from the moment he thrust the envelope into my hands alex was bristling for me to open his birthday card. as soon as the card unfolded he burst into an excited explanation about his colorful composition. he pointed to the figure on the right and said it was me. he then pointed to the figure to the left and said that was him. he then said that i was being super freaked out by all the smart things he knew, which was represented by the blizzard of chaos swirling around us.

the reason my child would say i'm freaked out by his intelligence stems from a game i play in the house. i, on occasion, will act mad when they do things like learn something new or laugh extra big or outgrow clothing or say something smart. i cite house rules like 'there will be no laughter in this home! i forbid it!' or 'that's it, you can't go to school anymore!' or 'no more exercise for you. you're getting too strong!' to these outburst the children titter and coo and threaten to learn two things at school tomorrow or to eat more fruit the following day to which i act more irritated and refer to the unspeakable punishments they'll receive if they choose to defy me and become smarter, stronger or happier than their father. i'd be lying if i said i wasn't a little hopeful that i can milk this tactic through their college years.

marty had the boys up to the library. she was flipping through some dvd's searching for our next movie night candidate. she spotted alex eyeing a rack of video tapes thoughtfully. anthony was next to him watching him stare at the tapes. after a moment alex turned to anthony, motioned to the rack of videos and said ruefully, "i watched these in the old times when we had a BCR."

marty and the kids we're picking up dinner at a gyro house near our home. standing by the register waiting for his already placed order was a man super-rife with tattoos and piercings. in our neighborhood these sorts of folks, and there are plenty of them, are known as loop-rats. while such scenes are reasonably commonplace, you do run into the occasional over-the-top variety and marty had said this guy was that given a variety of sprawling tattoos, some running up into his face and metal balls and hoops hanging from places that didn't seem able to accommodate such artistic and weighty objects.

after ordering marty and the kids sat down at a table to wait for their food. wordlessly, bella and alex continued to look at the man. fact is they'd been gazing at him since they walked in the storefront. finally, alex leaned into marty and in a soft and concerned whisper said, "mom, i think that boy over there is a pirate." alex's serious tenor made his remark much more comical and marty fought back the release of a deep guffaw. just when she thought she had it controlled, bella leaned in and said, "no alex, that boy just made a lot of bad choices."

my kids just may be brighter than i give them credit for.

some other pirates of our time. it's impossible to cite one favorite from the terrible tatts slideshow. the best caption for sure would have to go to "Backfat Wars: We feel a great disturbance in the force".

in tumult of everyman season it has been days, possibly even weeks, since i've been able to talk about pee, poop, choking up or bodily excretions of any sort. so, recognizing this, lets get it on.

last weekend we went camping. alex used a true outhouse for the very first time. and i'm not talking about one of those city-park, johnny-on-the-spot deluxe models but a full-fledged, hole in the ground, shanty outhouse. marty walked him in and he slid up on the seat. seconds later his face screwed up and desperately looked to marty exclaiming, "ohhhh mom! what is that horrible smell?" marty gave him the dope. alex lifted a cheek and looked down the well, staring right into hades itself. after that, alex moved his bowels in record time.

on the walk back to the campsite, alex asked how outhouses were made. marty detailed the obvious process. you dig a hole. you make a seat with an opening. and then you cover all that with a wooden shack. alex had great concern for the person who dug the hole. he feared it may have been a one-way trip. while i would have ran with that, marty explained how they probably have a system to get the human out of the hole before it's all put to use.

the next day alex scurried up to me saying he had to go. i knew there where real brick and mortar accommodations with running water a few miles away. i borrowed a bike and carrier from one of our camping mates and raced alex to these nicer facilities. after selecting a stall he stopped at the commode and pointed at two (clean) squares of toilet paper floating in the water and said this one was ucky and he'd need to find another. it's nice to see he's inherited my uncompromising and unmovable demand for standards. although the 50's dad in me was tempted to throw him back in the bike and make him use the satan-toilet again.

