a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. try again

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...

the first compelling argument i've heard against sleeping naked:

there is a man. he is sleeping naked. his three year old daughter, having stirred from her slumber, foggily walks into his room in the middle of the night. she moves to his side of the bed. to hoist herself up, she reaches up grabbing a fistful of sheet in one hand and a fistful of her father's pubic hair in the other. she pulls mightily.

most anti-nude arguments deal with the scaring or scarring of children. they lack merit. a handful, even a three year old handful, of short-hairs viciously ripped from their root is merit, big ole wail-in-the-night merit.

editorial clarification: this man was not me.

we are on our third tivo remote. the first one just wore out. bella broke the second one. and the current one began flaking out after two weeks of use. as it is, if the new remote sits idle for more than five minutes you have to take the batteries out and put them back in before any of the buttons will work. this is slightly aided by the fact that the battery compartment door went missing in the first week thus granting easier and quicker access to this routine.

miffed at how soon the replacement had been compromised and in a fit of 'why won't this damn thing stop fast forwarding' furor, i chastised the children telling them i wasn't buying another remote and if this one broke we were done and would live without tv. three days later bella in a wordless rage because the remote wasn't working ricocheted it off the corner of a coffee table. all the rubbery push buttons mysteriously disappeared somewhere inside the plastic case leaving hollow holes where they had been.

with football season around the corner and wanting to stay true to my word, two nights after the fall of the remote i disassembled the device on my desk and painstakingly put it back together. when done, i popped the batteries in and tried it. it worked. it worked better than before because bella's outburst seemed to have fixed the battery issue as well. small gifts.

for the next few days the rest of the family secretly used the remote when bella wasn't around, wanting her to think the days of television were in fact over. but alex got caught when bella came in from outside to use the restroom. later that same day bella approached me:

BELLA
can i watch my show since i didn't really break the remote and it is working?

TROY
well bella, you did in fact break the remote and it is only working because your father is a great, great man.

BELLA
so ... does that mean i can watch now?

TROY
do you think you should be able to watch now?

BELLA
well, i haven't watched for three days and that's kind of a long time.

TROY
well, since when we thought you did break the remote you wouldn't be watching for infinity days, three days isn't so much.

BELLA (sadly)
yeah ... i guess so.

TROY
and for the sake of easier math let's say infinity days equals 1,000 days of which you are three days in. now what do you think is fair?

BELLA (contemplatively with finger on chin)
uhhm ... three weeks.

TROY
done.

since i was expecting her to say four days, i was pleased with her self-imposed twenty-one. and, if you're ever at our house and want to watch tv, the remote is stashed in marty's underwear drawer. we originally hid it in my desk but bella woke me up one morning with it in her hand asking if her days were over yet so we had to relocate it while she slept.

and, in fairness i must add in regard to how our kids treat electronics i got some insight from alex after he and i sat down to watch a show. when i turned the tv on, a horrible screeching sound came out of the speakers. without a moment of thought alex got up from the couch, walked to the tv and struck it hard on the side with his little fist. in a snit i asked him what he thought he was doing. walking back to the couch he simply said, "that's what mom does" and sat down next to me. to his and his mother's credit, the shrill screeching did stop.

we have a new ritual in our home, although we pass it off as more of a game really. it's called 'everything has a home'. we play 'everything has a home' after dinner. how it works is everyone walks through the house and anything that is out of place gets put where it is meant to go. we start in the dining room and move all the dinner stuff into the kitchen. then we set a timer for fifteen minutes ...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. just a child

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.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. now?

for the record:
waking bella is like quelling a prison riot.

waking alex is like performing twenty minutes of cpr on Resusci Anne.

and a whispy fart let go three rooms away is enough to pull anthony from the deepest slumber.

this is exhibit A. until 10am exhibit A was a stylish and comfortable-enough mission chair worth a few hundred dollars. after 10am exhibit A had a street value between four and eight dollars depending on how badly the customer wanted to build a fire at the moment of purchase. exhibit A is part of my argument against recent or soon-to-be parents investing in nice and/or expensive products for their home. fact is, i would recommend against acquiring anything you will care about in any way, form or fashion until your children are old enough to, oh i don't know, buy their own home.

exhibit A is a product of alex's most recent play-date. we didn't see exhibit A bite the dust, but we heard it, a full floor away. as marty gazed at the splintered wood on the living room floor, the two boys stood quietly at her side. after a few moments alex turned to his cohort and softly said "my mom is angee." he at times demonstrates great acumen in sensing the moods of others, especially when that mood is 'angee'.

should you be curious how many exhibits will be part of my presentation, i can give you a hint; a lot. i cannot be more precise because my bank of accountants have not yet finished itemizing the heap of tangled objects piled in the far corner of my basement. problem is, the collection is growing faster than they can complete their paperwork.

thus far i've learned this; you can love your stuff or you can love your children, but you can't love both.

