a note i received from one of bella's classmates (i think).

after bella asked me about girls and bras a few weeks back and i had to confess ignorance, i emailed a girl i knew in my elementary school days who has a son around the same age as bella. it read: reliable as always, carrie responded, and in great detail, with the following: then days ago marty was telling me about a friend of ours whose daughter just got a breast bud and how that phase of maturity would be starting for us soon. i first asked marty to describe what a breast bud was. she did. i next asked marty if she meant to say that the girl got just one, and if she still had one budless side. marty said that yes, that is what she said and that is how it tends to happen. marty went on to tell the story of when her first breast bud popped, she was sure it was cancer and remembered specifically thinking about how sad her mom was going to be that one of her daughters was dying.

the blank, lifeless stare i gave marty during my breast bud tutorial was not due to a lack of understanding. it was due to an exaggerated sense of understanding and an immense gratitude that when it all began for me one of the two face-down cards i was dealt had a giant Y on its face.

on wednesdays i try to eat lunch with bella and alex. unfortunately for my time efficiency, bella and alex have different lunch and recess times. how this plays out is that i have lunch with alex, and then recess with his class, and then i have lunch with bella and then recess with her class. it is worth noting that at their recesses i play ogre. ogre in this scenario entails one 41 year old dude chasing thirty plus running, climbing, sliding and screaming elementary age children around a wood-chipped playground for twenty break-free minutes.

this last wednesday while having lunch with bella's class, bella's best friend, a girl named fautou, saw me walking to the table and called to me. when i leaned down to her she said the following in a stumbling and hesitant manner: smiling at her struggle to get the observation out, i told her that that was the nicest thing anyone had said to me all week and i appreciated her taking the time to share it. and i do believe her compliment put a little extra bounce in me for that days round of ogre with her and bella's class.

a 2009 father's day card i found in my desk that somehow didn't get posted here yet. it was made by my daughter, to me, her father, who was adopted, which, as noted, was sad and good.









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a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. i get your wieners

they say a picture is worth a thousand words. rarely does it seem this true.

i believe all people get dealt one natural gift and one demon. the natural gift is something they can do better than 99% of people without even trying. the demon is some non-positive trait they will struggle with even when exerting great will against the vice. through these i believe one's satisfaction, success, and fulfillment in life comes from one's ability to (1) identify and leverage their gift and (2) tame and control their demon.

while in some regards it's too early to tell for sure, but if i were pressed to guess bella's natural gift, i'd say it is in someway leadership-related. i point to this because of bella's ability to orchestrate, motivate, and move individuals and groups of people, both young and old. i offer the following three examples in support:

bella's grandest demonstration of making things happen occurred two years ago when she put together a stage production of flipper in our front yard using kids from the neighborhood. there was a script, there were rehearsals, as well as (kinda) auditions. adults were summoned and lined up on the sidewalk to watch the drama. some brought lawn chairs to sit in while others leaned against trees. the staging area was in our foyer and mostly involved bella encouraging (and at times threatening) the actors to go out and do their best. it was about a twenty minute affair and i believe that no more than two of the performers cried from the pressure.

bella's most productive example of leadership can be seen in her impromptu selling stands which take advantage of a high traffic footpath near our home. if bella, or her friends or her siblings ever identify something they need money for, bella will have a selling stand in place within the hour. these stands have sold drinks, cookies, books, artwork and toys. bella is currently working on her most ambitious selling stand yet which involves knitting hats and scarves on her own and through knitting parties she plans to organize at our house in the summer months. she is building a stock so on the first snow day next winter she'll put up a stand and sell hand-knitted hats and scarves (and hot-chocolate i'm sure) to the underdressed college kids walking to and from class. she plans to use the money to buy animals for impoverished countries via the heifer fund and such. (ed note: if you don't know or are wondering, bella turned nine last month.)

