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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

your hair looks like a letter M.

what alex said to marty just after she get out of bed one morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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a few weeks ago marty was out with a group of mom's from the kids elementary school. at several points through the evening women would break away from the conversation to call home and check in on the dads and the state of bedtime.

when one woman called, one of her kids, a first grader, answered. the mom asked how things were going the kid answered by saying, "johnny's being a dickhead." the woman's head dipped, she massaged her temples, paused and said, "put your dad on please."

obviously marty would never get a report like that from her house. not because her kids are above such blue language but because marty still doesn't have a cellphone.

bella was messing with anthony and he got upset. marty entered the scene and told anthony that if he didn't like what bella was doing he could tell her so. with this counsel, anthony turned to bella and said "bewah, you are breaking my spirit!"

if marty can do that with a three year old just imagine what she could achieve with someone who actually cared if they were sitting in their own feces.

in our home we have a bedtime hour. in this hour, every motion, action and thought is to be directed at the transition from being a foul, bristling, engaged, sporting, singing, learning, living, sassing young person to a sound asleep human. this is an all hands on deck affair and anything short of full participation has the home listing and fighting the currents.

last night, just seven minutes into the bedtime hour, i found myself locked up with bella on what began as a simple matter of semantics. i learned long ago that heated debate is not a conducive facet of the bedtime hour, but here on this night, i was fully engaged. this distraction left alex and anthony free to bury each other in the multitude of blankets and comforters piled on a bed. seeing this, i ordered them to the bathroom to go potty and brush their teeth. after studying my taut tone for the briefest of moments, they complied. bella and i proceeded down our path. just as i (and the beloved art of logic) was making headway, alex dashed into the room saying, "look at what anthony did." i studied him and saw nothing. i asked him what anthony did. alex turned to show a long smear of fluorescent tooth paste down the back of his shirt. ANTHONY! STOP PUTTING TOOTH PASTE ON YOUR BROTHER! i ignored his return plea of, "but, i like putting toothpaste on yallix." i returned my attention to bella. as we continued our slow trek to understanding marty called up the stairs, "i have to run some cookies across midland. i'll be back in a few." at this hour, with this start, i'm unable to count the number of bad things that could go down in "a few" minutes. but here we were.

digging out begins with a single shovelful of dirt. i looked at bella and said, "i hear your point but i hope you hear mine. i needed you to do something and i took the time to explain why i needed you to do it. in the future i need you work with me on that." with as much compliance and respect you could expect from a willful eight year old girl, bella turned to begin her bedtime ritual. i turned to alex, asked him to lift his arms up and pulled the soiled shirt over his head and told him to follow me. i walked to the bathroom and pulled the toothpaste out of anthony's hand, picked his protesting frame up under my arm, walked him to his room, threw him in his bed, and told him if he got out i was going to frazzle his biscuits and make him sleep on the garage roof. by some karmic credit i accrued in a previous life, everyone was asleep within the hour.

if there is a human (non-sleeping) restful state such as the peace a person meditating finds, the experience of wrangling unwilling, untamed children without the use of physical trauma is the opposite of that restful state. and were you to remove all life-threatening scenarios from the picture, this act of directing children stands as one of the most trying human endeavors an adult can navigate. that said, we've had our share of moments where a call to 911 was surely in the cards, placing these matters occasionally into the life-threatening category (although, that is not the exact spirit i am talking about here).

and, to be fair, while marty isn't one of the most diligent practitioners of the bedtime hour given she's essentially been in a form of the bedtime hour all day at this point, she also does not typically leave the home and the night i described above was an unusual exception. but she may have also seen the dark cloud forming in my study and chose to save herself from the next fateful (and unpredictable) eleven minutes that unfolded in the upstairs of our home during the bedtime hour.

morgan is a bad kid. if you listen to anthony at least. actually if you listen to anthony, morgan has to be one of the worst kids ever. every bad choice made in our house over the last eight months was made by morgan. for example, i recently found one of marty's valentine's decorations on the floor. it was a red cupid that was adhered to an upstairs window. i found it on the hallway floor and miss...

alex prefers to pee in the bathtub. and i don't mean just when he's getting a bath. i mean all the time.

this may almost certainly be attributed to the long, luxurious stints his sister spends on the toilet reading chapter books. truth is you have a three in five chance of finding her perched on the commode when you enter our home's only bathroom. and it seems it happens with enough frequency alex has decided to not fight the fight and just use the tub as a matter of course. so, when he enters the bath he stops short of the toilet (wether it is occupied or not), turns towards the tub, throws the curtain to the side, pulls his pants down, hangs his business over the tub's edge and lets loose.

and hear this (as alex would say), when he's done and before he turns to wash his hands, he reaches up and briefly turns on the shower sending a quick burst of water into the tub to send any residual signs of his visit down the drain. it's his flush.

i've yet to use his move. when i find bella camped out i shoo her away telling her she has had more than her share of time on our family's only pot. that said, i will admit, watching the way alex handles his affairs with such panache and flair has made me consider joining his camp on more than one occasion.

marty told me about a house rule some friends of ours have. the rule loosely states that the mother is done being a parent come 9pm. the rule less loosely states that if you need anything reviewed, fixed, cleaned, spoken to, mended, treated, approved, addressed, or checked get it done before the nine o'clock hour.

this law came about after one of their kids asked the mother for help doing her due-tomorrow homework at 9:30 one night. the mom glanced at the page handed to her and then at the kid. the kid asked what the problem was. the mom replied that everything written on the page was in french. the kid asked if that was a problem. seconds after the last question was uttered the child was sent to bed (with her unfinished homework assignment in hand). and seconds after the child was sent to bed the off at nine law came into being.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TROY
what are you doing bell?

