anthony initiated a most unexpected play-date. it was unexpected because it was with, of all things, a girl. i say unexpected because to date most of anthony's sentiments regarding the fairer gender have been more along the unoriginal, five-year old "i don't like girls--they are dumb" lines of logic. this time not only did he acknowledge this play-date, the morning of the play-date, he announced the following in the foyer while putting shoes on:

ANFER
i'm going to marry with edie.

(to this everyone in the family raised their head up from what they were doing)

BELLA
but i thought you were going to marry with me.

TROY
and i thought you were going to marry with mom.

ANFER
nope. now i'm marrying with edie.

MOM
does edie know this? usually both people have to agree to such an arrangement.

ANFER
yes she knows. yesterday at school i said i was going to marry with her and she said she was going to marry with me.

i would encourage edie to consider upon a longish courtship. this way she can see if anthony outgrows his near perpetual need to incorporate the word poop or penis or butt into every conversation, regardless of their contextual relevance. there are other points i could raise regarding a cautious entry into matrimony, i just don't think there's need to add evidence to an already sound position.

a large part of the reason i didn't emerge last week can be attributed to marty's holiday schedule. to recap:

friday	kids built gingerbread houses, an annual tradition at a neighbors (troy at work)
saturday	family swim outing (2nd annual)
sunday	christmas
monday	marty's family christmas
tuesday	roller skating, friend's house & xmas lights display
wednesday	kids rule day
thursday	girls' meltdown
friday	go-karts, rock climbing, and laser tag
saturday	new year's eve party
sunday	city museum
monday	dinner with the dunns

kids rule day is a day where the kids got to do whatever they want from breakfast to bed. to say the least there was much screen time, candy and junk food throughout.

the girls' meltdown day happens once on every extended run of family together-time. the boys have learned to give them lots of room and keep our snide and judgmental comments between just the boys.

as with all vacations since having kids, i return to work to rest. i have no idea where marty goes to recover.

also, as of today marty and i have been together twenty-two years, fourteen of them married. we're often asked if there is a secret to this success and there is, two of them in fact. the first is marty keeps me so busy (and entertained/distracted - see above) i don't have time to question or plan an exodus. the second is i'm tolerant as a monk [ ;-) ].

if you're wondering what we're doing to celebrate this hefty milestone, we'll be hanging out at the kids school tonight making pancakes for a buncha folks i don't know and trying to keep anthony from talking to adults. so, i guess, the veiled answer is not taking things too seriously.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. bathroom words

yesterday i shared my thank you note in our hosts' guest book. today i'm sharing the thank yous the kids left.

him climbing the mountain




all of us climbing the mountain








part a : thank you
part b : family drawing
part c : us climbing the mountain
part d : us at the drive in (for as good of an artist as bella is, her rendition of our van is most curious)

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we're a decently dashing lot via bella's eye/pen ... although i fear marty isn't wearing any pants.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. acting out

for those that asked about yesterday's sassafras picture, re-shown below, here's a more revealing picture of what he was climbing. these tolkienesque huts were erected in front of the art and architecture buildings of the university by our home. we passed the recently completed structures while coming back from roller blading/skating in forest park (and headed to breadCo for hot chocolate). i had seen the early stages of their construction a few weeks earlier but dismissed it as something not meant for me. coming upon the completed version my foot quickly moved to the brake and i pulled over for a closer look as they definitely jump out in front of your eyes. seeing the grandeur and stability of the edifices one of my kids, i forget which one, called for an impromptu game of ogre. the kids won in a best of three affair, anthony winning the third and pivotal round. and we concluded that when we play ogre in funny shaped buildings like this, instead of a city park or swimming pool, it will be called smurf ogre.



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our bathroom sink was recently broken for about five weeks. our experience camping has never paid more dividends as once the sink was declared inoperable marty set our camping sink up on the bathroom radiator and after their initial "why's the camping sink up here?" question and subsequent shrug of their shoulders, the kids never looked back or groaned.

a few weeks into our family's no-bathroom-sink lifestyle marty told me she was thinking of inviting a new family she met over for a brunch. they have a son who a daughter of ours might be mildly smitten with so marty asked bella if she would mind if we had the boy and his family over socially. after a beat of silence bella asked, "will the sink be fixed before they get here?"

it began with a jokey comment made by a five-year old anthony to marty in front of me. he leaned in on her and intentionally said loud enough for me to hear ...