and lastly, where you will see bella most often ply her powers of persuasion is getting her siblings, neighbors, and classmates to play a game where they (they, not bella) act like dogs. panting, scratching, licking, pawing, thankfully not urinating dogs. bella plays the role of the owner. everyone else plays the role of dog. whenever i see this game happening i completely marvel at how fully these children, these human, willful children give themselves over to this charade. it has now happened with such frequency that its specialness has even been moderately lost on bella. there are times when she appears to tire of the game and will go into another room to start doing something else. these temporary canines will awkwardly trail her, still in character and nudge her leg with their bowed head for notice and attention. bella absentmindedly pats their mane or coos at them for a moment before returning to her other more interesting distraction as if this child-dog has been in our home for years. given her proclivity and skill to make people act like domesticated curs, i predict that as an adult bella will either be a new york city dominatrix or a fortune 500 CEO. truth told, of those two i'm torn on which i prefer because it sure would be nice to have family in NYC.

as for bella's demon, i'd say it's too soon to call. obviously, marty and i still have plenty of years to mar and traumatize the child so the air is rife with possibility.

while alex and anthony were taking a bath together, alex started playing a puppeteer game with his penis (a surprisingly under-mentioned perk of not being circumcised). after taking this show in for a few moments, anthony asked, "why do you do that with your penis yallix?"

alex matter of factly said he did it because it was funny.

after watching and listening to alex's antics a few more moments, anthony brightly called out his agreement saying, "it is funny alex. it is!"

chalk this up as another reason younger siblings are on the concord of development. without an older brother to teach him, anthony may not have discovered that his penis could double and a funny finger-puppet until he was four, maybe even five.

we're dog-sitting this week. the biggest change to our home is that i say the phrase, "anthony, stop eating the dog's food" more often than i would during a week we weren't dog-sitting.

bella turned nine last saturday and had her first party where the invitation did not read, "please do not bring a present". after last year's party, bella respectfully asked marty if we could remove that line from next year's invite. and so it happened.

when it came time to open presents, a big huddle gathered around bella and kids were shoving presents at her with shouts of open mine next and this one's from me and mine's the one with the fancy paper. one after another bella opened the presents and squealed and shrieked with delight at each turn. just looking at her reaction you would think that (a) each parcel contained a boxful of puppies or that (b) bella leads a terribly deprived life and never receives presents (although this was for sure her most decadent day ever).

i sat in a corner of the room and took in bella's wonderfully animated reaction to each gift. truth told, the gifts she was getting were both (a) right up her alley showing bella's friends know her well and (b) pretty dang cool toys. about midway through the production, i saw one of the boy partygoers stepping away from the group and looking dejected. before i could approach him, another mother went to him knelt down to talk with him. when they were done i went to this mother and asked her if everything was ok. she said that the boy was afraid that bella wasn't going to like his present and he was embarrassed. concerned and thinking out loud i said i should try to get to bella to tell her to make sure to treat everyone equally but didn't know how i could do this without making it obvious given the gaggle of children crowding her on the couch. the mother, a good friend of marty's and a big fan of bella's put her hand on my arm, smiled and said it would be ok and that i didn't have to worry and bella would handle it just fine. i looked at this woman and her quiet confidence in my daughter encouraged me to sit back.

i re-took my seat and waited. when this boy's present was finally put before bella she began extracting the card, peeling it open like charlie bucket would a wonka bar. in it was a hand-drawn card the boy made. the picture depicted a horse race which showed a horse and rider about to cross the finish line. written above this horse was YOU - 1ST and then behind this rider was writing pointing to a horse off the page which said ME - 2ND. after bella took in this card you would have thought she had gotten two boxes of puppies. she looked at the boy and gave a shrill cry of happiness and said that she could tell he knew how much she loved horses. he looked down at his fidgeting feet, a small bashful smile covering his face. scarring moment averted.

later in the day, after the guests had gone home, bella and i were walking through our neighborhood. i asked her about that moment and what happened. she said that she saw that he, the boy, looked sad and she thought it might have something to do with his gift so she made sure he knew she appreciated whatever he brought.

not a bad start to nine. i'm just a little dismayed, a friend of the family knew bella would pull it off before i did.