BELLA
putting on my pants.

TROY
but your pajamas are still on.

BELLA
i know.

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

BELLA
no.

TROY
uhhm. ok.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BELLA
school.

TROY
from who?

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

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

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

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

after several weeks of chilly fall temperatures, the weather relented one weekend and dealt the city a beautiful saturday afternoon. we quickly plotted an outside event and invited friends to join us. we ended up going to art hill to fly kites. we for sure weren't the only people to have this idea because the hill was littered with all sorts of folks basking under the warm sun reading and visitin...

tactic #32 from the moms and kitchens section

STEP 1 unravel a complete ball of twine.

STEP 2 pour full glass of milk on unraveled twine.

STEP 3 walk away.

STEP 4 wait.

on sunday marty and i took bella and alex to the symphony thanks to some tickets gifted to us by friends. the show was part of a special series geared towards kids. the performance is an hour long and includes several well-recognized excerpts from popular classics. before playing the pieces the conductor would turn to the audience and point out and explain a technique or two that could be heard in the next song sometimes going as far as having the musician(s) demonstrate what he was talking about so it could be better identified in the piece.

at one point i turned to to look at the profiles of bella and alex. seeing their faces lit by the stage and their eyes wide with interest and intrigue at this new life experience warmed my parental fire. my arm was already around alex but i reached over further and placed my hand on bella's arm. she looked at me and i smiled at her. she reached up and took my hand in hers and held it in her lap, both of our gazes returning to the show. after a few moments she removed her hand from mine, pushed my fingers closed and nudged my hand away. i brought it back to where it was previously resting in alex's seat. after a moment i sensed something in my hand. i opened my fist to find bella had pressed her used gum into my palm before closing my fingers around it and sending me on my way. when i looked at her she was still watching the show but had a coy and knowing smile across her face.

hours later i'm still conflicted about how i feel that this tacky ball of chewed juicy fruit will be the symbol i remember from my first attempt to expose my children to the arts. that said, i am thankful (and fortunate) she didn't place a scorpion or human eyeball in my palm.

bella recently confided in marty that she was glad that i, her father, had never taken the medicine that would have given me breasts.

when marty told me this i wanted to ask her what she felt would compel our eight year old daughter to make such a declaration. this is what i wanted to ask but instead found myself so dumbfounded i could do nothing but look at marty with my mouth slightly agape. and this would be the sixth time in my life i'd been struck dumb.

while walking by bella's room, i heard bella say in a flat, conversational tone to a visiting neighbor girl, "my mom said when i get married i can do the french kiss."

this comment stopped me dead in my tracks. if i were one to say hail marys i imagine i would have uttered one right there, complete with waving the sign of the cross but since i'm not a formally religious fellow i instead closed my eyes reverently, considered how unprepared i am for my future and continued on down the stairs.

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

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

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

i've seen isacc cry.

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

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

i've seen george cry, a lot.

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

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

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

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

rough housing and tickle fights end in one of two ways in our house; when someone gets hurt or someone pukes (from laughing too hard).

this is no lie and i'm not embellishing for effect. last thursday marty went to a girl scout meeting leaving me to put the kids to bed. after baths and before i started reading to the boys a huge tickle fight broke out on my bed. it was me against bella and alex and anthony. about five minutes into the affair, i was tickling bella and she started coughing. i stopped. she turned her head and vomited a dark swill onto the comforter and floor. you'd think she would spin on me in anger or disgust at this turn but instead her face brightened and she said, "hey, i just threw up! does that mean i don't have to go to school tomorrow?" i had the parental duty of telling her that throwing up only gets you out of school if you can wretch without anyone touching, tickling, or gagging you. i was dismayed, but not surprised, to see the wheels in her head processing this new piece of knowledge. i'm sure if it's possible to will yourself to vomit, bella is about to become one of its most ardent practitioners.

at a dinner party, one of the mothers in attendance approached me and said the children were downstairs having a debate about whose father had the loudest and smelliest flatulence. she told me that bella was delivering a very persuasive argument which the woman doubted anyone would be able to best. i smiled awkwardly and said 'kids' with a shrug of my shoulders.

on the way home i contemplated explaining to bella how some things are personal and my gas is not something to be shared publicly. i never got a chance to have the talk because i got distracted thinking about today's post where i would talk about her talking about me and me not talking to her about how it wasn't appropriate for her to talk about me publicly.