bella has been between sporting endeavors (girls on the run and indoor soccer). to bridge the gap in the winter months i suggested she join me for swimming. she agreed and even sounded eager, that is until i told her to suit up because it was time to go. this was met with a surprised, "what? now?". after marty helped her get her stuff together we met in the foyer to head out. as i opened the door bella stopped me and asked:

BELLA
how long are we going to be there?

TROY
an hour.

BELLA
an hour! can i take a book?

TROY
no you can't take a book.

BELLA
why not?

TROY
because you're going to be swimming.

BELLA
for the whole hour?

the answer, of course, was yes for the whole hour. i told bella i would explain how it worked during the walk there. to this she said, "WE'RE WALKING!". the answer to this, of course, was again yes we were walking.

after we arrived to the pool, changed in our respective locker rooms, and met at a lane, bella was heard to say the following things during the experience:

• ok. so maybe i'm glad i didn't bring my book. this is fun. (her giddiness was largely due to the discovery that she, at ten, could swim faster than me. i wish i had a worthy excuse but the girl seems to have about four gears i'm missing).
• i thank you for not wearing a swim suit like the guy in the next lane. (he was in a speedo. after glancing over i told bella i was sure everyone at the pool was thankful i didn't wear a speedo).
• next week ... (i'm intensely glad she's excited about next week)
• they were from another country so they couldn't help me. (when i sent her into the locker room, since it was her first time at this gym, i told her to ask someone in there to point her to the general use lockers. the only girls in the locker room were part of a basketball team from another university and didn't know what to tell her. bella deems anyone not from our town to be from another country.).

marty brought the boys to the gym while we were still in the pool. there was a basketball tournament going on and we were going to watch some of the games after our swim. they watched us for a little bit from the windowed observation deck before heading to the gym. after the swim and the game when walking home, i asked alex what he thought of me and bella swimming and if he'd like to do it when he gets his skills up a bit more. he said, "no i don't really want to jump off the diving board." alex has connected swimming laps to going off the diving board because our summer pool makes swimmers show they can swim a lap before going off the diving board. he must think bella and i really, really, really want to go off the diving board given all the laps we swim.

alex and i were cuddled up in our chair and a half reading. i thought of something i needed to note and started feeling my pockets for my pen (which i always try to have on me). realizing i didn't have it, alex began:

ALEO
whatcha lookin' for?

TROY
my pen. i need to write something down.

ALEO
i got ya dad. you can use mine.

with this last statement alex pulled the baseball hat he was wearing off, tipped it over and pulled a pen out of there and handed it to me as naturally as a personal banker might hand you a pen from their shirt pocket. ain't nothin' for an eight year old to prove more prepared than many adults i run into.

for such a happy go-lucky guy, his style of math to word problems are a bit on the morose/morbid side.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. got milk?

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

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

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

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

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

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



click to enlarge



click to enlarge

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

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

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. problem solving

i chaperoned a field trip alex's class took to the zoo. shortly before lunch, the teacher instructed the kids to use the restroom. just after, she asked if i would oversee the boys room break ensuring no mayhem broke out.

the spacious and surprisingly clean bathroom offered five urinals and four stalls. the kids quickly raced to spots along the wall and started doing their business. alex and a few others held back choosing not to fight for a spot. as bladders went limp the first set of kids raced for the sinks. i repeatedly scanned the scene from urinals to sinks making sure no water wars, pee or tap, broke out. kids filed past me by the door laughing and goofing as you'd expect. the urinals were handling their last customers, alex being one of them. as i glanced that way i noticed alex looking to his left past an open urinal and watching the boy two spaces down urinating. i eyed this to see if what was happening was an acceptable passing glance or a problematic studied gaze. given the stare held for more than two seconds, we were most definitely facing the latter kind of ogle. while re-checking the boys at the sinks, i made a mental note to visit with alex about such matters of etiquette. as i glanced back to the wall of urinators, alex was now looking straight ahead and the red-headed boy alex had been observing at my last check was now turned to the right taking in what was going on in alex's bit of porcelain.

it seems i either need to have two talks or recognize this is a business as usual for this age group.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. totally awesome

three neighbor boys were over. they're all brothers, the oldest being alex's age. i was in my office and they were in bella and alex's room and making an astounding amount of noise, hysterical laughter mostly. i've been responsible for little humans long enough to know that such chaos, while good at the minute, can be short-lived for several reasons, many of which you'd never guess were even possible. having a few such debacles in my portfolio, i decided to look in on things.