meanwhile, back in our neighborhood, alex's two primary playmates were eating mushrooms they found in the front yard of one of their homes. after learning of this trespass, their mothers called the doctor and were instructed to give the boys the throw-up medicine. after a quick run to the store, the two boys spent the next few hours of their saturday sitting together on a front porch puking into buckets in some grotesque community production of stand by me. unsurprisingly, alex was sorry to have missed this unique moment with his friends.

and then after returning home, bella called out in the night to report an accident in her bed. it was the classic thought i was going to pass gas and got more than i expected sort of episode. marty cleaned her up and changed her sheets. two hours later it happened again. while marty was cleaning up round two i approached bella while she was on the toilet. she looked up to me beaming with elation. when i asked why she was so happy she said mother never made her go to school if she might poop her pants.

and lastly, while standing in the tub for his bath last night anthony peed at his own will. i don't know who was happier, his parents or him.

i think that should get you all up to speed on life in my home. as you can see, it's just business as usual.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. sleeping naked

while neighborhood kids were rampaging about the sidewalks last weekend, a lady from a few doors down pulled me to the side to tell me that her son and daughter (both of which are good friends of bella and alex) had a conversation at their dinner table about how long alex's penis is. after apologizing for the topic, i explained that this misperception is nothing more than an illusion of length given alex's healthy and present foreskin.

as for why alex's best friend knows what his penis looks like, it seems they have come to that brief age where showing your penis to a friend is good fun. as for why the girl knows i'm not too sure in that neither of the boys seem to yet be at that not-so-brief age where they enjoy showing their penises to girls instead of boys (should that be the side of the fence they happen to fall on).

and, after recently catching alex with his hand in the cookie jar, marty asked him if he was ok, in that wonderful 'i'm not judging you' tone only moms seem good at. he said he was fine. marty added that the way he was rooting around in his pants she was afraid he may have lost his penis and we'd have to get him a new one. he assured her he hadn't lost it but added that if he does he wants one that looks like his friend's. i don't know that a higher compliment from one pal to another pal exists.

friday bella had her first sleepover where she was the host. the neighbor girl was the guest and she was remarkably polite. after loaning her some batteries for a cd player she listens to while going to sleep, i explained they were rechargeables and i'd like them back in the morning. she looked at me and said quite naturally, "why of course." and when marty told her that if she needed anything in the night she could come into our room and wake one of us up and we sleep right over there across the hall. to this, the small girl said, "marty, i know where you sleep. i almost know this house as well as i know my own house. it's like my second house."

saturday alex and i spray-painted his bike. it was everything he could do to depress the nubbin at the top of the can and given this there was no way he could push that and direct the spray at the same time but he stayed insistent on doing the work. so we would rest the can on the workbench or ground and he would put his body's full weight onto the top of the can, firing the mist in the general direction of the bike or wheel or accessory and i would move the part through the spray attempting to coat it as directed. in the end, this method worked to transform alex's pink and purple bike to a preferred green and black. it also worked to effectively cover me up to the wrists in green and black paint as well.

on sunday, we celebrated anthony's birthday. every time anyone would say the word birthday around anthony, he'd start blowing in the air as if he were blowing out birthday candles. and on this weekend anthony uttered his fourth-ever phrase. it was "close the door". with kids bursting in and out of the house all weekend, he heard marty scream those phrase through the house no less than forty times. if you're wondering, his first three phrases were mama, bella and poop (although poop sounds more like poof but is not to be mistaken because of the way he points a finger at his soiled and smeared ass while saying it).

saturday alex's training wheels came off. we were probably four or more months overdue with this but my knee surgery prevented my helping with the running alongside period of training. on the good side, when you over-wait this particular skill, kids hit the ground running, rolling and quickly flying.

