Bella and Abdi (her multi-year boyfriend) were in Chicago for a long weekend. After parking their car on a congested neighborhood street, they stood back, assessing if their park job was okay given the signs and curb paint. They stopped two guys passing by and told them they were visiting town and asked if they, the guys, thought their parking was alright. The two fellows gave it a thumbs up. Afte ...

Last Christmas, I got a piece of sand art as a gift. It is a twelve-inch disc that rests in a plastic base. Half of it is filled with grains of sand of varying colors, sizes, and weights. The other half is filled with a liquid, which I assume is water. When you flip it over, the sand on the top half will slowly and unpredictably fall towards the base. This is the art part, watching the sand slowly...

we have a new ritual in our home. and to be clear, whenever i say "we have a new ritual" it means i am adding a new thing to my already lengthy list of routines. when the term "we" is involved it just means i am subjecting the rest of my family to the routine as well. i call this new one "house tip of the week".

this stems from a belief i have that if there is some life matter (versus s...

i'm a regimented person. so much so that people mock and ridicule me for the amount of structure in my life. i have talked to many people who say that sort of daily rigor is not for them--even if we have just discussed some challenge in their life where a routine is the exact answer to a problem they might be battling. this is most certainly my family's position on this matter. dad's schedules are...

how about that stranger things? if you're one of the six people who haven't seen it yet, worry not, no spoilers here so don't sweat reading on.

the show is crazy well-done. the story. the mood. and particularly for season two, the music. it is doubly poignant for me as i was the same age as the characters in the time it was set. i may have also, like the characters, been on the edges of ...

bella came into the kitchen twirling in her dress before leaving for her homecoming dance. we had some people over at the house, namely alex's middle-school soccer team and a few of their parents. some of the adults were complimenting bella's dress and hair. a few of the boys may have future chiropractic issues for all the hidden craning of their necks to get a better look at alex's older sister. ...

when bella was still in pre-school i began a ritual called dad days. dad days happen once a year, and are not to be confused with dad hours which happen five times a week. dad days began as a way to celebrate a child's achievements in school. in the beginning i would pick them up from their last day, which was usually a half-day, and take them out on some adventure catered just to them. further, t...

for the last few years marty has organized a large regional girl scout retreat. she first took it on during bella's short-lived stint in a troop. but even after bella stopped going, marty had formed a fondness for the mission so stayed involved. if i'm remembering correctly, alex attended more of these weekend adventures than bella has—it surely never hurt that all the girls found him wildly...

anthony is a rabid monopoly player. how much does anthony like monopoly you ask? well, every day my kids get a dad hour with me (technically, it's more like 45 minutes on the weekdays because there just isn't enough hours in the evening given the number of family members i have). in your dad hour you get to say what you and your dad (me) will do to spend the time.

here are what people us...

my baby girl turns 14 years old today. last night i told her she had to spend a dad hour with me (a nightly ritual i do with my kids) on this night becuase it would be the last night i'd spend with my 13 year old daughter. then when we were done (watching an episode of lost) we stood in my office hugging. after the hug should have ended and i didn't let go bella slowly said, "uh dad, i kinda gotta go to bed". after five more seconds i lessened my grip, gave her a long kiss on the top of the head and she left for bed and fourteen.

first off, sorry for dropping out like that. i do believe it is the first time i have dissapeared for that long, sans explanation in the fourteen year existence of this site, but, well, you know, life.

the lapse began after i had one of my most tumultuous weeks i can remember. there were dramatically high highs which the universe followed up with unexpectedly low lows. by week's end i was a bit of a spent mess. everything is back to great though. it just took a minute to let my mind cut it all down into consumable, bite-sized chunks. minutes up. chunks swallowed. moving forward. trending upward.