ANTHONY
i love you more than i love daddy.

MARTY
well yes, that is true right now but it will change soon enough.

ANTHONY (perplexed anthony raised up)
what?

MARTY (without looking away from her paper)
there will come a time when you will look to dad to teach you how to be a man and when that happens, he will become more important in your life.

ANTHONY
and you can't tell me how to be a man?

MARTY
well no, i can't because i'm not a man. i'm a woman. it's my job to teach bella how to be a woman. what i can teach you is how to be a man that women would want to be with. but it's your dad's job to teach you how to be a man.

without even throwing a brotherly or conspiratorial nod my way given this newfound bond between us, anthony turned and walked off calling for his ten year old sister.

ANTHONY
bella? bella? where are you bella?

BELLA (calling back)
i'm in the kitchen anthony. what do you want?

ANTHONY (yelling out as he walks towards the kitchen)
bella, did you know mom is going to teach you how to be a woman ... and dad is going to teach me how to be a man?

MARTY (to me)
that sounded a lot more innocent when it came out of my mouth.

bella recently asked me to establish an email account for her. i told her that i would under the condition that her first ever email be sent to me. she readily agreed.

here's the first ever email she received: and the first ever email she sent: it's hard to not appreciate a healthy dose of self-awareness and candor.

phone etiquette and kids stands as a most schizophrenic affair. they come across, sometimes simultaneously, as both more and less mature than they really are. how someone hasn't dedicated a show to capturing these early fumblings is a real miss. obviously my kids are no exception. here's a present observation on each of mine.

BELLA (age 10)
four out of five times bella answers the phone one of the first things she says is, "no, this isn't marty. this is bella. marty's my mom."

ALEX (age 8)
anytime alex calls home from somewhere else, the first thing we hear is, "hello, this is alex, alex dearmitt." conversely, whenever he answers our home phone he says, simply, "what?".

ANTHONY (age 5)
someone called the other day during marty's morning BM. upon hearing the ring she decided to let it roll to voice mail. then she didn't hear a second ring. what she did hear was anthony's voice from my office saying in a business-like tone, "my mom's going to the bathroom". then without another word of discourse or courtesy she heard the plastic clack of the phone being returned to the cradle (yes, we use decades-old, corded, wall-mount phones — of course).

while guarantees in life must be issued judiciously, i feel safe in promising that the phone skills coming out of my house will do nothing but improve and improve dramatically in the years ahead.

this year's halloween was most lively. i attribute its sheen to the ages of my children (10, 8 and 5) as they are all members of the peak, invested halloween years. i've been eager to capture the night since returning from trick or treating last week but haven't made the time until now. this i attribute to the lowly monday night draw which is just the worst possible halloween day. it's so sucky in...

the day after halloween i found this note on my desk with a orange pumpkin half-full of candy.

how such a specific bowl comes to be is when the kids (and any accompanying friends) come home from trick or treating they spread out in a room, dump their candy out before them and conduct a fast and loud series of trades in attempt to upgrade their candy stock. you hear things like "i'll trade five dum-dums for one snicker" or if something is really hated, "anyone what this pile of sour-patches ... it'll just cost you three peanut butter cups". alex is a great person to have in your trading circle because he doesn't like chocolate. what i didn't know, before this week, was that there is a special 'hate' bucket where the candy that nobody likes gets tossed into. and if you're curious what some of the terrible sorts of things found in there might be: tons of almond joys and loads of peanut m & m's, two of my favorites (and to the more refined palettes go the spoils.)

in response to aleo's card yesterday, a friend sent me a note their kid wrote, saying she wished she could claim aleo's instead of her daughters. while i wouldn't trade aleo's note for the world, i can confess to being crazy jealous that one of my kids isn't responsible for the following: please come see me.