we had friends over for dinner on friday night and the dad ran up and down the sidewalk with alex a very generous number of times (much thanks jk). during this alex looked very good so the next morning i pulled the training wheels off his bike (he had been practicing on bella's bike). by this time i just had to give him a slight push and he'd take off for about eight houses worth of sidewalk and then stop. i would walk after him (in that i still can't run or jog) and when i'd get to him we'd turn him around and i'd give him a push back the other way. after about three rounds of this when i was walking toward him he got tired of waiting and pushed off himself and shot right past me as if there was nothing odd about this new development (aside from a monster grin of pride on his face). and that was that. within the hour he and i were off for an hour plus bike adventure all over a university campus next to our home. there are many tree-lined, wide, twisty and smooth sidewalks to explore and on a saturday in early august, not many people. this was one of those special moments as could be seen in the perpetual smile spread across alex's beaming face as his little legs churned and pumped him with greater velocity and confidence with each conquered section of campus.

when we would pass a walking student or visitor alex would brightly say hi as he zoomed past. his hi's are very matter of fact. and alex rarely passes anyone without throwing one out there at them. he does not yet know that this ritual greeting is an optional part of society. unsurprisingly most people are startled by this small boy's resounding hello, especially when that 37 pound super-tanned, smiling kid is flying by on a tiny bike in his first hours of true two-wheel cycling. i like trailing behind and watching the dazed people come out of their stupor, orient their eyes to who just said hi, smile genuinely and then almost as an afterthought say hi back to the small boy who is already well past them.

our kids are pro-hello people. i reckon they picked this up from marty and i but they've been like that from the start. when bella and alex were both still in the rickshaw carrier and i would ride them through crowds of people they would wave and greet the throngs as if they were royalty being charioted to their regal home. in telling marty about alex's first ride out, she recalled once when she and the kids were driving through forest park (stl's central park) bella was counseling alex on how he should yell hello out of the window at all the people walking, roller-blading, running and biking. in showing alex how it was done, bella was yelling hi's and hello's to people out of her window. then the car passed a wedding party taking photographs in front of a fountain in the park, bella from the moving car screamed out of her window, "NICE WEDDING!"

for all the rigors of parenting, the payoffs are quite substantial.

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

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



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



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


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

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. little things

so alex doesn't feel left out of the loop during this week of sharing penis-centric tales, the other morning while i was eating breakfast in the kitchen, out of nowhere and with no surrounding conversation alex called out from the living room. all he said, rather loudly, was, "my penis is swelling!"

boy. what to say to that? i didn't even know where to start and in the name of competent parenting i chose not to start. i mean i did have to get to work that morning.

last night marty asked me to put the kids down for bed. alex and i got into a battle over his bath. it culminated with him refusing to get out when he was finished. while on crutches i'm a little impotent to put any teeth to threats about removing him physically so i told him if he wouldn't get out he could just go to sleep in there. twenty minutes later i went down to the kitchen where marty was cleaning up.

TROY
i have good news and i have bad news?

MARTY
ok

TROY
the good news is alex is asleep.

MARTY
ok.

TROY
the bad news is he's naked and sleeping in the bathtub.

in the end, i'm not entirely sure who won this grudge match but i do know i don't feel like i'm standing in winners circle.

we celebrated alex's fifth birthday last week. already, his christmas & next birthday gift list are six items deep. he is our consumer. bella on the other hand only wants two things, books and a horse. she reads so ravenously that i couldn't afford to keep her in books any more than i could afford to stable a horse. fortunately marty and the kids are mainstays at our local library, usually having between 40 and 50 books out at a time.

given our children's differing approach to material things, i employ different tactics in buying them presents. for alex, i try to buy him small, inexpensive things that are meaningful and insightful to show him that presents don't have to be grand or numerous to be special. conversely i tend to get bella bigger things to try to show her that there is more in the world than an animal that requires its own domicile and stable-hand.

