortunate lesson all parents and children must repeatedly face. the end of fun, innocence and special milestones. fortunately for this memory, the day that actually happened was far better than the day that was originally planned. i don't often get this lucky and because of that i'm quick to know when i do.

you may recall me mentioning a discussion i had with a man who asked if i had yet crossed streams with my son while urinating. at the time of the question, i had not. the gleam in the man's eye told me he found this to be one of those father-son moments he looked forward to and now cherished.

last weekend i joined the club. marty's voice called up the staircase announcing breakfast. this woke both alex and i. we got out of the bed we were sharing and together shuffled to the bathroom. wordlessly we stood side by side before the toilet, unsheathed and began to urinate. we directed our torrents around the bowl in a haphazard way. after a moment, the streams touched, crossing magically, if even for just moment. alex looked up to me, about to speak. i cleared my mind waiting to experience a moment i knew i would forever remember. alex's still tired face caught my eye and said ... "dad, stop splashing me."

the man who turned me onto this milestone did say i would remember the first time i crossed streams with my son. he did not say why i'd remember. he just said i would remember. he was right.

bella is a willful human. changing her will, when she's willful, is as easy as compelling a devout vegan to eat raw meat, and requiring them to enjoy every sinewy bite.

now bella has always been spirited but i remember the first time her level of conviction alarmed me. bella was four and at the time of this tale was getting washed by her mother. midway through the bath i began hearing ra...

when i come home from work marty is typically putting the final touches on dinner and the kids are somewhere in the house playing invented games. the sound of the front door slamming at this time of day sends the children into an automatic frenzy and they scramble for hiding places because a game of ogre is now afoot. as i stand in the hallway i gauge each child's location based on their excited shrieks and hurried footsteps so i know where to begin my search for toes, tummies and biscuits. and on days when neighborhood kids are over, the fervor is extra-pitched.

when i stepped inside the house one day last week, i was not met with the usual cacophony but instead complete silence. i swung the door closed loudly and waited and listened. still nothing. my sweep of the first floor found no giggling hiders. i moved upstairs and checked the first few rooms. still nothing. then i found all three children shoulder to shoulder on the ping-pong room futon gazing blankly at a movie playing on marty's computer. as i stood next to the screen the glazed over kids barely acknowledged my arrival giving me a quarter-hearted 'hey dad' (we may need to take this no tv business a step further). i moved to my office to find marty sitting in the corner equally sullen. she was casually flipping the pages of a three day old newspaper.

hey.

hey.

how's things?

hanging on. long day. i haven't started dinner. feeling nauseous.

sorry to hear.

and, i'm too nervous to take a pregnancy test.

with our first few children marty used a pre-arranged code to tell me she was pregnant. the secret sign was she got her hair cut really short, like demi moore in ghost short. that's how i knew and when i'd first see her, she'd smile at me and i'd smile at her and then we'd hug and dance and shout right there on the spot (later i realized the flaw to this plan was some anonymous hairdresser learned i was to be a father before i did, but small price for the surprise frolic). now with three short haircuts behind us, i'm told the potential news while her eyes continues to skim the Week In Review section of the Sunday Times. marty is not a fan of unintentional things, especially when those unintentional things will go on to launch things off her dining room table during dinner and play with whatever they find lurking in the toilet bowl and repeatedly eat gravel.

and in case you were feeling anxious for us, marty's queasiness has since passed.

but the fear hasn't.

marty is the maker of breakfast in the morning. while i finish getting ready for work i can tell what kind of day it is by the smells wafting up the stairs. many times it is oatmeal or fresh bran muffins with yogurt. sometimes it's plain ole cereal. but on lucky days french toast or pancakes make the cut. i descended the stairs on a french toast day, speared a couple of slices and readied my plate. bella soon followed doing the same. marty was upstairs finishing with the boys. before bella dug in she said:

mom usually ties my hair back before i eat syrupy things.

oh. what does she use?

i don't know.

as it turns out, i don't know either, which marty was quick to smirkingly observe when she entered the room.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. no secrets

when i stepped out of the shower i heard marty and the kids leaving for school. in the mornings i either take bella and alex to school myself or give hugs and kisses to them as they leave for the day. today i was wet and in a towel when i heard the front door slam. i ran to an upstairs window, opened it and shouted goodbye as they walked towards the car. alex returned the sentiment and bella turned paused and then shouted, loudly, "will you please shut the window! i can see your big, fat nipples!"