the last two weeks of the year are my low-tech, high-slumber days. in this time, i try not to look at, think about, touch or dream of my computer. another thing i do during this block is to actually go to sleep when i'm tired. marty calls this listening to your body. i don't listen to my body too much the other fifty weeks of the year. over the last fourteen days, i went to bed anywhere from 8pm and 4am. additionally, i slept anywhere from two to thirteen hours a night. this is another way of saying, i'm quite screwed up right now and have about seven hours to get my game face back on since i'm expected back to work in the morning.



sleep-aside 1: in the days leading up to christmas, bella and alex drug anthony's crib mattress (as of yet unused by anthony) from our room and dropped it at the foot of their beds. i wasn't sure how this smaller makeshift cot was superior to their already touching beds but they both seemed quite certain of the change. after getting some covers in place, they crawled under the sheets and snuggled close, facing one another. you could hear them talking quietly of the pending christmas morn. they were quite bristling. as sleep approached, their voices got softer and then their words started getting elongated and unrecognizable until there was the beautiful sound of children being good body listeners.

sleep aside 2: marty and i have real different notions on sleep. since having kids, it is something we 'chat on' quite extensively. one of the suck parts about it is in just watching my kids, i believe one's sleep proclivities are greatly genetic. no matter what time alex goes to bed, he naturally wakes up at 8:37 each morning. no matter what time bella goes to bed, she sleeps exactly eleven hours. and excepting four occasions, anthony refuses to sleep more than two hours at a time which means that excepting four occasions marty has not slept more than two hours in a row over the last four and a half months which makes her a much less friendly debate opponent because if she does not get a consistent and continuous eight hours, her demeanor gets all sideways and hostile. personally, i think she just gets surly with me to demonstrate the import of sleep. fortunately for me, i'm too fatigued to make the connection.

before we had children, when accommodating out of town guests marty and i would straighten and clean our home. now that we have children, all we look to do is remove any visible blood, feces or urine from our kids. that said, if we see a bodily excrement sprayed or wiped on a wall or piece of furniture we will attempt to clean/remove/hide it. although, i don't do ceilings. so if an illness, natural event or blood-sport marred something i can't reach on my tippy toes, it's getting left for the visitor's imagination.

and i assure you this is one scenario where the mind's creativity won't surpass or even come close to our life's reality.

i promise.

before running out the door one morning i was sent upstairs to get a replacement dress for one that got soiled during breakfast. once upstairs i couldn't find the particular garment i was told to retrieve.

TROY (calling down steps)
hey bella, do you know where your red dress is? it's not in your closet.

BELLA (calling up steps)
uhhhm ... try checking in ... uhhhm ... did you look in ... uhhhm ... just try looking harder dad.

would you believe, her suggestion worked.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. you should know

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.

yesterday i bumped into a friend and her three-year old son leaving his pre-school. after introductions i had the following conversation with her boy.

TROY
so ravi, how'd school go?

RAVI
good. a fire truck came.

TROY
oh, wow. a fire truck. that's pretty cool.

RAVI
i didn't cry.

TROY
well, that's ... great. firemen do good stuff, there's no reason to cry.

PRIYA
he says he didn't cry because half his class did after the firemen put on their uniforms.

did you know this? that kids are freaked out by firemen. i had no idea. fortunately our fire professionals are a little more in tune and make it a point to tour their communities acquainting kids with the process. can you imagine busting your ass through a burning house only to have the little human you're trying to save shriek, turn and scamper under a flame-engorged bed. if it were me i'd be as alarmed as them by their reaction and think there was someone else in the room they saw and i didn't. odds are i'd dive under the bed right behind them to get away from the scary thing. it wouldn't be until they screamed, again, scurried away, again, and locked themselves in a burning closet that i would figure out i was the scary object in the room. and this is only one of the reasons i'm paid to type on a keyboard all day long instead of rescuing humans in peril.

additionally, if you remove the fire-element from the above, the scenario has way more similarities a marty-troy date night (before children) than i'm willing to share in such a public venue.

alex has graduated to big boy underwear. when i was his age, they were white. maybe a colored band here or there, but mostly just plain ole white. nowadays these utilitarian garments are a colorful and busy strain branded just for kids. you name it, someone makes it. right now, alex's favorites are batman and spiderman, with buzz lightyear getting some occasional play.

for alex, in addition to selecting which super-hero to pull from the drawer, he must also decide which artwork he likes better, the picture on the front or the picture on the back because for him it is important that the better of the two be front-facing giving it superior exposure. so each morning before slipping his tiny jockeys on, alex diligently studies the front and back of the shorts, deciding which scene deserves the marquee. you'd think this review would be consistent, but for reasons i can't explain, it is a total crap-shoot from day to day, and one i'm mildly embarrassed to say leaves me thoroughly intrigued.

i'm a boxers man. have been for decades. in looking at a pair of briefs i would have guessed they could be worn backwards without even noticing, other than having the ill-conceived penis-tunnel even further from the member it is meant for, making the knee-bending maneuver of extraction that much more precarious. but, if you, like me, thought the cut was reversible you'd be wrong. it turns out the material on the back is significantly larger than the front, and when you wear them backwards you find it only partially covers one's biscuits (that's parental-speak for ass-cheeks). this unforeseen detail results in what appears to be, from the back-side, a modest man's thong. and, before you think this is the only flaw in the design, consider all that bonus material in the front which makes the wearer look like they shoved a hot-pocket down their shorts.