if you're wanting examples, i won't bore you with the lows, as who wants to document or read about those, but will share a sample high. on may 25 i drove bella across town to attend a roller-skating party. whenever bella wants to get somewhere on time she taps her time-obsessed father who attempts to respect other peoples' time as much as his own. when we pulled into the lot i commented on how empty it appeared. after checking the invite in her lap bella smiled at me uncomfortably and confessed that she may have gotten the time wrong and we were an hour early. now this may seem minor to some but sixty mid-day, beautiful-weathered weekend minutes to a guy who likes distance bike riding and reading on the porch is like four hours any other time of the week. no stranger to my ticks, my daughter knew this was no minor mis-read. i breathed deeply and circled us out of the barren lot at a clip a police car would have noticed. wanting to avoid the busy avenue that brought us here i turned us deeper into the neighborhoods and we unhurriedly glided our way through the tree-lined streets pointing out houses and yards we found interesting.

after passing a sprawling church complex i made a u-turn and pulled into its lot. i drove to the dead-center of the large, carless, blacktop and turned off the car.

BELLA
what are you doing?

TROY
you said you wanted to learn how to drive.

BELLA
what? like now?

TROY
yeah, why not do something worthwhile with this unexpected free-time.

BELLA
oh my god! oh my god! yes. ok.

i then taught my thirteen year old (just turned) how to drive a stick-shift ... in seven minutes. the brief experience, twenty minutes end to end, culminated with bella driving figure eights in a church parking lot. my 91 bmw softly and slowly sailing across the smooth pavement, windows down, sunroof open and the biggest smile possible stretched across my fearless daughter's sunlit face. after we traded seats and headed back to the skating rink i told her that she, at thirteen, could do what a great number of adults could not, and she should feel like a bad-ass because of it. her beaming face and quaking frame revealed that she did.

so these are the sorts of things (e.g. the highs at least) i'm experiencing and as long as i'm the one charged with both having and documenting the happenings, the math will quickly show there are just not enough hours in the day. but i don't want to become that guy who just appears every now and again, and only when it is convenient for him and never for you (e.g. like that fair-weather college pal who is only hangs out between love interests) so i've given some thought to how i can continue to nurture this website (and our relationship) and still lead my new hurly-burly life. here's what i've come up with. if you look in on monday and there is no posting, there will be no content all week. but if you look in on monday and there is a post, then there will be a post every day of the week. i think in a relationship like this there needs to be some sort of understood expectation.

of course the thought of just stopping rolls off my mind's ticker-tape machine every now again but for personal reasons i wish to continue recording my family's moments and i have learned this vehicle is an imperative part of that commitment. for those of you that enjoy reading along, you incent me to pull my act together. without you, it's a very hard affair so i appreciate your on-going participation more than you understand.

my two core objectives with this site are:
1. to continue chronicling the funny, sad, curious, and note-worthy moments that occur in my home full of children.
2. to see that what i document is thoughtful, edited, and not being done for the wrong reasons (which has surely happened from time to time in the past).

most important to me is that i don't create an expectation that forces me to produce content against a schedule i can't maintain, well at least maintain and try to keep the content on point and thoughtful. because i find when we let such standards go, pride in the product being produced is not far behind.

friday night marty took alex and bella to an amen concert. amen is the acapella group our friend e-love operates. for not entirely clear reasons, anthony did not want to go this year so i agreed to hang back with him. just after the concert-crew left, i told anfer to saddle up and we were going on an adventure. wanting to assess if this second option held appeal to him he asked what we were doing. i told him it was a surprise. anthony is not a great fan of surprises and told me as much. i held my ground.

my palm V informed me that the bubble soccer courts were open tonight. i learned about bubble soccer some months back and after laughing till injury while watching their explanatory videos i entered the tournament dates into my palm. as i said that was many months ago and i recalled seeing it in my calendar and here i was with a young boy (who i thought would find bubble-soccer high-sterical) and some time on our hands. i planned to follow that up with a dam burger (the most amazing burger-fry combo in all of stl) which happened to be magically near the bubble soccer courts. and then we would swing by ted drewes which, once addicted, can always be rationalized as being close-by.

bubble soccer did not dissapoint and i found myself laughing till injury, again, while i watched a set of high school kids, male and female, sending each other awkwardly ricocheting off the walls, floors and other players. curiously, anthony found the sport "harsh", a description he repeated after every collision. his side of the dialogue included, most exclusively, the following lines repeated.