i can say with the full confidence that my nipples are neither big or fat. i just don't know how to say it with confidence to the neighbors who surely heard bella bark the information through the quiet morning street.

when my sister-in-law was exiting a store with her three year old, he spied a nearby baby, pointed at it and started loudly screaming, "stupid baby! stupid baby! stupid baby!" some hours later she called marty to commiserate about the incident. of course none of our children ever hurled insults at hapless passerbys from the red cage of a target cart. our children much preferred biting them. i mean, i've seen insulted kids not cry. the same cannot be said about freshly bitten ones.

the stupid-baby tale supports a theory i have about parenting: it is not the parent's job to mold the human, it is the parent's job to keep the human alive until adulthood. we come much more wired than i think many seem to acknowledge. for instance, we didn't teach bella to bite kids who touched her crayons. she just did it the first time it happened. as parents it's our job to teach her not to bite crayon-curious playmates because one day she may bite the wrong one and they, in turn, will eat her. we will have then failed her as parents.

another thing not often acknowledged is the full psychological rigors that come from life with children. sure, people say it's hard and it's this and it's that, but not many people talk about their honest emotions when coping with the frustrations of children. what previous experience prepares you to look at a stranger and say 'yeah, sorry my kid called your baby stupid. i'm sure he's not that stupid, you know, being a baby and all' or to make the phone call saying you're glad that the bite didn't break the skin. parenthood will for sure test the most patient and capable out there.

when marty is at her breaking-point she goes into this deep-breathing trance. she told me that during it she thinks about the child (in question) when they were still in infancy and still cuddly and toothless and wordless. a few moments of this helps her re-enter the heat of the fracas less likely to take someone (in question) out.

thinking about the past doesn't work for me, i have to think about the future. when i start unraveling, i say the three letters F and S and U, repeatedly. what FSU represents for me is the day in my future when i deliver my child to a university to begin their college education. i pick FSU, or florida state university, because it is far away and because it strikes me as a party school (two characteristics that twist the knife a little extra). so i imagine driving my child halfway across the country, unpacking their bags and boxes and then briefly inspecting their room. i imagine myself sitting on the couch of their room during the awkward last few moments. i imagine marty standing by the door gesturing for me to get up. i imagine my child not nearly as aware of the import of the moment as myself. i imagine that tighter than usual hug and a longer the usual kiss on the cheek. i imagine the hollow chasm in my chest when the dorm room door closes and i imagine the deathly silent walk to the car.

so when i walked into the living room six days ago and found the christmas tree toppled on its side ... FSU. and when i walked into the living room three days ago and found the christmas tree again toppled over on its side ... FSU. and when i walked in the door from work tonight and found our christmas tree fallen yet again ... FSU. and when i asked alex what happened and he said "anthony just looked at it and it fell down" ... FSU.

and now just even typing out how many times the christmas tree has fallen over the in the last week ... FSU.

alex is peeing standing up. in watching him feel his way through this transition, one side of me wants to step in and counsel him on how he could do things better. another side of me sees how little i've come in 35 years of peeing upright. my own lack of progress keeps me both quiet and humble. truth told, there is really only one mistake he routinely commits that i never do and that is resting his penis on the rim of the bowl while he goes. of course the only reason i never do this is because my stuff doesn't reach the bowl. if it did, i'm sure i would take, and i don't think i'm alone here, the occasional break from hefting my phallus through the daily and arduous affair and just let it laze about on the cold porcelain while it does its deed.

people who own them and women who are married/living with them know of the variety of potential urinary misfires. i liken their haphazardness to those strobe light balls at dance clubs that randomly shoot multi-colored lights out of a spinning orb? when urination goes wrong it is a bit like that. but, instead of light they shoot fluid and instead of different colors they shoot variant types of streams (i.e. hissers, splitters, arc-ers). it's hard to get on a kid about this because it happens to grown men as well. when it occurs the best i can do is tell him to shake it, or whip it, or hit it, or tug it. while the approach seems mildly unscientific, it is the best we've got. reason is, penis flakiness happens with such pure unpredictability it's virtually impossible to study proper. so when it occurs your mind simply reacts and thus the shake, whip, hit and tug approach.