all this said, how ill-fitting the shorts appear doesn't phase alex in the least. he just sucks in his tummy, looks down and excitedly points at the display saying, "BATMAN!, look daddy! batman on my shorts". and i do look and i must confess that the picture of batman standing atop gotham with his cape flaring in the wind looks pretty smart in wide screen across the front and am both impressed with and pleased by my son's eye for such detail. but it is during this revelry when alex turns to leave the room anxious to show others today's selection where i'm left spying his narrow biscuits sneaking out of the deficient material in the rear ... and sneaking more with every excited stride.

the kids and i biked to a nearby park last weekend and i bumped into an ex-colleague. we were close enough to the playground that bella and alex continued on while i stopped to chat with my friend and his family. after bella got off her bike, removed her helmet and was ready to proceed she started calling for me. i was busy bringing my pal up to speed on my life; bragging on how well things were going with the new job and even newer baby. he asked how the kids were adjusting to anthony. i explained, honestly, that they were great. bella is doting and alex impressively gentle. overall things were very warm and loving. i should mention that the whole time i was talking bella was thirty feet away yelling at me, bike helmet in hand.

dad, we're ready to play.

dad!

dad get over here.

dad get over here right now!

dad git!

father. if you don't come here right now, you're going to be fired.

dad!

DAD! you're fired.

(alex was standing there sucking his thumb and looking elsewhere through this whole lambasting until that last line at which point he removed his thumb just long enough to say in his soft, partially interested voice)

yeah dad. you're fired dad.

i was specific in directing the warm and loving sentiments of my children towards their new brother, not their old father.

marty recently suggested, seriously, that we replace our current furniture with outdoor/patio chairs and tables because she doesn't see the point in replacing our home's kid-broken furnishings with nice stuff just so it can be trashed like the originals.

i upgraded her thought by suggesting indoor tire swings and felled tree trunks like they use in the great apes display at the zoo. i mean why sugar-coat the problem we are combatting.

question. do you know the two words most used by a three year old? they are 'no' and 'why'. another question. do you know how demoralizing it is to get whittled down in an argument by an opponent who refuses to say anything other than 'why'? it is the equivalent of losing a chess game to someone who moves nothing but pawns, which for those who don't play chess is pretty sucky.

another que...

our bathroom door doesn't lock. come to think of it, our bathroom door doesn't even latch. it stands wide open much of the time, occupied or not. casting a glance that way while walking down the hall often results with spying bella sitting on the john chin resting on her bracing arm and her legs dangling from the seat.

you may think that given the state of our door hardware, people would respect that when the door is swung closed, the room is occupied. we're not quite there yet. five minutes before the writing of this thought i was attending to my late afternoon constitution when the door pushed open enough for bella's head to pop through. "oh!" she exclaimed. "sorry dad, i just need one of these." her arm reached to the back of the door and pulled a bath towel off a hook and she and it disappeared. she called a "thank you dad" out as she quickly ran down the hall.

i'm not a math guy but this equation is one which i'm all over. that is, if bella is hurriedly after a full size bath towel, something pretty bad just went down. there was a time i'd try to figure out if it was one of my valuables or another's but parental experience has shown me that it is always my stuff. the kids have yet to be employed and therefore haven't acquired anything of merit or value. the last thing marty voluntarily purchased out of need or desire was back in 98 and that item fell when bella was just three. so what is left is a house chock full of dad-stuff. and it's not like i prefer delicate and costly electronics or anything. and certainly not stuff that couldn't withstand being doused with a bowl full of milk that got upended during a scuffle between bella and alex for the remote while yelling "my show, no my show, no my show, NO, MY SHOW".

many more of those sorts of battles and that argument will become a moot point because marty and i are in agreement that we're not replacing any more broken household items until the children leave for college. if you could see some of the antics that go on in our miniscule tv room, you'd know the tele is already living on some serious borrowed time.

since having children, the tenor of our dinner parties has changed.

curiously, it's not to say they haven't changed for the better.

little kids masturbate.

my sister in law, who is an elementary teacher, calls kids who masturbate in class honkers. she calls the act of masturbating in class, honking. i fear my kids may be future honkers. while i don't recall specifically, odds are more than good that i may have been a honker myself. my new theory is that without intervention, all kids have the honker gene in them. i r...

someone recently asked me about the key to my success. for those saying "what success?" i hear you, i really do. but it's all relative and this person was seven years old and well, cut me some slack. after thoughtfully rubbing my chin, ruminating on it and acting successful all the while, i proffered the following sage words to this young lad.

my success is a product of a whole lot of sitting very still and being very quiet in the corner of whatever room i occupy and making interspersed quips about circumcision, digestive disfunctions and revealing very intimate details of my life with total strangers.

ok, so it's a borderline homeless/psychotic strategy but when plied properly it provides stupendous results.