last weekend we celebrated bella's third birthday. what's the difference between a two-year old and a three-year old? you can have conversations like this with a three year old at the dinner table:

marty
so what part of today did you not like bella?

bella
when Isaac was touching our dolls.

marty
oh. and what ...

after a mishap in the basement, bella informed me that 'this is not a house where we say dammit'.

she's right. fact is dammit is possibly the cleanest expression of disgust ever uttered, shouted, screamed or just plainly said in our house. fact is, dammit only came into existence about a year after bella came into existence. fact is, dammit is what i reserved for when in the company of a relative or a person of the cloth. fact is, i feel i can now say dammit with the conviction and intonation to make one feel i just said something much, much more severe. fact is, it's really to damn bad ours is not a house where we say dammit.

here's another way having a three year old around differs from a two year old.

when we asked bella to draw pictures of her great grandparents to be mailed to them, she said no problem. later, when she handed her sketches to us we were pleasantly surprised at her eye for detail and said as much. she then instructed us to turn the pictures over. when we asked what was on the backside she explained and we were pleasantly appalled (see exhibits 2 & 4 below).

after bella returned to the breakfast room to draw more, marty and i had a brief discussion about who was to blame bella's overly thorough renditions. marty's firm belief in the scientific facts hurt her. my conviction to the pedestrian nature of our bodily functions didn't do me any favors. in the end we agreed to consider the other at fault realizing we were equally unswayable.

sorry grandma and grandpa but i'm not one to interfere with another's artistic expression or its public display no matter how personal ... to people who are not me.

exhib 1. great grandma | front


exhib 2. great grandma | back


exhib 3. great grandpa | front


exhib 4. great grandpa | back

the highlight from this year's christmas happened the night before. aunt peggy came over to help make sugar cookies for santa. bella complemented the snack with a refreshing single-cup combination of milk & orange juice for him to wash it down.

we were to then drive around and look at christmas lights before putting the kids down. bella had a long day and it was apparent she didn't have the juice for a nighttime car adventure. marty suggested she and her go take a shower and then go to bed. bella quickly upgraded the plan to a family shower. and, being the awesome hostess she is, she even invited aunt peggy to join in our four-person bathtub fun. aunt peggy gracefully declined.

at one point during the family shower, i looked down to find bella catching the water dripping from my penis in a plastic cup while loudly singing happy birthday to jesus. if i had a nickel for every time that very thing has happened to me...

man is my mom going to hate this photo. but not nearly as much as i'm going to hate the one my family goes on at an official photo studio, ala olan mills, in the days to come. "you tilt your head this way...now you move a little to the left...you rest your elbow on your knee like you're relaxing...you tilt your head back the other way...now everyone smile...eveyone have fun...can someone make the ...

to answer some questions regarding the previous post.

yes that was a television bella was jumping from. our old busted one which we gutted and gave to her. it is not at all uncommon to see her pushing it down the hallway en route to climb up on something. it's not the smallest step stool in the house but it sure is the funnest.

and, yes we do endorse jumping on the beds in our home. well we encourage the children doing it. marty is decidedly against the adults (meaning me) from doing it. our bed almost sags to the floor in various spots. i've tried convincing marty this is bella's doing but it only took once for her to hear the tired springs groan under my weight to convince her otherwise. i've asked that we replace the bed because i can't get the height i once could out of my jumps. she is firm on the point that we will replace the bed when the people weighing over 28 pounds stop jumping on it. i'm sure we can all agree, if this is the case, we're going to have this bed for awhile.

as for bella's olympic dive pose, i'm not sure where she picked that up, but it is truly how she begins every event. and as for her naked from the waist down deal, i'm sorry to report that this is far more usual that it should be. i'm merely hoping she gets it out of her system as a prepubescent youth so she doesn't feel the need to in later life.

have you ever felt dirty? unchaste? impure? yeah, me neither but recently i've been struggling through a certain predicament. you see, bella likes to watch sesame street. she also likes someone to watch with her. oftentimes that someone is me and i'm always happy to oblige in this basic request.

bella likes gina the veterinarian. she is nice and helps people/animals. daddy likes gina the veterinarian a lot too. she is nice and does all sorts of kind acts. and did i mention she is crazy, smokin' hot. having sensual thoughts about a beautiful woman intermingled with elaborately detailed talking and dancing sock puppets hasn't done my psyche or intimate life any kinds of favors.

think i'm joking? you try having your more libidinous thoughts interrupted by a two-foot tickle me elmo doll informing you that tying your own shoes makes you a big boy, a very big boy.

i sympathize with the burglar who selects my home to rob in the wee hours of the night.

i've lived here 5 years, know the floor plan and have yet to nocturnally navigate it, post bella, without:

1. kicking over a bucket of marbles in the 2am silence
2. running my scantily clad groin into the handle of a fisher price vacuum cleaner
3. stepping barefoot on a two day old, half-eaten and fully husked banana

sadly, we no longer have any valuables that have not been bellafied (aka broken) so they will be doubly pissed at their misfortune.

thursday morning i woke up, took my shower and then went downstairs to the kitchen wearing a towel around my waist as i'm like to do. bella was already down there sitting at the counter eating her breakfast.

b: good morning daddy.
d: good morning sweetheart.
b: there's another daddy in the basement.
d: oh is there? that's nice.

one quickly adjusts to the rocketing imagination of a young child and learns to nod and 'uhm-hum' with great frequency. so i got my breakfast together and sat next to bella at the counter eating. then the 'other daddy' emerged from the basement appearing in the kitchen doorway.

o: good morning.
d: oh, good morning.
b: there's the other daddy, daddy.
d: yes, i see the other daddy.

turns out the other daddy in the basement was the exterminator marty had let in while i was showering. marty entered the kitchen and started rapping with the guy. i decided to quickly finish my breakfast and head back upstairs to get ready for work. but, the conversation he and marty were having proved interesting enough to draw me in. it's not often that i stand in front of strange men in nothing but a towel and jaw for 20 or so minutes but (1) i didn't know he was here and (2) it is my house and this is what i do. one may ask what can be learned in such a short span between a man holding a can of bug spray and another wearing a plush green towel. here's a sample of what i now know about this other daddy.

our exterminator ...

1. was one of eight children. four boys. four girls.
2. had a nun ram a pencil into the palm of his hand when he was in first grade. the lead tip is still there.
3. is a book-writing, painter.
4. grew up on a farmhouse built where a lake used to be. in addition to several feet of water they would routinely find salamanders swimming around their flooded basement.
5. went through a horrible divorce where he sold his bar in attempt to get his two sons. he lost the petition and was instructed to give them up and pay child support. when he and his wife exited the courtroom, she pushed the two boys to him and said you take them, but i still want the checks.
6. cried when he dropped his oldest boy off at college. he almost made it out of there but as he was driving away his son looked back and waved. it was here he lost it.
7. almost died from internal bleeding after having colon cancer surgury.
8. wished he had learned to play the piano in his youth, but feared for his safety given his three brothers.
9. tried to domesticate a flying squirrel, mole and just about anything else he could catch in the woods.
10. knows a guy who looks a lot like me.

i had no choice. i told the guy i had to go to work but he would absolutely have to come over for dinner in the very near future. once at work i had the following conversation:

g: hey troy. so what's up?
t: not much. although, i just met the most interesting guy this morning.
g: who was it?
t: my exterminator.

this modest piece of banter culminated with the following life-lessons being passed down to me by a half-circle of the hunting, scratching, full-time-uber-males i work with ...

1. the man of the house should always know, and i mean always know, when another man is in his home.
2. men do not walk around their home in a towel.
3. men do not talk to strangers while in nothing but a towel.
4. men do not invite perfect strangers to their home for dinner.
5. men do not wear boxers. (one guy)
6. men do not wear briefs. (another guy)
7. men switch between boxers and briefs. (and yet another guy)
8. men shower before going to bed and not in the morning.
9. men do not run outside in their underwear to grab the paper.
10. sleeping naked is left to hippies and perverts.

i fear these guys are three minutes away from dragging me to the bathroom to prove to them that i'm actually a member of their gender club.

in college i majored in english. unfortunately i was not a member of the cool and sexy camp of creative writing, that was better left to the james kelly's of our world. my specialty was in analyzing the literary greats. while my first college roommate wrote a three page study on the black jellybeans left in the base of his mother's easter dish i was dissecting d.h. lawrence's rocking horse winner, explaining how the young boy was having sex with his mother and dying on the cross all while madly riding his wooden, rope-maned steed (the key was in the eyes, the boy's eyes crack the mystery wide open). i didn't exactly seek this discipline out, it's just what came easy to me, it's how my mind operated, and by the end of it all i was pretty good at it if i may for once make this site about me.

last tuesday night i was forced to use my powers not on the likes of Nabakov's Lolita but instead on Frankel's Once Upon a Potty. the task at hand, making isabella understand what was passing through the main character's skull when she defecated not in her potty but right next to it. many would think that explaining this simple scene would be an eyes-closed kind of exercise for someone trained in the craft. but i spent forty minutes on it before looking into bella's tired eyes and giving up. i accept that in the very near future i will find a tiny, toppled turd on the floor inches from bella's very own portable lavatory, all because i was unable to effectively convey the nuances of prudence's thought processes to my eldest child.