click to enlarge

for those that thought yesterday's homage to life with anthony was tame for one of our children, you were impressively right. i wasn't implying that that was an example of true anthony chaos. not at all. that was actually an example of anthony being cute.

if i wanted to tell of an anthony-disaster, i would have told of last friday when i came home from work. the first thing i found upon walking in the door was marty and alex curled up on the chair and a half, under a blanket, talking quietly. this was one of the closest and warmest moments i can recall seeing them share. i gave them a wave, dropped my bag on the bench and bounced upstairs to change clothes. when i arrived to the top step i was met with a haphazard trail of white viscous fluid that travelled the entire length of the hallway and turned into every doorway it passed. it looked like a giant Jurassic slug had been slithering the halls, leaving its telling trail behind. upon further investigation i learned that it was anthony walking around with a full liquid soap dispenser pinned to his chest with one forearm while pumping it effortfully with his free hand. obviously this close body technique meant he had smears of the white liquid covering his forearm and pantlegs. fact is, given how hard he had to work to manage the awkward (and now slippery) pumper, an impressive amount of the soap was clearing his body and making it onto the hardwood.

when he saw me enter the room he gave me a big toothy grin. i began scolding his choice, grabbed the bottle from him with one hand and picked him up by the armpit with the other. i carried him at arms length while tiptoeing over the soap smears to the bathtub and dropped him in there. hearing the ruckus, marty appeared. she put a hand on my shoulder and told me to go change and go downstairs and set up for movie night. i looked at her for a moment and then decided to take her up on this smart offer. when marty and anthony later joined us downstairs for the start of the movie, she said when those things happen, you just have to calmly explain the rule, clean it up, and move on. this varies considerably from my solution of yelling loudly, beating children randomly, and creating moments my kids would go on to talk to shrinks about for unforeseen decades to come.

in my defense, here's another bit of anthony's handi-work. and when this happened, bella and alex, owners of the wagons, would have firmly voted for my yelling and beating program in this particular instance

in case you're in a pinch for something good to do, i thought i'd share bella's LIST OF THINGS TO DO. that #1 wasn't to "make a list of things to do" was a little disappointing to me but she more than made up for it in the long run.

28 and 23 would be my first two picks were i pushed to select.

bella's anti-pajama boycott is still going strong. she is now in her third week. i'm fearful to tell you the politicking required to convince her it was ok to take them off so i could wash them on laundry days. during the negotiation i asked bella if other kids were doing this? she said, "no just me. it's my funny but usual way."

this morning when bella asked for help getting the pantlegs of her jeans pulled over her pajamas, marty paused for a moment to ask what bella's end goal with this was. bella said it was to get the world pajama-wearing world record. marty asked what the current record was and how long she had to go. bella confessed to not knowing the answer to this. i told bella this was great news because that meant she had to have it by now and could stop wearing the pajamas. the look bella gave me told me that this argument did not hold weight with her.

once a year bella and alex's school has a pajama day where all the kids get to wear their pajamas to school. this day, to say the least, is wildly popular among the little ones.

at some point during this last pajama day someone must have asked if they could wear their pajamas the next day. to this, the principal of the school said that they could not and you could only wear pajamas on pajama day.

four days after pajama day, i saw bella getting ready for school. she was pulling her pants on over her pajama bottoms and we had the following conversation.

TROY
what are you doing bell?

BELLA
putting on my pants.

TROY
but your pajamas are still on.

BELLA
i know.

TROY
well aren't you going to take them off.

BELLA
no.

TROY
uhhm. ok.

three days after that bella wore her pajamas to alex's soccer game, sans outer clothing. during the game an older student from the school who helps with the coaching asked bella why she was wearing her pajamas. she told him that she had been wearing them since pajama day. he said that was over a week ago. she she said, 'yup'. he leaned into me and asked if she's been wearing those pajamas all week. i glanced at bella and remembered her pulling her pants on over them and replied that as far as i knew she has been.

it's now four days beyond that and bella's still holding strong. the scary part is she's not boasting about it or touting some point she's trying to prove. she's just waging a quiet battle against an invisible foe called principle. i can't wait until she swings these guns around in my direction to prove some point or subtlety to me.

a memorable moment from each of the kids over the last few weeks.

everytime we drove by a nativity scene, anthony would call out, "hey! baby genius! baby genius!"

and during our christmas meal thank-yous at my parents house alex led off with "i'm thankful we have food to eat and that none of us died before this christmas day."

and while driving home from visiting friends bella enlightened the family with the following bit of wisdom:

BELLA
don't ever say 'sitting' while holding your tongue.