at a dinner party last weekend i mentioned our home's new kid-trauma to a fellow father. he has two older boys and asked if my son and i had yet crossed streams. i looked at him a little askew wondering if he forgot what a piddling four-year old was like because at the moment if i'm in the same room with him when he sets up, it is a mistake or an oversight on my part because i need a doorjamb between me and him until his reaction time is a little more in the sub-second range. i told the guy i hadn't yet had the pleasure. he looked at me nodding slyly and said "it's pretty cool the first time you cross streams with your boy. it's pretty damn cool."

something that makes all the random sprays and mystery puddles worthwhile is one of alex's more unique rituals. when he's done, he reaches to his left grabs some toilet paper, dabs the tip of his penis, drops the square in the water, pulls his pants up, runs his mits under the water, dries them on a towel and proudly exits the bathroom. what makes his routine unorthodox is that he doesn't tear the toilet paper square off of the roll before pulling it over to blot his penis, meaning that the next person to use the bathroom finds the toilet paper elegantly draped from the wall holder and into the bottom of the commode. you just gotta hope you've arrived on the scene before the toilet water has leached its way up the paper strand and into the full roll. admittedly, if the moisture does reach the source and i'm the first on the scene, i'm going to quietly make my way out of the house and ask the neighbors to use their facilities so i don't have to be the one to swap out the soggy roll in our home's only bathroom.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. old

on saturday marty and bella went to a wedding. bella had the job of handing out hershey kisses to guests walking out of the church after the ceremony. as she dropped the foil wrapped sweets into the passing palms of exiting people she was instructed to say, "kisses from the bride and groom."

meanwhile back at home, i took the boys kite flying. it was a stupendous day for such an outing a...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. outmatched

tickling is a major staple in our house. we have numerous tickling games, tricks, ploys and methods. but we are also a house of rules and some tickle-related rules we have include:

1. no tickling someone when they are going to sleep, sleeping or waking up.
2. no tickling someone when they are eating or preparing food.
3. no tickling someone when they are sitting on or standing in front of the toilet.

if i could only pick one of those to enforce going forward it would be number three, without question or hesitation. although number one is pretty sucky too.

many of these battles unfold a little bit like this:

TROY
alex, come here, i want to whisper something to you.

(alex starts walking towards me, albeit suspiciously. if bella's in the room her head snaps up and looks our way. if she's somewhere else in the house and heard my words she runs to the room we are in.)

BELLA
ALEX! don't do it! it's a trap! he's going to tickle you.

(many times alex has already moved too close and i grab him up, throwing him over my lap, tickling him madly.)

ALEX (through great laughter)
DELLA! DELLA! help me della.

(and bella does answer but as soon as she arrives to save him i push him away and grab her up throwing her over my lap and begin tickling her.)

BELLA
ALEX, HELP! HELP ME ALEX!

(and like bella, alex rushes to her rescue and i trade the kids out again. and so our game goes. sometimes i think the sport would go for hours but one, if not both of the children, in their excitement resort to hitting, kicking and biting to save their ally and they are big and surprisingly strong and their father is delicate so this is usually how the games end, with me massaging a bitten arm or rubbing a punched temple.)

at a weeknight dinner last week bella informed the table that our family needed a password. when asked what this was she went on to say that it's a secret word only our family knows and would use if we, the parents, sent someone to pick one of the children up. like if bella was walking home from school and someone pulled up saying, "bella, your mother asked that i take you home today." bella would ask them what the password was. if they knew it she would go with them. if they didn't she would not. this led to a lengthy discussion about what to do if the person didn't know the password. i suggested if the person was in a car, the child should turn and walk in the opposite direction and go to the closest home of someone we knew and ask for help. bella then asked what to do if someone didn't ask anything but just grabbed her. marty said, very succinctly, that she gave bella and alex full permission to do whatever they could to get away. kick, claw, bite, scream, punch, gouge eyes, you name it you can do it. bella then thoughtfully ranked her skills saying she was a great pincher and could kick hard and yell "YOU'RE NOT MY FATHER! THIS IS NOT MY FATHER!" louder than anyone else in the family. then she looked at alex and said "and alex is a great biter, especially with his zombie tooth." marty and i both turned our eyes to bella and said in unison "zombie tooth?" bella, getting her next bite of food together, said "yeah, his zombie tooth. that broken one in the front."