this year i bought alex two presents. first, i got him a movie he super-adores that we've only ever been able to get on VHS (from the library). since we no longer have a tv or vcr we haven't been able to watch it except when we go to visit grandparents. i had to search deep in google's listings to find someone that sold this thirty year old documentary on dvd. the other thing i got him was a fishbowl nightlight that caught his eye about six months ago when he and i were out shopping. as a rule, we typically don't get the kids impulse baubles while out, but he never let go of this particular item. every few weeks he'd ask me if i remembered that really cool fish-light we saw. i would say i did and that yes it was pretty cool. dreamily looking out at nothing, he would re-affirm the sentiment saying, "yeah, that thing was really cool." so i got him that and when he opened it he gave me the five-year old version of the 'you remembered' look.

i expected him to plug that shiny, glowy thing into his room and admire it often but this gem has gotten far more play than i imagined. before going to bed he always makes sure it is on and working. then he will lie down and look at it a few moments before turning over and drifting away. in the middle of the night when he changes the room he's sleeping in, and he almost always changes rooms, as he walks out of his room, he yanks his nightlight from the wall and carries it with him in his sagging arm. when he gets to the room he plans to bunk in, he searches out an empty plug (or empties a socket for the need) and plugs his fish-light in before crawling into the already occupied bed and drifting back to sleep.

i don't know if my psychology will pan out in the end, but i like how it's starting.

if you're ever going to lay in bed for a week or two and don't want to be lonely, alexander is the pal you want to have around.


the second he walks in the door from school his little feet race up the stairs towards the bedroom. once outside the door, they slow, pause even before he peeks around the door jamb to see if i'm awake. if i am up he says quietly, "hi daddy" and comes to the foot of the bed. after asking how i'm doing he runs through a short checklist of things i might need; pumps in my aqua-kuff or more tea or fresh ice or adjusted pillows. after seeing i'm stocked up and comfortable he crawls into the bed and curls up at my side leaning his head on my shoulder. we will sit like this for a short while without words. after a bit we will do one of two things; read books (BONE series) or play on the computer. the other day while bella was at school and anthony and walt were napping, alex and i sat side by side in an otherwise silent house for three hours. he was playing games on pbs kids on his computer and i was watching season three of battlestar galactica on mine. we would occasionally get the others attention to ask a question (how does this work daddy?) or point out a cool looking thing (check out this rocketship aleo.). these uninterrupted moments with alex has turned out to be a real surprise of this long stretch stuck in bed.

saturday alex had a birthday party to attend. i was tapped to take he and a neighbor boy, sebastian to the celebration. sebastian lives a few doors down from us and is one of alex's favorite pals. the last time i took the two of them out, we went to a local attraction, the city museum, for the day. when it was time to head home, we had lost sebastian's shoes. when i delivered him home, i told his parents i had good news and bad news. the good news was i was safely returning the eldest son. the bad news was he no longer had his shoes. this saturday after his mother buckled him into his seat next to alex, she turned to me and said "and don't worry about his shoes this time troy, i put a really ratty pair on him." i appreciate human sensibility.

the party was leagues away. the birthday boy chose chuck e cheese as his locale and the closest one was several zip codes from us. between the distance and a highway closure, i ended up horrifically lost. a trip that should have taken thirty minutes took us over an hour and at our most remote point we were driving through farmland and at one point even found ourselves in the middle of a forest. when we were shrouded by trees i found the boys staring our of their respective windows, fascinated. this was about forty minutes into the trek and one of them asked:

SEBASTIAN
how much longer will it be until we are at chuck e chese.

TROY
uhhhm. well a few minutes ago i didn't know where we were, but now i do which means we are no longer totally lost. so that is good. and based on where i think we are, i'd put it at ten minutes away.

turns out we were twenty five minutes away but the moment i walked into this children's mad house, i yearned for the uncertainty we knew only a half hour ago back in the woods. in surveying the dark, cavernous room, i concluded i haven't been to one of these since i myself was alex's age. furthermore, i think i can sum up the day by describing three scenes:

scene one. the birthday party is sitting at a long table watching a video of people singing happy birthday. there are four other such long tables to our right and left. a commotion behind us causes all of the seated adults to crane their heads to see the source of noise only to spy a huge costumed rat walking towards the stage with a mob of children parading behind it. in the melee i see a child launch himself from a chair onto the rat's back. the kid looked like a miniature version of tom cruise acting out a scene from the mission impossible series. post-jump, i recognize the kid as being from our neighborhood. i looked to his mother who was sitting across the table from me. she looked both drunk and high:

TROY
lori, i think your kid just attacked the rat

LORI (smiling as though she didn't hear my comment)
i feel like i'm in a movie. i've never been here before. this is surreal. i don't think this is really happening to me.

she never acknowledged the fact that her son was chewing on the rat's tail and madly punching his right buttock. based on the rodent's non-response i think the high school kid wearing the costume either couldn't feel the assault or found it inconsequential compared to the fact he was currently wearing such an ill-fitting and socially-damning getup.

scene two. throughout the day the hostess of the party gave me over 150 gold tokens for the two boys i brought. at first i thought this would be far too many but learned it was possibly not enough. there was one game that had you deposit a token. the game would then shoot the coin into the air where it would land on one of three terraced metal trays. on the trays were the coins shot by previous players and behind the coins were several mechanized bulldozors which cyclically pushed at the coins. the goal was to land your coin in a spot that would cause the shovel to knock a bunch of coins off the tray. alex quickly fed five coins into the game. he then looked up at me and asked why nothing was happening. my eyes widened.

TROY
alex! what do you mean nothing is happening. don't you see it shooting your coins in the air?

ALEX
no.

TROY
well why'd you keep putting money in.

ALEX
i don't know.

TROY
you should figure out what's happening with the game before you pump a bunch of coins into it.

ALEX
oh.

after i explain the premise of the game, he becomes excited and pushes coins in faster than the game can launch them into the air or he can watch them fly. it turns out the best game of all is seeing how fast you can insert your fistful of coins into one of the machines.

scene three. i am sitting in a race car game. alex is on my lap. he needs me because he can't reach the gas pedal. i can see sebastian playing another game to my right. regarding alex's game i just keep the pedal pushed all the way down so i can watch sebastian. alex spins the wheel madly. occasionally a sultry sounding woman's voice comes through the speaker, "what are you doing? you are going the wrong way." she sounds annoyed ... but sultry still. without looking at the screen i tell alex to turn the car around. he asks why. i tell him he's going the wrong way. while we have this discussion i see a kid who looks about nine hovering behind sebastian. sebastian's game has spit out a bunch of tickets, which he hasn't noticed because he's focused on the game. the nine-year old reaches down stealthily and tears the tickets loose and stands to walk away. and this becomes the next thirty seconds of my life:

TROY
HEY! YOU! YES YOU. GIVE THOSE TICKETS BACK TO THE BOY! turn the car around alex. GIVE THEM BACK TO THE BOY! cuz the sexy lady said you're going the wrong way alex. STOP TAKING LITTLE KIDS TICKETS! you're still going the wrong way alex. APOLOGIZE TO THAT BOY! SHAME ON YOU! turn the car around alex.

at the end of the day the kids have collectively won just over 300 tickets with their 150 coins. before leaving we go to the prize counter to learn that they can have a plastic spider ring or fluorescent sticky worm that will cling to walls. because the two boys are not insane, they have no interest in either of those crappy baubles. the perky girl showcasing the prizes tells me that i can pay the difference between the ticket value and true cost of the toy if i'd like. they kids pick a ball game they can play together. my cut comes to more than twice what we would have paid for such a toy at the k-mart next door.

the moral of this longish story is this. if you have any money to invest, buy chuck e cheese stock because they have somehow figured out how to run a nearly criminal operation under the guise of a legitimate business. they are geniuses. their patrons are not.