in the middle of the room was a running fan. the protective grill on its face was missing (a casualty of anthony knocking it off a stool days earlier). in alex's raised hand was a peach-colored ball of goop, very similar to a product called 'slime' when i was a kid. this goop concoction makes orange marmalade seem like rock candy, and given its runny, sticky, gelatinous composition puts it in great contention to be the $800 answer to the question 'things troy would most hate to come into contact with'. that's all you need to know about the goop. well that and that at the moment i appeared in the doorway, alex's hand flung the nebulous mass directly into the spinning fan blades. upon contact, the goo jettisoned from the fan as if shot from a gun, flying straight towards the doorway i just darkened and hit me square in the junk.

the room went silent. all five boys gaped at me with frozen, open-mouthed expressions. after a moment of complete stillness, aside from the fan which was ramping back up to full speed, i grabbed my groin and doubled over in an exaggerated manner, dropping to my knees. the astonishment level in the boys faces heightened, if you can believe it. i looked up to alex and in a pained voice asked why he shot his father in his wieners. if you thought there were hysterics coming from the room before, my performance took these young men to an all new high. i'm glad to see that even in the age of the wii, a good sock in the crotch can still win a room over. it's hope-inducing.

alex recently told me where hiccups came from. he said, "your diaphragm falls asleep and then the snoring makes the hiccups come out."

the really sad thing is that is a better-sounding answer than i could have come up with in a pinch.

this weekend while lazing around the living room, alex asked anthony, who was wearing only underwear, if he wanted a wedgie. you'd think that might be the funny part of the story but it definitely got better after anthony said, "yeah, sure." marty and i took a break from our game of junior monopoly to watch alex position himself behind his brother, get a good hold on the elastic of his batman undies and near lift his brother off the ground. by my estimation it took an enormously long time for anthony to start rapidly saying, "ouch! ouch! ouch!" than i would have ever guessed it would.

and as if that wasn't enough, which i assure you it was, having anthony reach behind him and curiously feel the rope of fabric that was wedged between his paper-white butt cheeks with a wondrous look in his eyes as if her were petting a stingray at the zoo or touching a freshly born baby may have been the most unexpected bit of it all.

there is a detail i forgot to mention about aleo's bike crash episode last month. after i carried the bloody boy into the fire house and the paramedics looked over his mouth and head, one of them wanted to cut his pants off. when i asked him why he said that it looked like his legs got banged up given how torn up his pants were. i had the enviable task of explaining to the man that that was what his pants looked like before the accident.

there are two reasons for this predicament. first, alex has only ever worn hand-me-downs from his cousins and second alex ardently refuses to change clothes for days at a time. the result of this innocent combination is most days, aleo looks like a full-on vagabond (and i'm not even including his mop of hair which he's recently decided he doesn't want cut anymore). so as if his oral trauma wasn't grueling enough, i also got my first taste of feeling embarrassed by one of my children's appearance. and i know you're thinking i should have crossed this bridge long ago, but my children have historically been more embarrassing sounding than looking. like for instance, the time bella said to her preschool classmate's overweight nanny, after studiously looking her up and down, "boy, you sure are fat all over!" marty and the nanny just exchanged looks before smiling uncomfortably and walking their different ways.

aleo turns 8 tomorrow. in reflecting on his year i find myself marveling at his unassuming courage, relentless effort and genuine kindness. my favorite story from his seventh year happened earlier in the school year. alex's music teacher had just learned that one of her former students was in the hospital. she was understandably upset but was at work and doing her best to get through the day. when the first grade class filed in for their hour of music, they acted like a first grade class who was about to partake in an hour of music class, they were loud and rambunctious. she asked them to be quiet and that she needed them to listen and cooperate on this day. they quieted down and she stood at the front of the room collecting herself for a moment. then a student's hand went up. the teacher, with a sigh, said, "yes alex." alex said, "mrs k. you look like you need a middle of the day hug. do you need a middle of the day hug?" her body sagged at the words and after a pause she said she did need a middle of the day hug. alex excused himself through his classmates, walked across the room and gave his music teacher a middle of the day hug.

and here are a few images from his 7th year.

how long it took for aleo and i to ride our bikes to the cub scout bike rodeo: 9 minutes.

how long it took before a fast moving aleo collided with another fast riding bike rodeo goer: 40 seconds.

how long it took for me to run to the nearby firehouse with a crying and bloodied aleo in my arms : 3 minutes.