this would be his front-left tooth which bit the dust a few years back when bella, alex and i were leaving the pool. i mummy-wrapped a shivering alex in an adult sized beach towel and told him to follow me. when he took his first step, his feet got tangled in the towel and he fell forward. because his arms were pinned inside the towel given the snug wrap job i had done on him, the first thing to hit the pool-deck was his nose, the second was that unfortunate front tooth. when i picked him up he was a bloody mess and i didn't learn the extent of the damage until i delivered him to marty at home, still quite bloody. in the midst of her first aid she looked up and said "troy, his tooth is chipped." marty's a tooth-girl and was quite, well, pissed that i had wrecked her first-born son. she hot-lined the dentist and asked if there was anything we could do. while she was on the phone i was holding the still sobbing alex. she started relaying questions the doctor was asking. is it just the one tooth? is the gum-line bleeding? what color is the tooth?

MARTY
can you see a bloody-pulp?

TROY
a bloody what?

MARTY (to the phone)
did you say bloody pulp? yes. where?

TROY
marty, i think i'm going to puke.

MARTY
troy. look at the tooth. where it broke. are there blood and veins and stuff coming out of it?

TROY
oh my god, marty. tell them they're going to make me puke.

MARTY
just look at the damn tooth troy! is there a bloody pulp or not!?!?

there was no bloody-pulp on the tooth which kept my puke-free streak alive. seeing how upset marty was through the rest of the evening, the next morning on my way to work i stopped at the pool and found the missing tooth piece. i put it in my pocket where it lived all day at work. when i got home i told marty to hold out her hand and dropped the little shard into it. she called the doctor back and told them we had the tooth chip asking if they, or we, could glue it back on. they said they could but didn't recommend it saying the cement would age and it would break off at some point probably when the child was eating and he would then swallow it. by the time marty told me this news i said that was good because i forgot i put the tooth back in my shirt pocket and sent it through the washer. even though it wasn't of use, marty was non-plussed about my losing alex's tooth a second time.

marty can sometimes not see the bright side of a situation, like how her son now has a cool and jazzy weapon against would-be kidnappers; his razor-sharp and smart-looking zombie tooth.

i'm leaning in the corner of my morning shower and am extra foggy because of a long night with a sick anthony. i notice someone enter the room which in a single bathroom home is not all that uncommon. moments later a young falsetto voice behind me says, "hey dad, say cheese so i can take your picture." this part would not be so common.

i did say cheese. i did not smile. then i offered a little lecture about how taking pictures of naked people when they shower is considered, by some in society, to be an inconsiderate and rude gesture. they left and i figured i would throw the disposable camera away, never having it developed. later that day, my thirteen-year old niece who was staying the week with us came to me and said, "uncle troy. have you seen my camera? it's one of those green disposables."

suck.

on saturdays i try to take bella and alex out on adventures. this is my attempt to reward marty at the end of her week. mainly it allows her to run something other than a zone-defense in her home, if even for a few hours. on the most recent outing bella and alex were in a bit of a competitive place. let me try to give you a sense of what two antagonistic sub-seven year olds sound like over a four-hour period:

37 x	I won
38 x	no, I won
10 x	everything is not a race alex
8 x	i'm not racing della
6 x	how about you're the second winner alex
5 x	dad, della is touching my shoe
4 x	dad, alex is making faces at me
1 x	dad, i have to go pee ... and poop
1 x	me too.
and this is what the father of two sporting kids sounds like over the same four-hour window:
16 x	bella, stop teasing your brother
15 x	alex, stop provoking your sister
10 x	do you two want to go home?
3 x	i need everyone to be silent and still for five minutes
3 x	the toilet paper goes in the bowl, not on the ground
2 x	leave it on the floor, don't touch it!
2 x	ahhh! i said don't touch it!
1 x	i'm done. they're all yours. i'll be in the shower...

i confided in marty that i thought i needed to find a book on father-daughter relationships because i've really been struggling with bella the last few months. it occurred to me that my trials could be more about her age than her girl-ness but in thinking through the specifics, i truly feel it's more of a gender problem. after saying she'd keep her eye open for such a book marty told me of an exchange she and bella had earlier that night at bedtime:

MARTY
this was a special day for me because now that we're back home from vacation i got to focus on being you're mom again and i really enjoyed being able to do that today.

