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.

i know not one but two of the fellas in this picture which makes me one acquaintance shy of knowing all three people in one of the best-ever photos chronicling american society.

after having been a parent for weeks shy of nine years, my first piece of paternal advice, not that you're asking, would be to respect sleep. get sleep. give sleep. mandate sleep. enforce sleep. people are just not properly performing or interacting or experiencing life or one another when they don't have enough sleep.

please note that i'm writing this at 2:30am. i just arrived home from work which might be why sleep is so on my mind. (note: i did take a break in the evening to eat dinner with the family, play a round of ogre and help put the kids to bed.)

now i'm going to take my own sage and wise advice and go get some sleep.

if you came by early yesterday you may have not seen the day's post. i made a mistake entering the date and it didn't show up until later in the morning. so if you missed it, you may want to read yesterday's valentines post before reading this one.

regarding yesterday's post, more than one person wondered what marty's card looked like. and more than one person wondered if there was a reason i didn't share hers and was it because it was better than mine or that it was way NOT better than mine or that i'm self-centered or pouty or selfish or i want all the attention to myself and the answer is, yes.

and for those who thought that the thoughtfulness and sentiment contained in my card couldn't be beaten, prepare to stand corrected.




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sunday morning i was brought from sleep at 7:15 with a kiss on my forehead and the words "happy valentines day dad." it was bella. she then whispered, as to not wake up alex who was sleeping next to me, that my breakfast was sitting on the windowsill next to me for when i woke up "for real". she then quietly exited the room. some minutes later i cracked my eyes and lifted my head to peer at the window she referenced. on it rested a tupperware platter with two pieces of freshly made french toast, a puddle of syrup, and a glass of sweet tea with hand-crushed ice.

marty who was sleeping with anthony in our bed down the hall received a similar treatment. on each of our trays was a highly detailed, bella-drawn card. on this valentines day my eight year old daughter woke up before 7am, went downstairs by herself and silently made her mother and father french toast, from scratch, and adorned the platters with hand-drawn cards she secretly made earlier in the week.

there have been multiple occasions bella has left me speechless, but never more so than with this completely unexpected and unforeseen gesture of love and kindness. at multiple points throughout the day, i found myself staring at her, in wonder and curiosity and gratitude. at times like this marty calls her a paradox. i don't know that i ever could justly verbalize my thoughts on bella and the way she approaches life. i just know i'm thankful to have the front row seat that i do to watch her wend her way through it.






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if you're like me (earlier in the week) and haven't yet heard of dimitri martin, you're about to enjoy, for the first time, the smart, comedic stylings of a very talented young man. if you're not like me and consider dimitri last year's news, settle down because there isn't a more re-consumable you tube clip than this large pad spot ... except maybe louis ck's bit on conan.

in reviewing this week's entries it felt like i needed to give anthony some love (or explain why we haven't yet bartered him to a circus passing through town).

number 67 on the REASONS TO KEEP ANTHONY list is the cute way he has of announcing his hunger which is to say, "my stummy go gummel, gummel" while looking up at you with his big round eyes and gapped and chipped teeth.

you'll notice a new feature here on the monorail, an archive viewer (it will always be just below the most recent post on main monorail page). this tool, which allows you to quickly peruse entries made on (or around) the same day from previous years, is the product of my readership's schizophrenia. meaning, it is not at all uncommon for me to post something and then get feedback that covers the full spectrum of possible opinion. if i post a picture one person will comment on how cute it is. the next person will call me a cop-out for posting an out-of-focus picture instead of writing something original. if i write a long post people will complain that they've got better things to do and i'm an average writer and i should stick to shorter thoughts or pictures. and others yet will say i should delete everything from the site other than the troyscripts. so, you can see why i'm feeling a little off balance. and from this need to please i present the archiver. with this, if you don't like what was most recently posted, you can pop though and pick something from the last seven years in search of something that may more closely suit your particular needs.

and as for why i stop at seven years. it is my observation i was a complete bore before i had children. this is obviously not to say i'm still not a bore, it's just to say that now that i have funny, little humans underfoot, i have more, less boorish, things to talk about.

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

what follows is an unusual type of content for this site but someone sent it to me and it stands as one of the most surreal and mesmerizing things i've seen in some time. if i had to liken it to something i would call it a mashup of the castle, an american movie, multiple david lynch films sprinkled with various other movie and music influences too numerous to name.

caution: there are some naughty words and stamping visuals so if such things vex you, may i suggest some old parker lewis clips instead.



and there's definitely more humor at their website including a more ambitiously produced ninja video.

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.

marty calls slow, sensual marital encounters 'sexy sex'. she calls for this by saying, "i'm not looking for a mad dash here, i want some sexy sex." problem is, in a house with three children eight and under, that is like saying i want everyone to be fed today but i don't want any dirty dishes in the process. it simply doesn't work that way.

but still, the call for sexy sex gets made on oc...