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

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

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

the good news is we've got alex to stop calling people poop-head. the bad news is he's simply replaced the term with poop-things which is kinda even worse because previously the insult was quite specific. now he waves a hand in your direction and says 'you are poop-things dad. a lot of poop-things'. now it's not just my head but all of me and and not only am i just a turd on a pair of shoulders but all sorts of defacatory-related things as well. not a good place to be for a guy like me.

i fear we brought this upgrade on because of how we tried to defend 'poop-head' by saying that all 'poop-related things' belonged in the bathroom. it's actually quite keen of him to discern that there are more than just poop-heads in this big and great and mysterious world.

when my mom worked for the CDC in colorado, she worked with doctors who flew all over the world treating epidemic illnesses. in their journeys they met all sorts of folks practicing all sorts of medicine. one technique a doctor brought back was a cure for hiccups. the fix went like this. for someone experiencing persistent hiccups you would pinch them on the arm or leg. the pinch would be firm so the person knew they were being pinched but not so hard it would hurt them. while pinching them you'd ask a series of questions. like the pinch, these were to be hard enough to make them think but not too hard that they couldn't answer them. the other night while putting alex down, he started hiccuping. i asked him if he wanted me to make them go away. he did. so i explained what i was going to do, pinched his arm and began my questions.

TROY
alex, whose house did we eat dinner at last night?

ALEX
sebastians?

TROY
no, not sebastians.

ALEX
uhhmm.

TROY
you don't remember where we went last night? we went there to watch a game. and you played with their little girl.

ALEX
uhhmm. i don't know.

TROY
ok. different question. what friends came over to play this weekend?

ALEX
sebastian?

TROY
no. not sebastian. it was a brother and a sister.

ALEX
sebastian and sophia?

TROY
no. these friends have red hair. and their mom does too.

ALEX
uhm.

TROY
the girls name sounds like heaven.

ALEX
i don't know.

TROY
ok. new question. when we get up in the morning and get dressed, where are we going to go?

ALEX
sebastians?

TROY
no. not sebastians. school! we are going to go to school!

ALEX
(hiccup)

not only was this the first time this has never worked, ten minutes after leaving the room, i found i had the hiccups.

sunday we drove by a street protest. the group was across the way from the scientology church in our neighborhood. as we approached the mass alex started yelling for me to stop the car. startled, i asked him why. "because there is a marching band! stop! stop now!" i remembered that alex thinks any collection of humans on the street is a marching band and i told him i didn't think this particular group was a that kind of band. as we passed the rag-tag collection, alex asked, "well, what kind of band is they?" i sedately told him it was just a band of nut-jobs with an enviable amount of free time.

seriously, isn't picketing the scientologist about as necessary as protesting a presidential bid made by me.

lately marty has been sending anthony in to wake me in the morning. reason is he is better at it than anyone else in the house. in trying to get me to play with him he hits me about the face, perches himself on top of my head hoping i'll try to make him fall and/or buries my face with books, toys and clothes. yesterday he woke me by trying to force a plastic car into my mouth. very effective that. i groggily sat up, patted him on the head and moved to the bathroom.

i mindlessly turned the shower on and walked to my office giving the hot water a chance to start its day. anthony waddled behind me at each stop hoping i'd toss him in the air or read him the book he held in his hand. as i leaned over my desk typing my password i felt something on my foot and looked down to see an arc of pee coming from beneath his unbuttoned onesie and landing on the top of my foot. he looked up at me proud and smiling. from my up-high view i didn't notice that he was diaper-less. my mind tried to remember if before cramming the matchbox in my mouth if he had sat on top of my head that morning. i couldn't be sure. while still watching the stream i let go a throaty "AAAAAAHHHHHHGGGGG!" hearing my exclamation marty innocently called from downstairs, "is anthony peeing?"

on the good side, i couldn't have been in a better place in my day to get pissed on. i was already naked and the running shower should have reached a steamy state by now. when i finished washing my foot five times (and my head twice just in case), i pulled the curtain back to find alex standing in the bathroom. his pants were around his knees and he was fumbling with the front of his underwear.

hey dad! look at this?

what am i looking at alex?

i can pull my penis out of this hole in my underwear.

well yes you can. and it's only 8:12 in the morning.

do you want to try to pull my penis out of my underwear?

not today pal. i gotta get ready for work.

standing in the kitchen, i quickly ate a bran muffin, got dressed and headed down to take the kids to school. as i descended the stairs alex was standing in the foyer with his pants, again, at his knees and showing his new trick to the rest of the family.

look mom. look della. i can take my penis out of my underwear through this hole.