(a full minute of silence passes)

BELLA
i have one of your hair barrettes hidden behind my bed.

while bella's response is precious on several levels it also speaks volumes about the sort of challenges i'm facing with her. i mean it's not like she can hide my hair barrette when angry with me so her reactions manifest themselves in less obvious and even less decipherable ways.

i'd like to put this on the record as yet another example of how my sucky hair is ruining my life.

when it comes to my children i have two speeds. they are:

oh my gawd, isn't this soooo much fun!
... and ...
oh my gawd, what just happened!

i believe there are some grey moments in-between but am pretty sure all the children or i will ever recall are the moments in these two extremes.

yesterday morning, marty woke me to say she was making an early morning run to the store. the next thing i discerned was the slam of the front door which officially woke alex and consequently brought him to my bed which officially woke anthony (who was sleeping by my side) which officially woke troy. now that i was up, officially, and had two wiggly, giggly kids playing about me, i decided to begin my day and head to the shower. i put anthony on the floor, raised the gate in front of the stairs and told alex to come get me if there was a problem. once in the shower i assumed my usual position leaning in the corner of the stall to begin my twelve-minute pre-wash soak. after just a few minutes i heard a spectacularly loud crash followed by anthony crying. i killed the water, threw the curtain aside and shouted "oh my gawd, what just happened!" and bolted wet and towel-free toward the disturbance.

as soon as my foot hit the wood floor outside the bathroom it slid like a freshly sharpened ice skate. my body made an instinctual attempt to stay upright but lost and i continued falling backwards. the next to hit was my right butt cheek which when upon the wood slid like a freshly sharpened ice skate. in that i was still falling backwards my shoulder blade was the next to make contact and, yes you guessed it, it also slid like a freshly sharpened ice skate. i slammed into the wall that ended this short stretch of hallway to our bathroom. my legs were in the air and my fleshy bottom took the brunt of the impact against the baseboard. i looked to my left. alex was sitting on the floor sucking his thumb right next to where i stopped. he turned and looked at me expressionlessly.

what just happened alex!?!?

you fell down.

no. not to me, what happened to anthony? why is he crying?

i don't know. why you fall down?

because the floor is wet.

why the floor wet?

well, the floor isn't wet. i'm wet.

then why you say the floor is wet?

where's your brother?

(he wordlessly points into my room at anthony who is now not crying).

(i lay my wet head down on the floor, stare up at the ceiling and take a deep breath)

dad.

yes alex.

i can see your penis.

just think, all this fun and i'm just seven minutes into another day with children. in re-reading this account i see there's good reason we only remember the harshest sides of our lives. i mean it's admittedly not all that often you get to carry on a relatively calm conversation with a wet, naked adult sprawled awkwardly on the floor ... without paying for it in advance at least.

before having children somewhere in my body existed a bucket that held my patience. pre-kids it wasn't so much a bucket as a thimble. now that i'm almost six years into the journey my thimble has been stretched, pulled and contorted into a larger container, now approximately the size of a dixie cup. when i wake up from a night's rest, the cup is full. as the day wears on its contents are slowly drained. by the time the kids' night routine is underway i'm typically running a finger along the sides hoping to find even a trace amount of residual moisture. sunday night, my circling finger found nothing but parched, dry surface. the scientific term for this parental state is 'screwed'.

i had just filled the tub and called the kids to the bathroom. after noisily entering the small room i instructed them to strip. alex started raising his shirt over his head and quickly got tangled in the maneuver. while i was extracting him bella noticed the steamed-over mirror, climbed onto the pedestal sink and began drawing a picture in the sweat. after getting alex naked and in the tub i addressed bella.

TROY
bella. get naked.