that was harsh dad.
why is this game so harsh?
why do you want me to see this kind of harshness dad?
do you want me to grow up to be this harsh?
that boy is the most harsh.
do these boys know they are harsh?

to picture the full dialogue you need to imagine the person he's talking to as resembling bobby deniro's character in cape fear cackling in the movie theater. and i'm not even a slap-stick comedy kinda guy but i found this inflated-gladiator warfare wickedly funny.

anthony's dislike turned into a full-on snit so i said we'd go. as we walked out his lecture about my choice continued. by the time i was pulling out of the rec center's lot i had cancelled our next two stops and was headed home (even though this injured me more that it did him but a good percentage of parenting needs to go that way).

as i closed in on our house i realized it was 8pm and i hadn't eaten since lunch. so i pulled up in front of our cheap chinese spot, told anthony i'd be right back (he was reading in the back seat). i ran in ordered my usual and then stepped back outside to wait for it to be ready. as i stood on the sidewalk i watched the people passing by got lost in my thoughts of work and the weekend. i was pulled out of my stupor by a loud-talking man. he appeared to be a college-student and was leaning into a police car. i heard him say to the officer, "maam. someone left that little boy alone in the car. they pulled up and ran into one of the stores here."

honestly, the first thougth through my head was "now what douchebag went and did that?" then the guy pointed at my car. my eyes went from my car, to his outstretched arm, to the police officer swiveling in her seat to get a better look, to my car, to the man's pointing finger to the officer to the pointing finger before my mind shook me from my daze enough to hear the words, "they're talking about you idiot".

i raised my own hand and said "excuse me sir. that is my car and i'm right here." he ignored me. i thought he didn't hear me so i repeated myself. this time i knew he heard me but still ignored me so he was fully caught up in some bizarre passive-aggressive move (like being left in the car alone too often as a child himself) so i just walked up to the policemen's window, leaned in and explained that the car and child were mine and i was standing there waiting for a food order. she nodded, smiled and drove on. i stood up and looked at the whistle-blower who was walking off self-importantly. my mind flashed an image of him wearing a huge clear bubble, then a bubble-wrapped me careening into him at full-speed sending him into a rolling ricochet off the plate-glass window of the storefront he passed. this mental movie may not have made me cackle, but it did make me smile.

before marty went back to work, she took care of getting the kids to school. the one battle i heard more than any other took place over shoes, namely, where are they? i could describe to you the variety of places missing shoes had been found but (a) the internet does not have enough space for the inventory and (b) you wouldn't believe me anyway (e.g. one time the left and right shoe weren't even i ...

if you don't recall the start of my minecraft career, it might be prudent to refresh yourself before continuing.

i'm continuing to log minecraft hours with the boys. playing with the boys reminds me why adults often talk about how quick kids are to pick up new technology things and how young people view us as slow and addled. after ...

i recently wrote about the picture i thought was the most joyful ever. in that discussion i shared that my image of choice was part of a daily ritual i have but i didn't discuss it further. i have a ten minute walking commute to and from work. while it is great to have your home be that close and convenient to travel to, ...

the night before i went on my mancation ski trip this year, alex and i spent a few quiet moments together before bed. out of nowhere he reflectively said the following: what he doesn't know is when he starts traveling, like for college, life, and marriage, i'll be the one not animatedly sliding into my seat and maybe even crying a bit. i hope i come to terms with it as quickly and maturely as he has.

i have a rule with my children that the first thing they say to me in a new day cannot be a request for something.

this results with them sometimes saying things like:

"did you sleep well dad? great. can you help me with my homework?"

or

"you look handsome today dad. can you log me on so i can check my mail?"

the other morning, the first thing anthony said to me, as he brought me from sleep was, "dad, you have a lot of hair in your nose".

i might need to extend the ban to include comments that make my first act of the day be studying my aging body, super-up-close, in the mirror.