TROY (after thinking it through)
where'd you learn that?

BELLA
school.

TROY
from who?

BELLA
i don't remember. but they taught a bunch of people by telling them to all say "i was sitting on the toilet the other day" while holding their tongues.

i hope your break was equally irreverent, insightful, and educational.

there's something about voicemail from kids that is so way better than voicemail from grownups.

click to play

128kb / 31 seconds transcript hello. this is bella dearmitt at the troy dearmitt's house. happy birthday again. lots of people at school are saying happy birthday also. uhm. i was wondering where you wanted to go to work, or i mean, to dinner. we are all voting for sushi. i am voting for steak if you would like to. so give us a call. bye. in the end i trumped them all and returned to the natasha's kabob international for the second year in a row.

i was awoken with one kiss on the cheek and then a second. the first came from bella. the second from alex. then i heard, come on dad, wake up. it's someone's birthday. i blearily opened my eyes. through squinty slits i saw bella and alex standing before me. smiling broadly. as soon as they saw whites in my eyes they broke into a bright and spirited version of happy birthday, which seemed extra bright and spirited given the pre eight o'clock hour.

they told me to get up because i had to find 'things'. i groggily asked what things i had to find. alex asked if i remembered how mom hid numbers for the kids on their birthday? well this year they hid little numbers for me to find. i asked how many. he asked how old i was. i asked if i could go to the bathroom before i started. bella held her hands up, instructed me to wait saying that she would get the bathroom ready for me. by the time i staggered through the doorway, she had lifted the seat and had the father wipes sitting open next to the toilet (not that they were needed). as i approached she was standing before the toilet fanning her hands towards it like a price is right model introducing a shiny, deluxe motor-home. when i entered she shooed alex out saying i should get privacy.

i walked out of the bathroom towards my office for a drink of tea. after taking a long draw from last night's glass, i turned to begin my search. alex stopped me in the doorway and said i stank and should get a new pair of underwear. i told him that if he could smell me from where he was, i probably needed more than new underwear and should take a shower. he said it was definitely my underwear. there was a laundry basket nearby and i leaned down to get a fresh pair of boxers but alex said the ones there wouldn't work and i had to get them from my dresser drawer. he was practically dancing in place as he said it and then i understood, one of my numbers was there. one down. only forty to go.

in my defense the kids numbers are way bigger than my numbers. this seems backwards to me and the geriatric factor should trump the small hands and short attention factor. in evidence, there's just a few more hours left of my birthday day and i'm still missing three of my forty-one numbers. since the kids helped hide them i'm thinking i'll be lucky to find the those last three before i'm forty-two.

tactic #32 from the moms and kitchens section

STEP 1 unravel a complete ball of twine.

STEP 2 pour full glass of milk on unraveled twine.

STEP 3 walk away.

STEP 4 wait.

we went camping about a month ago. marty suspected that one of our twin blow-up mattresses had a leak in it. when we returned home she and boys brought it up to the living room, blew it up and tried to find the leak. marty, the former biology teacher, ran the kids through all the various way in which they could test the mattress and locate the leak. the boys sat on it and marty looked. marty sat o...

i try to spend lunchtime with bella and alex once a week. alex has lunch first. then recess. then bella has lunch. and then her recess. how they are spaced out is kind of lucky for me in that i get to visit with each of them separately but it does make for a pretty long lunch routine, even for me.