BELLA
one minute.

TROY
you've already had your minute. i want you down, naked and in the tub now.

BELLA
one minute dad.

TROY
that's two bella.

BELLA
i said one minute. i'm drawing a lamb.

TROY
that's three. you just lost a book.

BELLA (wheels around to face me)
father! i said one minute! you don't have to be so harsh with me!

i paused, lowered my head, drew in a breath and felt a few drops mysteriously fall into my cup of patience as if someone mercifully wrung the water from a cloth above. i sat on the side of tub facing bella who was now off the sink and undressing. as she moved to get in the tub, i stopped her and said she was right and i didn't have to be so harsh with her and i was sorry i lost my temper. she leaned in and hugged me saying it was ok giving me a few consolatory pats on the back. she then moved past me to climb in the tub excitedly asking alex if he wanted to play the find-the-soap game. many days i feel outmatched and ill-equipped (tiny-ass patience cup) in this game.

as i cut the the french toast into kid-sized pieces i was planning my defense. you see, i've been watching this sorry slice of toast bounce around, unwrapped, in the freezer for almost a week now. several times i found it lazing about in the ice tray to which i'd pinch a hardened corner and wing it to the opposite end of the shelf. other times i'd find it sitting on top of the bryer's real-vanilla-bean vanilla ice-cream and would send it elsewhere with a flick of my finger.

as i poured syrup over the now bite-size squares, i thought how just six days ago this texas-thick slice was piping hot on the sunday-morning skillet, a butter-pat dissolving on it's face. it could again melt butter thanks to a forty second trip through the microwave. bella had resurrected it, saying it was the one and only thing she wanted for breakfast.

i was certain that when the first bite touched bella's tongue she would animatedly eject it from her mouth, sending it well beyond her plate. she'd yell an exclamation you only ever see spelled-out in the sunday funny pages (and followed by numerous exclamation points). i was sure all of this was moments away, which is why i'd been preparing myself to handle it in a way other than barking, "i told you it would taste like shit, but noooooh, you just had to have desiccated cardboard for breakfast and now you're going to eat it!" but she didn't spit it out and she didn't scream AAARRRGGGGHHH!!!! instead she thoughtfully chewed and swallowed the cudgel, smacked her lips and proclaimed it to be the BEST piece of french toast she's ever had. i leaned against the door-jam with my head lowered and rubbing my temples as i sometimes do in the pre-coffee hours. in my mind i pictured the paternity-test billboard out by the airport and wondered if five-years in is too late to know. my rumination was interrupted by alex, who pointed across the table and said he wanted what she was having. i matter-of-factly explained that it was the last piece and i didn't have one to offer him. he was audibly non-plussed over this truth.

it appears i was preparing the wrong defense on this morning.

over the weekend, marty had to make a morning run to the grocery store. when this happens, my sleeping body will get nudged and told she is leaving and i'm on. i blearily sit up and look for the clothes that got dropped next to bed the night before. once she sees i'm staying upright, she leaves.

i immediately move to the bathroom, urinate, brush my teeth and walk out. bella, like an appar...

sunday morning is 'big breakfast' day in our house. on big breakfast day we make our one stovetop breakfast of the week. typical offerings include pancakes, waffles or french toast, bacon, omelettes, sometimes sausage, fresh fruit and occasionally hand-cut hash-browns. about once a month we look to invite another family over to share in our weekly debauchery. those gatherings are always pajama-friendly and never begin before 11am.

big breakfast is my favorite morning because in addition to lavish vittles this is the one day of the week where i am naturally drawn from sleep by the sound of birds or smell of cooking food. sometimes, on bird days, i might begin to wake and sense marty next to me, warm, close. i might hear bella and alex quietly engaged in a made-up game down the hall. it is here i viscerally know the value of my home.