things i say a lot to my kids:

in the morning when i first see them:
welcome to another beautiful day on planet earth.

when i say goodbye to them:
do good.

when i announce we're about to leave:
wheels up in five.

when it's time to go to bed:
shut it down. brush, potty, and bed.

when they do something i deem foolish:
oh c'mon. you've gotta have more sense than that.

when i'm in mush mood for them:
you know i love you big, right?

i turned 45 last sunday. i took the friday before off work, not so much for my birthday but mostly to prepare for my everyman wrap party happening saturday night, although i snuck some troy-centric things in along the way, namely burnt butter pasta at the old spaghetti factory for lunch. because of the early prep, the saturday party went off anxiety and issue free. sunday offered more leisure-time and some visiting of friends (some who had a new labrapoodle puppy--i'm now deciding between getting one or two for our home). we then went out for my ritual birthday dinner at cafe natasha and their mystically good beef kabobs. because we had leftover mama nat ice cream pie from the party, we returned home for desert (instead of the usual stop at ted drewes). at the dinner table, my family sang happy birthday and marty and boys gifted me a new bike pump to replace the broken one i've been cussing at for over a year. my twelve-year old daughter then handed me a three sheets of type-filled paper and instructed me to read aloud.
while tempted i will not bore you will all 100 items. here are a few from the start and end, with a few from the middle sprinkled about. if you'll please excuse me a moment. i'll be off crying (again) for a bit.

a quick recap. yesterday i talked about making a change in my approach with alex. in short, i made the decision to allow alex's interest to direct our time together instead of me pushing things i deemed more worthwhile for alex and his development (yeah, i know, what a big-time ass). presently, one of alex's premiere interest is a game called minecraft. as a rule, i'm reasonably derisive towards video games believing them to be an unfortunate use of young minds primed and ready to learn real things with a never-to-be-had-again ability or rapacity. in putting aside my agenda and deciding to support my son in his interest, i called one of my best friends, bookguy, who i knew played the game and asked his advice. bookguy defended this particular game saying it was better than most and iterated through the reasons why, a key one being the intensely creative nature of the game which craftily blends lego-like building with dungeons and dragons-like adventure. bookguy also pointed me to a few things to accelerate and amplify our experience.

so monday night, the first night of the new troy, alex helped me install the game on my computer. he then schooled me on the basics and helped me to build, or craft rather, my first house, complete with a roof and bed. i backed away from the computer after night one feeling good about our progress.

on tuesday night i suggested to alex we try to load one of these maps my friend told me about AND to try to get the local network gaming figured out, another bookguy tip. alex inquired about the map and i said i had one in mind. i pulled up the webpage bookguy directed me to and the second it appeared on the screen, alex lost it, and i mean completely.

ALEO
herobrine's mansion! herobrine's mansion! that's the map we're getting?

TROY
i think so. if we can get it figured out.

ALEO
oh my gawd dad! that is like the most amazing map ever made for minecraft.

TROY
that's what i hear.

ALEO
oh my gawd! oh my gawd! i can't believe this is happening. this is amazing!

and happen it did. we got the map installed, the texture add-on in place, and the networking figured out. alex and i, with anthony enthusiastically watching, ran around a mightily impressive world made by some mightily impressive dude. there were lots of excited explanations by alex and re-spawnings by dad (namely because i kept hitting the bad guys with a piece of steak instead of my sword). let's just say a certain corner of our house was much more lively than it has historically been for a routine tuesday evening.

when i later put alex down for bed he thanked me for playing minecraft with him and getting the maps and figuring out how we could play together. he then said, "dad, this was the best day of my life" and from the dreamy seriousness in his voice i felt that he was not embellishing his mood, not one iota.

had you told me on sunday afternoon that i would be experiencing this moment forty-eight hours later, i would have wondered what major life event had occurred. it just turns out the major life event was a quiet ten minutes of thought. i knew i wanted something more from a very important part of my life, i just didn't know it was so close at hand.