yesterday was a wicked long day (on the tail end of a wicked long ten days). and then in the evening, marty had a meeting which put me in the barrel getting all three kids down. i read to alex and anfer and then hung out with anfer while he went to sleep. before moving in with alex i stopped in the bathroom. when i opened the door to exit, there was a piece of paper on the floor. it is shown below. if you subscribe to the bucket system (a paradigm that likens your emotional needs (e.g. esteem, energy) to buckets that can be filled and emptied by various actions), this modest token penned from a child's emotion is the equivalent of having a dump truck's worth of water deluged atop a small, tattered bucket. i post it here so down-the-road on another low-level day i can come back and ladle some of its pooled goodness into my wanting bucket.



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bella commenting on a miley cyrus disc she slid into the car stereo.

while walking home from our dad-day lunch, anfer he found a penny on the ground. upon spying the unexpected treasure he let out an unabashedly excited, 'oohhh, penny', crouched down, and raised it in his pinched fingers. he held it inches in front of his eyes as if inspecting a fine gem. suspicious, he held the penny higher for me to observe. he asked if a real penny could be this skinny. i lowered my glasses on my nose, glancing at it. i confirmed it looked to be the real deal. he responded with a hushed "yesss" as if he didn't want any passersby to learn of his luck. he then looked down at his right hip, patting it with his hand checking for a pocket. finding none he swung his gaze over to his left hip. again no dice. without pause he slid the thumb from his free hand under the waistband of his shorts and underwear and pulled them them both away from his body. he then held the penny over the open chasm as if lining it up for some sort of carnival game and let it drop into his shorts. once it disappeared his thumb released both elastic bands and they tautly snapped back in place. confident his treasure was safely concealed he resumed his wistful march towards home.

marty got called up for jury duty. this is the third time since we've had kids. the first two times she got out due to breast feeding. this time she felt she should step up to it. she worked hard to figure out the logistics of getting kids where they need to be for the week. the mornings are are pretty much all me. yesterday morning, the first morning of the week, the three children and i were all in the foyer, minutes from jumping on bikes. the boys were putting on their shoes and i just removed some braids from bella's hair and was brushing it smooth. alex looked up and with great sincerity said, "wow. your hair looks beautiful bella." to this bella matter-of-factly replied, "well, don't even think of falling in love with your sister dude. there's too many girls in the world for that."

i'm quite confident if i spent more time with my kids, documenting their innocent, daily banter would become a full-time effort.

bella had an homework assignment. it asked her to envision what the start of a day would look like in her adult life. in the middle of working on it, bella read a cut at the work to the boys and i as we settled into bed for reading. it went:

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. problem solving

imagine anthony nestled in a top bunk piled high with blankets and pillows given the fall morning chill, after his wake-up pee, flipping through the colorful pages of the first three installments of the Amulet, due to the thankful release of the fourth in the series, wearing nothing but a loose pair of shorts - backwards, no underwear, and with more than an hour before the school bell rings. that is a pretty good start to the day. and he doesn't even know how to read. jealous, jealous, jealous.

eating out. it's just something we don't do too much. as a family we may hit a restaurant about three times a year. don't waste your pity on us as this is up from our long-standing one time a year (usually my birthday). marty takes the family dinner table most seriously, and those that know marty know how the term 'seriously' ought to be interpreted. for those that don't, i fear i lack the ability...

before hearing this story, you need to know one small detail about anthony: he vigorously contends that he is a robot, or at least that he has robotic innards. anytime i compliment him for doing something surprising or impressive his countenance sinks in frustration and he says, "dad, i keep telling you, i can do those kinds of things because i'm a robot. why can't you remember that?" and i apologize and say i forgot to which he gives an exasperated huff and moves on as if wondering how a boy robot got saddled with such an lacking human parent.