how long it took for the paramedics to conclude there was no bodily harm but significant oral damage : 8 minutes.

how long it took me to explain to marty over the phone what happened : 1 minute.

how long it took marty to convince our family dentist to leave the restaurant he was eating in to meet us at his office : 38 seconds.

how long it took for marty to arrive at the firehouse : 4 minutes.

how long it took for us to drive to the dentist office : 7 minutes.

how long it took for the dentist to assess the damage : 5 minutes.

how long it took for the dentist to remove the damaged tooth : 12 minutes.

how long before alex recovered from the ordeal : 3 minutes.

how long before marty and i recovered : unknown as the clock is still running on this one.

in the end he lost one tooth on the playground and another in the dentist chair. he also has a gum injury which i will spare you from hearing more about (honestly, though, this is more for my sake than yours). fortunately, both of the lost teeth were baby teeth and will soon be naturally replaced by their adult counterparts. i don't know if the same can be said for the nerves marty and i lost in the wake of the night.

on the drive home, a spent marty dedicated her daily thankful to dentists.

i dedicated my thankful to our particular dentist, dr. chris who by every count and measure is a complete rock star and extraordinary individual. if we had more like him in our professional and familial ranks i'm certain our society would be an all-around better place. i thank whatever fortune put us in his path.

it began with both boys choosing to get into the shower with their clothes on. it continued after they got soaked through and got out of the shower to walk around the house looking for me to ask if they could get in the shower with their clothes on.

glaring at the two boys dripping water on my hardwood floors, i chastised them both for their foolish choice. i sent alex back to the bathroom to take a proper shower and i stripped anthony's clothes from him and sent him to bed, crying (because he couldn't continue his shower).

then a partially informed marty who was downstairs when this took place brought a repentant and naked anthony before me to apologize and ask if he could return to the shower. she coached him through the steps of a negotiation prompting him at each turn. i smugly observed the teaching moment and said it was up to her but as far as i was concerned he should be sent to bed. marty vouched for the boy and escorted him to the bathroom. her first step onto the tile soaked her sock through as she experienced first-hand the boys' handi-work. it wasn't until then anthony wished he hadn't exercised the second-parent gambit.

following an episode like this i find myself whimsically contemplating how i'm going to spend our kid's college funds as it seems they may not have use or need for them.

i've mentioned how our home has only one bathroom.

i've mentioned how bella monopolizes the toilet for long periods, reading.

i've also mentioned how this has forced alex to learn to pee in the bathtub.

what i haven't mentioned is how alex has come to prefer peeing in the tub so much so that even if the toilet is open and the tub is (or is not), he will still pee in the tub. and if you direct him to the toilet, explaining that etiquette dictates that you only pee in the bathtub when the toilet is taken, in addition to being mildly perplexed by this not-well-documented hierarchy, he is always visibly nonplussed about standing before the more functional but less exciting commode.

this past weekend marty's family gathered at the lake house of one of the in-laws. anthony believed, until we arrived, that the lake of a lake house existed inside the house instead of next to it. he was only partially convinced otherwise upon arrival. this weekend replaced the annual camping trip marty's family used to take before her father passed and the family camper was sold. while there were still blow-up mattresses involved there were now also king-sized beds, private bathrooms, docks with tall water slides, jet-skis, and boats good for fishing, water-skiing and/or giant-raft pulling.

the three-day weekend began with a morning of tubing. on anthony's second round out (with bella and i) a bout of wake turbulence bounced him into the air and out of the raft. seeing him fly out of sight i rolled backwards into the water (navy seal style!) and after twisting and rolling in the waves i came up to spot him bobbing in the water about twenty feet away. i quickly swam to him and and when i arrived he crossed his arms and dejectedly told me, "i no like tubing anymore!" to which i said i understood and we'd take a break, which we did, which was fortunately easy given all of the other equally fun distractions.

the weekend ended with alex becoming an accomplished jet-skier. when he began on day one he didn't want to go more than 10mph, even as a passenger. by the end of the weekend he was charging over waves at more than 40mph. for his last ride, alex insisted on taking his uncle mike out to show him how good he was doing. afterwards, mike commented to me how coordinated alex was at handling the ski (e.g. body lean on banking turns and rooster tails). he added i should hope this zeal never translated to a motorcycle. as for bella, she broke the 30mph mark within five minutes and the 40mph mark about seven seconds after that.