depending on the weather and my clothes and how much time before i need to be back at work, we may play ogre at the recess. ogre essentially consists of me chasing forty plus kids around the playground for twenty minutes while they dash and dart and scream wildly knocking into playground equipment, each other and me. the game's end is marked by a loud hand-held whistle blown by a recess attendant. this sends the kids dutifully racing to a numbered paw print painted on the ground to line up for their return to class. the rapidity in which these children switch gears, especially leaving something they're enjoying, is impressive. i slowly amble over to the head of the line and wait for them to begin the march back inside. as they pass i give them high-fives thanking them for playing ogre and telling them to do good in class. they eagerly ask if i'll be back tomorrow and that i didn't tag them and i'm too slow and they're too smart. i laughingly tell them that i can't play tomorrow but will try to come back next week.

my first few visits to the lunch table each year is met with rabid enthusiasm and intrigue. once the newness wears off, it's as if i'm just another student unexcitedly nibbling at a four-hour old pb and j. recently at bella's table our group experienced multiple bouts of silence, some lasting two or three minutes. full silence among five or six kids and one adult in a raucous cafeteria doesn't happen much, based on my experience, so when something of the like occurs i'm intrigued and i study the faces of each child trying to see what they are thinking. last week, one boy broke the lull by pointing across the table and starting the following conversation.

i've seen isacc cry.

well, i've seen you cry. i've seen amit cry too.

i've seen bella cry. and you. and you.

i've seen george cry, a lot.

uhhm, i haven't seen chris cry, but he's new, but i have seen isaac and bella and amit cry.

after gleefully taking this in and waiting for everyone to go, i interrupted the confessions

so if i'm hearing this correct, it pretty much seems like everyone here has seen everyone else cry, except for chris and that is only because he is new.

the kids looked around and nodded in agreement. what struck me most about the round robin was that there was no agenda at hand. no one was trying to make anyone else feel badly. there was no accusing or mocking tone. it was just a group of children announcing statements of fact. i repeatedly looked at chris the new kid during this confessional. while this discussion bounced around the table chris sat there with long rangy curls of blonde hair, his eyes darting from speaker to speaker. the whole time he had a natural smile which was partially blocked by the sandwich triangle he was holding with both hands just in front of his mouth. his smile was so easy, so natural, it seemed like there was nowhere he'd rather be. and as i took stock of his mood and the quirky community i was in the midst of, if asked, i think i may have agreed with his sentiment.

alex had some friends over to the house and we were playing ogre and chase and rough-housing. at one point in the mayhem, one of alex's friends stopped his play, turned to the side protectively and said with a serious urgency to one of the other boys: that is probably the most accurate, heartfelt expression i've ever heard for a guy's junk, like, ever.

someone asked about the summer challenge mentioned in yesterday's post.

the summer challenge program was an idea i had as last year's school season wound down. my original thought was to offer bella and alex a series of possible skills they could try to learn. options would have included things like magic, walking a tightrope, piano, riding a unicycle, yo-yo tricks, playing a drum to list a few. at the beginning of the summer they would pick the skill they were most interested in and every day they spent at least fifteen minutes practicing their skill they could make a mark on a calendar. if they accrued enough marks over the summer they would get a super-cool toy they really wanted. i had put a lot of thought into this and was both excited and proud with the result.

when i presented it to marty, she was six kinds of against it. she didn't like the notion of them feeling pressured. she didn't like the notion of tracking it. she didn't like the notion of them getting paid to learn. we bandied these issues about in the kitchen one night after the kids had gone to bed. this was so not the response i expected from marty. i thought she'd be appreciative of this option for the long summer days. i thought she'd be impressed at the level of thought and interest i put into it. in the end she told me that it was unfair to project my childhood regrets that i didn't better use my free time while growing up onto my children. with this wild right hook that seemed to be brewing long before this evening came to life, i backed off the topic.