furthermore, when i find this misplaced turd on the floor, somewhere in my home will be a content and proud isabella. when i find her she will be smiling and by the time i pick her up i will be smiling too. but, i won't be smiling for the reasons you may think. my grin will come from the fact that i will feign ignorance of the mishap and marty, ever true to her nature, will be the one to scrape human feces off our breakfast room floor with a not-thick-enough paper towel.

all parents and potential parents have fears. will my child be healthy? will my child be happy? will my child succeed in what they want to do? while we all have them not everyone is forced to face them head-on. not everyone is actually dealt one of these blows to cope with, adjust to and move on from. while maybe not a foreseeable item for me, one of my greatest fears regarding a child of mine was realized last week.

in a trip to the zoo last week, i found bella hunched over a display and pushing a button on the wall. i peered in through the smallish Plexiglas window and saw a bunch of sand and twigs. my eyes prowled for the prize. i scanned the box until i saw pressed into one of the corners a shiny, blue, three inch scorpion. AAAHHHH! i shrieked. then bella pushed the button and the box went dark. that is everything in the box except the scorpion which now glowed a dull shade of white. BBBAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH! i super shrieked and bella looked up smiling largely and asked if i saw the blue spider-crab.

if you're like me you never conceived that such a creature could exist. want to know where freaky ass glow in the dark blue scorpions come from? while i'm not sure exactly where they got that one i crapped three of them into my shorts when bella hit that friggen' button.

you may or may not believe me, but believe that if i ever saw this thing out of its box, you'd need to know stephen hawking math to precisely count how many of those atrocities shot out of my ass.

last thursday after first getting up and passing bella in the hall she stopped and held her hand up to me as if a cop instructing traffic to halt and said the following in a doctor-serious voice. she then turned and headed towards the tv room. the body of the teddy bear she had in a serious headlock bobbing behind her. if i could express a thought in the office using half her conviction and firmness, i might actually make something happen. which i think may have worked out had i not been watching the prescribed episodes of big bird and company all morning.

so the somewhat asked about gallery for captain is finally baked. i've not yet settled on a frequency for updating this yet. i posted to rockefeller center weekly for several months but that was primarily for my mom's benefit who was pining in distant pittsburgh, pa. now that she's here in town and gets regular smother of spoil stops she doesn't require the cyber fixes she previously thirsted for.

but, for equity sake and to not start that second-child slide so soon, i'll probably post every monday for the next few weeks as to let everyone, everyone that cares to that is, catch up on the little man since he's been living a rather reclusive life since his debut.

and as with rockefeller center, updates to this section will be noted on the front page and the photos are accessible from there or at the base of the gallery section.

today is bella's birthday. she's two. two! i woke up this morning and i have a two year old child. you start gettin' the vibe of what older parents are talking about when they're all like "it seems just like yesterday we brought you home" or "they grow up so fast, right in front of your eyes". my response to them was always the same ... pah-leez. well, here i am wishing my eldest child happy two-year birthday and her saying "thank you. bella birthday. bella two. bella birthday'. why do i have a feeling i'll be at a high school graduation in about 12 minutes.

and for the goods, marty got her play-doh and i got her a silver ringer-bell for her bike. for those thinking what paltry gifts, last year we didn't get her anything. we actually bought ourselves presents for making in through the first year of parenthood.

a bad day is having your breath mistaken for gas by your wife upon first waking up.

a worse day is having your your breath mistaken for gas by your two year old daughter who won't stop chanting "gas. gas. gas. daddy gas. gas. gas. daddy gas. gas. gas. gas. daddy gas." and, all this while patting me on the shoulder just in case anyone in the store was uncertain of who exactly daddy was.

that spike in the altoids' stock was me. and me alone.

the other day i expressed my love for a close friend, michael (02.06.2003). today i must also divulge that i have an equal amount of concern for this very same fellow.

in example, you can see how a moment of inspiration moves michael and his cohort, buddy james.

my household is keeping the oral b folks in business since bella discovered the host of cool things that can be done with a toothbrush. you'd never guess what a versatile tool it was. but to my point, someone i know owns and uses some juiced kind of electric toothbrush that has an auto-timer and other amenities on it. i'm looking for you. clues as to your identity.