but, there is a bad side to this story. the unfortunate side effect to injecting an ok life with a plunger-full of awesomeness is it can make ten year olds curse like a target stock boy. it peaked as my minecraft character dropped into the newly installed herobrine world when alex, awe in his wide eyes, shouted in my ear, "ohhhh! this is awesome!! this is so fricken' awesome!!!"

i would have chastised him, but i agreed.

the last seven days floated more innovative ideas before me than any other week in the history of troy. a few you may have heard or seen as well, assuming you too are not enforcing a news embargo, but a few will be new to you.

item one told of "the coach that never punts or kicks off" (video) but instead runs on every fourth down and only does onside kicks. it seems he read this study by some harvard prof who has the math to support the approach, and this coach has seen a great deal of success from it. i'm confident i'm not the only one wondering if this is all true, as it seems to be for skill levels found in the sub-college ranks at least, i'm left wondering how has no one seen this before?

for the second item, a friend over lunch told me of a teacher at his kid's school who has his students learn the lessons at home via web videos (e.g. what is the pythagorean theorem?) and do their homework in class where, if confused, they have access to the teacher and others learning the same concept. when i mentioned this to marty she had heard of it, being in the industry and all, and said the practice is called 'flipping' the classroom. given all the great web fodder out there, cases in point, i can see this as being a highly profitable approach, especially if it means my kids not having to turn to me for help with things i didn't understand the first time around.

the third bit of inspiration i bumped into came from the mother of one of my former students. she told me that when her three boys were young they got very little television. she policed this in the following way:

• each boy would pour over the weekly television listing that came in the sunday paper where they circled two hours worth of television from the offerings.
• the marked up schedule would then get posted, like on the fridge, for reference. then everyone knew when they had to be home for tv, being the pre-tivo age, and the boys would look forward to their windows of time.
• alternately, and probably more importantly, they could look at the movie section of the same paper and direct their two hours at a theater movie instead of television.

i can just imagine the excitement and anticipation surrounding this ritual and how it would make special something that for must of us has become a completely numb and expected part of life. i'm anguished i didn't learn of this practice ten years ago. i find it beautifully thoughtful, inspired even.

the last item comes from my own desk. perhaps all the innovation happening around me moved me to keep up. the everyday problem i held in my hand dealt with alex and the time we spend together. it's not that our time together is strained, it's just not as vibrant and easy as i would describe my relationship with my other kids. as such, i sat down to reflect on this and inside ten minutes came to the conclusion that i was trying to push alex towards things i wanted him to do instead of leveraging one of his many interests. when i considered how i would feel if someone did that to me, i concluded i would think:

1. that the person was an ass.
2. and that the person might be acting a bit like their own father.

these two lines of thought put a quick end to that. minutes after this epiphany i called bookguy, a fellow i knew to be a minecrafter (minecraft being one of alex's core interest at the moment), and asked for some advice. then, minutes after getting home from work, i sought alex out and after the usual check on the day i asked him if he could do me a favor. being the helpful man he is he of course said yes and gave me his attention. i asked him if he would teach me how to do minecraft like he does. his late in the day expression brightened more than a little bit.

if a doctor's mandate is to do no harm i think a father's mandate could be 'don't be a dick' because who wants a selfish dick for a father. i wouldn't be surprised to learn twenty years from now that those ten minutes of reflection might be ten of the most important minutes i spent in regard to my boy aleo.

those are four examples where things that happen everyday were re-thought and from those re-contemplations, life got changed. these thinking organs we got are pretty dang impressive. so think. think hard. improvement is everywhere.

for me, one of the hardest adjustments of parenthood was having people touching me and my stuff all the time. and when i say this you're probably imagining clean, healthy and groomed humans but that's not always the case. it turns out children prove as slippery as the weather and one day might gift you a beautiful gerber baby day while the next deals you a mucus-plugged nose or diarrhea filled foo ...

over the last few weeks i've taught alex how to work the stick shift in my car. so now when we we're driving, and he's next to me obviously, i'll hit the clutch and call out a gear, like second or third. alex then moves to action changing the stick accordingly and then acknowledges the change by repeating the gear i called for. i'm struck by the cleanliness and efficiency of our dance which has come about most naturally. we're already so good at it, we're able to insert the calls and responses right in the middle of conversations with only the slightest pause in thought or acceleration.