the next day at work i talked with a colleague about the surprising episode. she is someone with experience dealing with young children and to my shock, supported marty's concerns. but instead of scrapping the idea outright, she suggested modifying things a touch. she suggested that i should just introduce the different skills to the home and make them available to the kids. she said not to put any expectations on their usage or routine, and thus not have rewards for time or consistent practice. in short, she suggested i make the whole affair less official. i was dubious of this and still liked my method better but thought this may be the middle ground marty and i obviously needed. and to give credit, marty was edging towards these same notions but didn't have the time or energy to express them more clearly.
so that night i re-pitched to marty and got her buy-in. in this new format i had some changes to consider but they were small and easily done. what i came up with was this. starting on the first monday of summer, i quietly introduced the first skill that was to be part of the summer challenge. every two weeks thereafter a new object would appear. midway through the kids figured out what was going on and finding out what the next challenge was before it was unveiled became as much of a pastime as the challenges themselves. in the end, here's what shook out.

THE 2009 SUMMER CHALLENGES
june 15th - tightrope / slack-line
june 29th - magic rope tricks
july 13th - ripstick
july 27th - trick-grade yo-yos

it was curious to see how the kids responded to each. bella was definitely the person most into the slack-line. after a couple days she started wanting to charge neighbor kids for lessons. i told her she had to be able to balance on there for five seconds herself before she was allowed to charge anyone. both kids seemed to like the magic tricks about the same. bella is now a proficient ripstick-girl (her father ain't half-bad either). and those yo-yo's were spot-welded to alex for most of our summer vacation.

so that is what the summer challenge program was about. i guess it was a success in that it made the list of things bella plans to take with her into her parenthood. friday movie night stands as my other proud addition to the home that made the cut. as for everything else, i'm beginning to understand the joy of grandparents watching from the sidelines now that they are not the one that has to divine, explain, and enforce the myriad of rules of a family home.

it seems the mourning period has passed and we have a replacement hermit crab.

the former crab's name was nate. there is a nate that lives five doors down the street. this crab's name is sebastian. we have one of those four houses away. it seems alex has a thing for naming his pets after kids who live in the neighborhood. while i could jibe his lack of creativity, i prefer it over bella's motif. her monikers tend to more resemble quintessential stripper names (like krystal or cinnamon or pepper). so as it turns out, i'm rabidly supportive of naming pets after kids who live on our street.

after getting sebastian home i thought we should clean the habitat before introducing him to the mix. first impressions and all. we use a large, glass aquarium i found next to a dumpster when the college students were moving out a few years back. looking useful and being close to home i grabbed it up and threw it on a shelf in the basement. one curious thing i've noticed since we started using the aquarium is on the bottom corner of one of the long, front-facing sides there's a retro, red label that reads PLEASE DON'T FEED THE ARTIFACT. when i place the tank in the kids room, i always turn it so the label is on the backside. alex saw it during this recent cleaning and asked what the raised, white letters said. i told him. he asked what that meant. i told him i didn't know and i was reasonably certain it was something we were better off not knowing. being my son, that proved good enough for him.

(for those wondering why i don't just peel the label off removing the need to think about or explain its relevance, it's because then it would have less of a story than it does now.)

marty found a state park which had old cave dwellings which you could walk through. the experience began with a short walk through a forest and field to the main cave system. a few of the rooms were accessible via home-spun ladders. while the spaces looked spacious for a hole in the side of a cliff, they felt less cavernous once you crammed five people into them. and we didn't even have any of our stuff. like, where would i put my chinese teapot collection?



after working your way through the initial set of caves you hit a fork in the trail. one arrow points you back in the direction of the visitor center and the other sends you on an additional 1.5 mile hike through more woods to the community's defensive lodging. still feeling good, we opted for the extra leg.



when we arrived at the base of the defensive stronghold, you couldn't really see where it was situated in the cliff. but by the placement of the first ladder you got the sense that it was 'up thataway'. we ascended this first ladder and then wended our way through some tight walkways carved out in the stone. we hit the second wood and rope ladder. this one was twice the height of the first one and was bolted to a stone face that was more sheer and ominous than the first. in the below picture, it was about were that man was standing, facing out, with his arms in the air that i lost it. i blame him.



bella went first. then alex. then marty. then anthony. then me. on that ascent at about the point where the man was waving his arms the first wave of nausea hit me, then sweat. i was close in on anthony essentially looking at his butt. when the dizziness hit me i called up to marty saying i wasn't feeling right. marty is well aware of my issues with heights and immediately started talking to me, "ok troy. it's ok. you're almost here. just a few more. just keep looking straight." as soon as my body took in her words of encouragement. anthony let go of the ladder with his left hand swung out so he could turn and look down at me and said

ANTHONY
go pee daddy

TROY
no pee anthony. not now anthony. turn around anthony.