now the story. we were at our city park for alex's soccer game. bella was sitting on the bleachers reading. i was on the sidelines helping coach. marty was chatting with a friend and anthony was killing time on the playground. at one point marty looked over and saw anthony crossing a tall set of monkey bars. given their height she kept an eye on him. he had shimmied up the vertical upright to get started but once across, his legs couldn't reach the other upright or the top rung of the ladder. seeing him struggle marty ran over to help but before she got there, his grip gave and he fell, landing on his side in a hard, horizontal thud. given the height and the awkward landing, marty feared the worst.

when she crouched down next to him he pushed himself to a sitting position. marty asked if anything was hurt he. he grabbed his side and marty rubbed it testing his response. finding none, she commented that he was lucky he didn't break anything. in response, he explained that his side is his "metalist" part.

a few more feats like that and i may start giving some credence to the boy's claims of robotic componentry.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. totally awesome

i walked into my room for a pair of socks at 9pm. bella sat upright in the bed reading by the light of a lamp on the nightstand. i was basement-bound to do my night's biking/spinning. she glanced at me in the dim light. i stood by my dresser shirtless and wearing only my bib-style biking shorts. she placed her open hand flat on the page of her book and asked:

BELLA
what are you wearing?

TROY
oh. these are my biking shorts. this kind is called a biking bib and they're kinda like overalls to help keep them up and in place.

BELLA
well ... i'm going to have nightmares from your biking shorts.

TROY
yeah, they do look a little funny before i get my shirt on. after i get a shirt on they look pretty normal.

BELLA
i gotta say it is definitely not eye-candy.

and i gotta say bella's dress-down of me standing there in nothing but a pair of bib-style biking shorts planted several flags into my gelatinous esteem as i found myself pushing a little harder than usual that night on the trainer. in fact, so good was the workout, i'm considering letting bella verbally abuse me before every aerobic endeavor. if she gets good enough at it, she could possibly become a new sort of fitness trainer that does nothing but berate her clients into action.

i was awoken by anthony rushing into my room waving his fist above his head. he moved right next to me, either not realizing or not caring that i was asleep just four seconds earlier. undeterred by my addled response, he instructed me to ask a question. the easy manner in which he did this would have told someone watching that we were ten minutes into a conversation and not that one of the participants was just pulled from a deep sleep. compliantly, yet groggily, i asked why he was waking me up and not someone else. to this anthony vigorously shook his hand back and forth a few times as if making a cocktail, and then stared at his palm. after a moment a deep baritone voice said, "the magic meatball doesn't think so." at this declaration, anthony shrieked with delight saying, "ahhhh! he doesn't think so dad! you lose." dropping my forearm over my closed eyes i retorted in a partially involved voice, "you do realize anthony he didn't really answer the question i just asked, right?" like with the sleep, anthony either didn't realize or care that his sage failed him. nor did he seem interested in talking to his real-life father over this mindless plastic bauble which, by my count, paid as much attention to the actual conversation at hand as my overly self-interested college roommate did back in the day.

as this experience, and volley of questions, continued i found myself ranking this waking to my list of worst wake ups ever. bella's cannonball into the small of my back has proven to be a real gamer that no one has ever come close to matching. while finding this moment's spot in the list, marty entered the room and after a pert, already-showered hello said to anthony:

MARTY (with a mischievous glance my way)
ask the magic meatball if dad is going to get busy today?

ANTHONY (excitedly to the toy in his hand)
magic meatball, is dad going to get busy today!?!?

MAGIC MEATBALL (with bravado and confidence)
the magic meatball says YEEESSSS.

ANTHONY (even more excitedly)
aahhh! you're going to get busy today dad!

anthony's rejoicing at my imminent fortune had both marty and i laughing heartily. and i may have been hasty in my judging of the meatball. he seems ok to me. but, before we stamp any thank you notes, i should add that his prediction may not have been as prescient as he led on because at the time of this writing, i'm rather busy-less. and i assure you no one is bluer on that count than me. truly. in fact, i'm miffed enough to consider a rebranding effort for the magic meatball to something a touch more accurate. fortunately for me, he already mostly has the appearance of the moniker i'd been toying with.

UPDATE: so after i posted the above and before midnight, the magic meatball's promise of good fortune came to be. my apologies mr. meatball.