tuesday morning when i entered the garage to take the boys to school, they were both in the car and waiting for me. one of them had already hit the garage door opener and when i slid into my seat alex already had his hand on the stick ready to go. seeing this i cautioned him to be careful to not pull the stick out of gear when i wasn't in the seat (explaining it is possible to do when the clutch isn't engaged lest he thought otherwise). to his question of 'what would happen?' i explained if the car was parked on any sort of grade, it could start rolling forward or backward depending on the slope. fortunate to the moment, there is a slight grade out of our garage so i told him to go ahead and pull the car out of gear. he looked at me with uncertainty. i nodded and said it was ok. so he pulled it from first gear and the car started slowly rolling forward. alex looked up at me. i said if this ever happened when i wasn't here he needed to pull on the emergency brake and pointed it out. as we talked this through, the car's front end moved out of the garage and began rolling faster due to a steeper grade when exiting. i said, "alex pull the brake". more speed. some panic out of alex. more speed. "pull the brake!" panic. more speed. "pull the brake alex!" his hand reached for it, gripped the handle and lifted up with as much force as his slender arm and coursing adrenaline would allow. the car lurched to a stop in the middle of the alleyway and a few feet from the opposing curb. anthony looked up from his book with piqued eyes. alex looked at me with wide eyes. i held out my gimme five hand. after he slapped my hand i smiled big and complimented the successful handling of his first car emergency. he turned from me wearing that glow of earned pride so special to see in one's children.

wednesday morning when we met in the car for school, both boys asked if we could do that rolling thing again where we had to use the emergency brake. we did.

the boys and i were watching star trek, the original, after dinner. we're slowly working our way through the franchise starting at the very beginning. we were piled up on my desk chair, me on the seat and the boys each sitting on an armrest leaning on me. during the show i passed some post-dinner gas. moments later a big fight broke out in the show. i commented on the suddenness of the melee to which anthony (7) said casually, "i think they're fighting because of your smelly fart".

last weekend bella and i completed our last two training rides in preparation of next weeks ms-150. on sunday we rode 28 miles following that up monday, on bella's insistence, with a 30 miler. we planned on thirty each day but a sudden cloudburst had us call the first day's ride short as biking in rain isn't ever really fun. this upcoming weekend, we'll complete the two forty mile options for bella's first organized distance ride.

for reasons i can't explain i never envisioned the part of parenthood where you get to do things you, and not solely your children, enjoy doing. i'm equally unable to express how impressed i am with my twelve-year old daughter's athleticism, commitment, persistence and agreeability even in the face of daunting endeavors (e.g. a surprisingly long hill twenty miles into a ride) which are surely pushing her beyond what she thought capable just a short few months back.

some of my latest, favorite observations i've most enjoyed about riding with bella:

• how when i pull up next to her and start talking about something she might say, "just so ya know dad i can't hear a word you're saying because there's a good song on i'm pretty sure is better than whatever it is you're talking about".
• how she refers to the homes in rich neighborhoods as "drama houses".
• how she asks me, on virtually every ride, if her biking calves are coming in yet.
• how she occasionally compliments me by saying stuff like, "you're not doughy compared to that guy who just went by".
• how after i asked if she wanted to replace the side view mirror that broke in an spill she took, she replied, "nah, i think i like going old school and just looking over my shoulder."
• how bella reacts when we catch guys overtly checking her out from cars, bikes and sidewalks. one poor kid looked so dumb-struck i thought his gum was going to fall out of his mouth. as bella was expressing surprise at this change in her life, i told her the bad side of the story is some people will wonder if she and i are a couple. to this, she looked as dumb-struck as the poor kid who almost lost his gum in the front seat of the family car. yes, every bright tale does have a dark-side it seems.

and there's still room on both of our pledge cards (granted there's way less room on hers than mine) should you be interested in supporting our ride and/or the ms organization.