big breakfast last weekend did not start in this fizzy way. on this day, the first thing i sensed was having my toasty flannel sheets and layered quilts harshly flung away from my resting frame. while my body tensed against the cold morning air and before i could open my lead-heavy eyes, bella excitedly screamed from the side of the bed, "DADDY! DADDY! I CAN SEE YOUR PENIS! I CAN SEE YOUR PENIS! I CAN SEE IT DADDY! ALEX, TELL DAD YOU CAN SEE HIS PENIS. GO ON, TELL HIM!" to which i hear my son obligingly, albeit less animatedly add, "i can see your enis daddy". not birds, not the neighbor's wind chimes and not wafting flapjacks, but instead taunts and heckles at and about my lifeless manhood. and i would say that on this day, at this moment, i also viscerally knew the value of my home which is seemingly about as predictable and hostile as the american stock exchange.

our home breaks more dinnerware than a 24-hour dennys. when i gathered the family to discuss this performance matter i was told that not only am i not in a position of authority over them i was actually several rungs below them on the chain of command. i kind of saw this coming when i overheard alex call bella to the meeting by saying 'della, the giant poophead wants to talk to us'.

i was brought out of my sunday morning slumber by getting pushed on the shoulder by bella and told: i guess we've left the everyone-can-be-naked part of our life. or perhaps we've just left the dad-can-be-naked part of our life. i see a plush terry cloth robe in my near future.

i have to go pee dad.

this is how it starts. with a small boy still in the rudimentary stages of potty-training tightly gripping his groin on a park playground. the more vicious the grip, the less time you have. you must also assess the feet because if they are fidgeting, time is extra-short. on this day, i gave the fist-feet combination a 7 out of 10 on the urgency scale. we were also about 50 yards from the indoor restroom. totally doable. i call across the park:

bella, i need you. come with us please.

why?

alex has to go pee.

ahhhh. i don't want to go.

come on, bell.

en route, i endure a lecture from bella about how she doesn't want to go to the bathroom and how she is old enough to stay at the park by herself. she informs me she is not going to go into the restroom because it is the boys room since mom is not here and boys are gross. and their bathrooms stink. and they can be mean. as we enter the rec center i point to a leather-bound chair and tell her she can wait there. she falls into it with an exaggerated huff.

when we get into the stall, i look at alex's fist and speculate his penis hasn't seen an oxygenated blood cell in four minutes. i lay a few sheets of toilet paper on the seat, pants the child and throw him on the commode. a heavy torrent begins the second his buttocks touch the seat, like there's some button-mechanism on his ass that controls his urethra's flow. when the stream ends, i ask him if he's done. a clenched face looks up at me, struggling to enunciate ...

i have to go poop.

oh. ok. that's fine. go poop.

in a still clenched and strained manner he informs me that he 'needs privacy'.

oh. sure. of course. i step out of the stall and lean against it. i take the first full breath of air since he announced his need on the playground. a guy at the other end of the long restroom calls out, asking if anyone has lost a girl.

i think she's mine. bella?

father. where are you? you guys are taking sooooo long.

bella, we're almost done. alex is going poop.

i'm done dad.

ok alex. i'll be right there. bella. wait right there.

dad, i'm done.

i know alex. i'm coming.

but dad. i've got to go too.

uuhhh, bella. ok wait just one minute. let me get alex.

dad. where are you? i'm done.

coming alex.

but, dad i have to go right now.

ok bella. coming.

i wipe alex and raise his two pair of underwear, one pair of pants and two pair of shorts. don't ask. meanwhile, bella has gone into another stall and is working on getting on the toilet. i come in, get her on the seat and am told she also needs privacy. i step out. she tells me to lock the door. i explain i can't lock it if i can't be in there. alex crawls under the stall before i can shriek for him to get off the ground. bella counsels him on how to work the lock. after he secures the door, she instructs him to leave. he crawls back out of the stall. more ground. more shrieking. bella calls that she's done and needs wiped. i explain i can't get in there because she locked the door. she clarifies that she didn't lock it and that alex did. during my eye-roll, alex shoots back under the stall. i've since surrendered that battle. he unlocks the door. i get bella out and place both kids in front of the sinks, even though what i really need is a mild acid and fire-hose. bella uses this time to reiterate, loudly, her male theory explaining how boys are dirty and gross and mean. three men standing at urinals turn their heads our way. i smile. they don't.

we make our way back to the playground. it's now twenty-one minutes since alex first called me. three minutes later alex approaches me again ...

i'm thirsty dad. can i have a drink?

no.

why no? i'm thirsty.

because then you'll have to pee again.