(the girls bend and crouch to see the action)

i see that alex. now can you put your coat on for me.

no. wait. one minute mom. do you want to do it?

no. i don't need to do it alex.

della? do you want to do it?

yes!

no. bella doesn't need to do it either. please put your coat on alex. you're going to be late.

i wish i had a penis. (bella said in her saddest voice)

while not as noteworthy, this day held like surprises for me throughout. but i absorbed them all with a broad grin thinking at least these humans weren't smilingly dousing me in fresh urine, nor were they offering to let me bend and contort their penis through a too-small and not-straight-enough passage in their jockey briefs. you can't keep a man with this outlook down. it just can't be done.

it was 12:30 at night. marty was reading in bed. her hand lazily reached to her right softly scratching my back as i drifted towards the ether. in the night silence came a wooden thump on the other side of the house. and then another. and another. they were steps. heavy, labored steps that neared our room. i opened my eyes to see the sweet tea in the mason jar on my bedside table dancing like the puddle in Jurassic Park moments before the t-rex arrived.

in our doorway appeared a sleepy isabella, pushing wild hair out of her face and rubbing her eyes. once her face was fully visible, she said ...

Mother! Go To Sleep!

she then turned and heavily-marched back to her bed. you could hear her collapse into bed two rooms away. back to silence.

the next morning alex reported having a dream where his toes got cut off with a pair of scissors. i said it was a weird night all around. i asked him who cut his toes off. he said in an exasperated voice ...

i told you already dad, my dream did.

alex hates changing clothes. at night, he battles to sleep in what he wore to school. come morning, he fights to wear to school what he slept in. it's quite easy to see what a sinister cycle this is and we've yet to find a loophole in his logic. he's got all his bases covered and you simply have to hope for a serious spill in the kitchen or some mud-sport in the backyard to soil his outfit to the point that even he doesn't want to wear it anymore.

one downside of alex's war is he's not very good at dressing or undressing himself because he's only got a quarter of the practice/experience a boy his age should have. one upside of his obsession is i could watch him try to take a long-sleeve, pull-over shirt off for hours. you just have to keep him clear of the stair-case.

alex stood quietly, watching me peel potatoes for dinner. the potatoes were wet and i was fumbling them in my hands. i started getting frustrated. i took a breath about to mutter something when alex spoke up:

aahhhh. you gotta be kidding me.

i looked at him and smiled. that is definitely something i mutter on a near-daily basis. he never took his eyes of my hands and continued to watch me struggle. after a few more minutes of slippery spuds i drew another breath and alex shot out:

son of a beeeeaaaannnn.

you see i usually catch myself before i finish that one and it would seem alex has surmised the word i've been omitting is 'bean' given the way i end up elongating the letter B. when the kids are a bit older i bet we could make a sporting game out of guessing the swear dad or mom would use given various scenarios.

alex had a playdate to the house yesterday. when the boy's mother came to pick him up she asked alex if he would like to come and play at their house. alex said that he wouldn't need to come to their house because he wasn't going to let the boy go home. the woman smiled at alex's cuteness and continued her departure. minutes later as she ushered her son to the car, alex stood on the front porch and screamed, "if he leaves, i'm going to take my penis out!"

i gotta say, i never had great luck with that threat either. i think a smarter approach would be to take it out and threaten to only put it away if your demands are met.

alex got a fisher price digital camera for christmas. on christmas day he took 231 pictures. since then it's been like living with a three foot tall paparazzi. it also makes me sensitive to how often i'm naked. and he could not be a worse height to be taking pictures of me naked.