below are a few pictures from the weekend. the anfer picture shows him lazing in the water after going off the dock's water slide. the next two are of alex and bella piloting the jet-skis (and represents what i saw for a very large part of the weekend). the picture of bella ain't so hot but properly framing a shot ain't so easy when, between the chop and erratic accelerations, you're fighting to not get thrown from the seat. and with aleo, it's curious as a passenger to look down and see arms as wispy as his confidently governing something he just began learning days earlier.

thanks aunt chrissy and uncle mike for the invitation, all the effort and the bounty of experiences. my family's sunday dinner table conversation after arriving home was rich and alive with excited retellings and rehashings of the weekend. big and memorable fun.

fin

on last year's vacation, you may recall, we issued vacation moniker's to the kids based on a prominent behavior we observed given all the time we spent in and around each other. this year we did the same. this is the result:

• isabella 'bella daddy say whhaatttt??' walter dearmitt because of the mannerism she picked up from her hannah montana/miley cyrus marathon on one of the five televisions at our house rental. this is apparently something miley/hannah says at least once in every show using a funny, sing-songy affect which bella seemed to have perfectly captured.
  
  
• alexander 'nuts and weiners' walter dearmitt because of how silly he got running around with a friend close to his age that stayed with us in the house. these games rapidly devolved into the boys (via alex's tutelage) constantly referring to, singing songs about, or threatening to karate chop everyone's nuts and weiners in the house. i couldn't be prouder that my boy was the one to teach their boy this lovely and becoming mannerism.
  
  
• anthony 'pee-face' walter dearmitt because this is how he tries to keep up with his nuts and weiners older brother by calling everyone a pee-face. in mulling this over i've come to consider this an impressively effective and entirely under-used phraseology and one i will be introducing to my corner of society in the near future. which i guess ultimately means that in this cycle alex influences anthony and anthony influences me and this would be just about where i've always fallen on the trend-setting train my entire life.
  
  

and i reckon if we can brand the kids with personality-illuminating nicknames, there is no reason the courtesy shouldn't be extended to the parental units that allow the obnoxious behavior noted above to happen.

• marty 'twin bed' jean walter because even though our room had a spacious and inviting king sized bed with an expansive ocean view, marty slept on a twin mattress on the floor (with an obstructed view of the window) because she couldn't deal with sleeping with more than one person in the bed (anthony and i) regardless of its size. by the end of the week, marty was blissfully alone on her twin mattress on the floor while i slept with not one, not two, but all three of our children in what proved to be a veritable tangle of humanity and limbs.
  
  
• and i think i would have been branded troy "georges" lane dearmitt in honor of the book i was obsessively reading every free moment i could steal. the severity of my condition was fully exposed when i was caught reading in the corner of the toilet nook in our master suite's bathroom. i could see how an outsider might call it a bit off but this stool sitting beneath a skylight even if smack between the comode and the two-head, walk-in shower was made for a private moment and a good book, which georges by dumas so completely was!
  
  

last week i talked about our time dog-sitting. there was an oscar detail i forgot to share.

in our current games of musical beds in the night, most days puts me and alex waking up together on a futon in the ping-pong room (anthony having made my usual and expected spot his place of choice). one morning when i woke up alex was staring at me with bright eyes. this was my first conversation of the day:

ALEX
good morning dad.

TROY
good morning alex.

ALEX
dad.

TROY
yes.

ALEX
one time oscar was licking his nuts and then i saw a red thing come out of his privates and it was shiny and it was soooo gross ... and he was licking it.

people often comment on how calm and passive i come off at work. when your day begins with colorful, and wide-eyed descriptions of aroused, self-stimulated male organs, there ain't a lot life can throw at you that will sound alarming or disturbing.

we've been dog sitting for the last five weeks. he is a small, light-shedding, black and white terrier of some sort named oscar. he was obtained from a shelter by the family of a friend of marty's. he is very mellow and easy going which can be mostly seen in how he shoulders the unpredictable life of sharing living quarters with anthony.

the first week oscar was with us alex kept a small supply of dog food in an R2-D2 toy clipped to his belt-loop. every time alex would pass oscar he'd stop the dog, hunch himself over, pat the dog on the head, and ask if he wanted a treat. the first few times oscar would sit there jittery with excitement, his tail swishing erratically behind him. alex would then fight to open the small toy given it's awkward position at his waist. once open, alex would pluck a few pieces of dog food out and lovingly say, "here you go oscar-boy" holding his palm out to oscar who would nudge and push the small bits around with his nose before tentatively pulling them into his mouth with a lapping tongue. after oscar discovered these seemingly sacred and hard to get to treats were no different than the dry food he was already neglecting downstairs, oscar's body language emanated an "are you kidding me" affect and the impromptu R2-D2 snack breaks waned.