1. you stayed at my home in the last year and a half.
2. on one such visit you touted the advantages of your shiny, automated mouth tool. and, if i recall, you may have been doing that while bella was using my toothbrush to apply diaper rash medicine to her perpetually moist teddy bear.
3. you did not specifically mention how this implement could be used for alternate, possibly sexual purposes, but i was thinking it.

if you are this person, please shoot me a note with the brand and model of this device. i would be forever grateful.

and, for those thinking that this is a bad plan and that i will now simply be repeatedly replacing a more expensive toothbrush, i'm way more anal about my gizmos than i am about my $1.39 pieces of plastic. i know it's sometimes hard to see the logic behind my actions but i assure you there is a tangible reasoning beneath the murk.

there is this popular video tape for babies that we have. i'm not going to say which one, no point. at the end of the tape the video's creator comes on to say something or another about the merits of the program and why you should buy more of them. i've come into the habit of uttering a particular phrase whenever she graces the screen. what i say each and every time is "stripper gone good."

the reason is quite simple. this woman simply looks the part. she looks as though she once may have felt comfortable walking around on tables in skimpy garments until marrying a wealthy patron where she's now doing that whole mom in the burbs thing, only with an entrepreneurial bent.

marty typically just rolls her eyes, employing her often used troy-annoyance-defense-mechanism. bella typically just looks at me momentarily and then returns to her task of beating her blocks against some valuable. the other day after saying my little quip, bella quite unmistakably uttered the phonetics of the same phrase. marty did not roll her eyes this time. they did something else, the description of which i will spare you.

my defense; "well, at least they weren't her first words".

and for the record "oh suck" which i say every time the wood bin is empty weren't her first words either. close to the first, but not her first.

bella's new favorite saying is 'my toy'. everything she can see, touch or conceive is her toy. when we were taking a shower the other day she pointed at my penis and said 'my toy'. i explained that i was very confident that that was not her toy, mostly because it was my toy, my favorite toy in fact. she thought on this for a moment before smacking my toy with a toothbrush, another of her toys and reclaiming it as her toy.

the best parenting advice i ever received came from my father-in-law; "you just gotta be smarter than your kids". i try to live this and thought quickly at this moment and decided to remove the curiousity, so i turned around before continuing my ablutions. i then heard another softer 'my toy' seconds before feeling the toothbrush attempt to pierce my rear crevice. let's just say my surprise could have snapped that brittle plastic in half.

when recounting this drama to marty she asked which toothbrush she had. all i could say with confidence is that she didn't have mine.

now oddly, my whole family brushes their teeth with the same toothbrush, mine.

i don't like most holidays. i like getting the day off but many times i don't even know what the day of the hour is. thanksgiving is different though. it is one of my more serious holidays. i mean once you get past the fact that it represents the beginning of the end for those pesky indians (*) the base tenet of thanksgiving is pretty cool, and highly needed. as a practice i take some time to think on what i have to be thankful for through the past year. typically the list is short and probably, if compared to someone else's list, a little backwards. i tend to keep it pretty lean, not because there isn't a lot for me to pay homage to but because one statement can usually wrap up the kind of year i had.

for instance this year's item of note is that i'm thankful that the worst experience so far has been the batteries in my gameboy running out twice in the same week. they usually last longer but bella likes the noises the games make and sometimes walks around with the gameboy like it was a portable boom box doing little flutter dances here and there. one such time she left it on and drained the rechargeables. this is bad because i have sadly become addicted to playing gameboy on the john and if i don't have this digital heroin, well let's just say that things don't go as swimmingly as one may like. enough said? hope so. if not, drop me a line and we'll talk, probably for much longer than you you will be comfortable with.

another positive indicator of my life is that when a colleague asked me on wednesday if i would be in on friday i was able to say, "Oh. Friday? I wasn't aware Friday was even a workday."

life is good.

* don't hate me for being facetious, hate me if you don't know what facetious means, but don't hate me for being it.

ok, i've got some bad news for you all. well actually it's bad news for me, but in my mildly egotistic world, that extends to you as well. i was recently told my job was toast. that isn't exactly right. i was told my job was moving. to portland. now don't get me wrong. i love portland. i think it's the most centered city i've seen. but let me tell you something about my life (for a change).

after bella was born a year and a half ago, my mom came out to visit and help. she then returned home and promptly quit her very posh job in pittsburgh to take a very evil job in saint louis just so she could be closer to this tiny non-speaking, non-sleeping bundle of late nights. this was one of the many examples of living by your priorities i've witnessed in my mother.

when my boss was discussing the relocation package i explained that it would have to cover 7 homes and 26 humans. when asked to expound on this need, i countered that that is what it would take to move 4 grandparents, 5 of 7 siblings and a whole gob of screaming cousins to portland because i wasn't going without them, cool city or not. the boss blinked.

so i have two interviews today. i have a couple more in the hopper as well should these not pan out. wish me well at 10 and 2 (cst). otherwise, i'll see you in the unemployment line with an unwashed bella and shoeless marty.

and, by the way, when my parents came over for dinner last night and bella went running to the door with flailing arms and indecipherable greetings, i knew my choice was the right one, regardless of today's outcome.