MARTY
anthony. not now keep climbing buddy.

TROY
go anthony! go now!

as of late anthony is playing this game where he likes to announce when he's going to go pee. when you ask him if he wants to go in the toilet he says no. i think he's just rubbing our nose in the fact that we're about to have some work to do. at seeing anthony hanging precariously off the ladder, holding on with just one hand, i was done and officially worthless. my sweaty hands tightened their grip on the uneven rungs and i pulled myself in closer to the ladder. marty coaxed anthony up the next few rungs and pulled him off the ladder and then talked me up the last few rungs. at this landing was another equally tall and sheer ladder. i looked at it then at marty. she put a hand on the my shoulder and said it was ok and she could handle the kids. which was good because while she was dealing with me, bella and alex already jetted up that ladder and were waiting to climb the next. marty followed anthony up and they continued onto the large cutout above while i sat on the ledge staring at the cliff wall.



marty and the kids returned after about twenty minutes. marty asked how i was doing. i said ok. i had been steeling myself for this moment and was prepared to get back down the evil ladder without issue. this time, alex went first, then marty, then anthony, then me, and then bella. marty was making sure anthony got down ok and was again talking to me. seeing what marty was doing once i was on the ladder, bella jumped in, as is her way.

BELLA
ok dad. it's ok. imagine that you're climbing on a ladder and that ladder is flying through the air.

TROY
oh jesus bella!

MARTY (in a hurried tone)
bella! you need to tell him things that make him feel strong. confident.

BELLA
ok. ok dad. dad. you're strong. very strong. you're as strong as a dinosaur.

amazingly, i got off that cliff without the aid of a helicopter.



in these woods that led to, and more importantly away from, the hell-cave we found that the trees smelled of cinnamon which for our family made them smell like french toast. bella sniffed the tree. bella hugged the tree. bella said the tree smelled so good she could marry the tree. and she doesn't even like cinnamon. that's my girl, amazingly unpredictable to the end.

on our second day on the road we gave nicknames to the children. they fell out as follows.

• bella 'really' walter dearmitt because of how she always says "really" after people say things to her she doesn't like or believe.
  
• alex 'no funniness' walter dearmitt because of how he always screams I WANT NO FUNNINESS when you try to play/mess with him when he's not in the mood for it.
  
• anthony 'showpop' walter dearmitt because of how he walks around the house all morning, day and night saying "showpop now. i want showpop now" which is what he calls my stovetop popcorn.
  

our first destination had a house-load of kids before we even arrived. most were teenagers and i learned the tenet of teenagers not finding younger kids cute was still alive and well with this current generation as could be confirmed by a conversation overheard by marty between two of them.

BOY 1
man those kids are loud.

BOY 2
yeah, and what's up with them. one is, like, american and the other one is, like, arabian or something.

poor aleo. and kids who have dogs look quite oddly upon kids who don't have dogs and like playing in the dog crates.



and we also got a taste of our future by watching a fifteen year old girl in summer mode, listlessly move about the house. one morning, or early afternoon, i overheard the following after the girl stumbled downstairs after waking up:

FIFTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL
i feel like it's incredibly early

FIFTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL'S BROTHER
it's 11:30

marty commented on the grace with which the parents shoulder the teenage daughters angst, which is another way of saying it was impressive that they didn't jump all over her when she said things like the above. the dad said that there were a few hard years, especially for the mother and the daughter. one day after observing a battle between the two the dad said to the wife, "you're working too hard. your job is not to run their life, it is to guide them and point them to opportunities." this notion went on to make a large difference and is probably something most parents could be reminded of time and again.