a few weeks in, the dog's owner, marty's friend, called to check on things. alex was the one to answer the phone. before marty became aware the call was for her, alex had told the lady that oscar threw up on a rug and pooped in the basement and that these things made his mom yell. by the time marty intervened, alex had the poor woman on the brink of packing up her family and returning home early in attempt to salvage this maimed relationship. marty, using all of her skills and grace, demoted alex's apocalyptic descriptions as mere transition pains and said everything was good and fine.

because i nickname everyone and everything, i took to calling the dog osky. one morning when i passed through the kitchen for breakfast and bid osky a good day, anthony told me not to do that and that osky was a bad word. before i could defend myself, bella jumped in, telling anthony that osky wasn't a bad word. after a pause and a reflective grunt from anthony bella added, "that is unless you change the 'aaww' to an 'aahh', and remove the 'skee'. then you had a bad word. and if you added the word 'hole' on the end of that word, then you would have an especially bad word." there is something to be said for getting what you know will be your most terrifying and surprising moment of the day out of the way before you have even have pants on.

two days before oscar was to leave, i asked bella what she thought the best thing about having oscar was. she thought for a moment, just a moment, and said the best thing about having a dog was it brought our family closer together. i asked her to explain why. she went on to say that since oscar needed lots of walks it caused people in the family to go out together; she and mom, she and i, anthony and i, she and alex. and also, there were several times where we'd gather around to see how someone was playing with oscar because it was cute or funny. i will give it to the girl, she can make a solid on-the-fly argument that is more cogent than i've seen grown men make in the heat of debate. in thinking about her observation, i would say that in the last five weeks just about the only one on one time i shared with anthony was while he and i were out walking oscar. although i guess i should also count the numerous times when i was explaining to anthony, one-on-one, that a dog's anus is not its GO button even if it looks like one and pushing it does, without fail, make the dog go.

in the end, we've learned the kids are closer to being ready for a dog than they were a year ago. we've also learned the same could be said of their father even if my progress hasn't been as significant. and we've learned that when all is going well, marty could possibly be caught petting and loving on the dog. that said, we've also learned that when marty's not feeling the life with a dog, the dog and whoever is responsible for bringing the cur into marty's home better sleep lightly until marty's funk passes.

i came home from work yesterday and asked if the kids wanted to go hit tennis balls. bella had a friend over so declined. anthony only likes hitting things that are not tennis balls with the racket so he was out. alex was at a friend's house but due to come home. i called over and asked if i picked him up if he'd like to hit tennis balls. he said yes so i picked him up and we headed to the courts. on the way there he said he forgot something at the house and we had to go back. almost to the courts, i said we'd stop on the way home.

then we played tennis, which means i fed him balls while i stood at the net and he hit them back. i initially got the kids interested in hitting balls by saying the object of the game was for them to try to hit me. when i reminded alex of this yesterday he said we couldn't play that game. when i asked why he said because if he hit me, he would break my glasses and i would be mad. i like this kid quite a bit. so i fed him balls and he returned them not hitting me once.

then i said we had to wrap up and head home because dinner would be ready soon. he reminded me about stopping at his friend's house. i said i didn't think we'd have time and would have to get them later. he stopped and scolded me, firmly reminding me that i said we would go and i can never break a promise. never! i paused, looked at him and said, ok, but he'd have to be quick because we were late for dinner. and, i told him i wasn't even fully stopping the car. on the way to the house, i asked him what he forgot and he said his ds lites. since alex doesn't own a ds, lite or otherwise, i figured i misheard him but didn't bother asking him to clarify. when we got to the house, alex jumped out, ran in and came running back with a sheaf of papers in hand. when he returned to his seat, i asked what he had. he said his ds lites. upon inspecting the pages, he and his friend had drawn games on the pages as if they had ds lites. all i got to say is nintendo ain't got nothing on hangin' out at a bud's house after school, with a well-worn set of crayons spread between you at the kitchen table while you try to best each other's hand drawn games in the pre-dinnertime hours.

although the scene laid out in the below image looks eerily similar to the climax of the gimp escapade from pulp fiction, and i'm not entirely sure how i should feel about that.