Father of the Year : single father

A Fond Farewell

Trey — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 22:15:00 GMT

Well, this will be my last blog on Babble. I can't thank you all enough for caring enough to check in on the kids and me and to those of you who wrote comments, thank you so much for your sage advice. I've enjoyed filling you in on our comings and goings (although sweet A was less thrilled about how much I like to share). We're all doing so well together. Our families are blending together very nicely. Even little Chet is finally coming around (A made him his favorite vegetable, spinach, of all things, and he loved it.)

If you still want to check in on us you can reach me at treyellis.com.

And stay tuned for Bedtime Stories, the TV series coming from executive producer Chris Rock.

love,

Trey

The Beginning of the Beginning

Trey — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 02:48:00 GMT

A huge week for us here. The kids, Ava and Chet finally came home! I missed them terribly. I hadn't seen them in two weeks. They're sleeping now. I worked them to the bone and they start school in two days poor things. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

A and I have been working at least twelve hours a day moving her stuff. Half of it goes to my place, the other half to Boston where she will be getting her Ph.D. in sociology three days a week. She'll be making the four hour drive twice a week to see us and to teach a college writing course. I know it sounds nuts but if anybody can pull it off she can. She's amazing.

So the crazy week last week began with us packing up her apartment. Then on Thursday night I moved the car for street cleaning around one in the morning. I had TiVod the Obama acceptance speech and was very fired up and also very tired. Anyway that's my excuse for having parked her car in a tow-away zone. The next day I picked up the UHaul while A taught back to back classes and then while I was moving her (with two paid helpers) she was racing around town on the eve of the Labor Day Weekend desperately trying to liberate her car. If she hadn't needed me to move her I think she would have chopped my head off.

I started loading the truck around 1pm, unloaded the stuff for our New York apartment around six pm and then A and I returned to her old place and finished moving the last little pieces around 1am. Then we were up again at 7:30 to drive to Boston through all the holiday traffic. She drove her car with baby M. I drove the 14' UHaul.

It was a thrill to see where she grew up; the sprawling house where she and her brothers were raised in an idyllic little semi rural town between Boston and Cape Cod. Her family took me candlepin bowling and we ate amazing fried chicken from the poultry farm just down the road. Then this morning I caught a 9am train back to Newark airport to pick up the kids coming from Atlanta. Before we got home I braced them for the huge mess and then bribed them with the promise of ice cream if they helped me put everything away. I would have loved to have waited for A and M on Thursday, to feather our nest together, but A will be so tired I think she'll appreciate that we've done most of the work without her.

I so want her, and little M, to truly feel that this is their home too.

Here is what the living room and kitchen look like now, thanks to my wonderful kids:

It was so lovely putting them to bed. I offered to sing them one of the songs I used to sing them when they were a little younger and they eagerly said yes. I can't tell you how grateful I am that they still wanted to hear me butcher James Taylor:

My New Family

Trey — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 01:58:00 GMT

I talk to my kids every day and saw them just last week but really, this month has been about getting to know M, A's amazing little girl. I find myself calling her "Ava" by mistake sometimes because her antics so bring me back to how my now ten-year-old used to be when she was just two. Here she is jumping on the Dora bed that I made her.

The other day the three of us had a wonderful evening going out to see James Brown's horn section playing a free concert outdoors at Lincoln Center. I didn't hear, but A overheard some ladies behind us murmuring about us. M looks Asian from her father's side, A is white and I'm black, so the two black women behind us were furiously trying to figure out who belonged to whom. The same thing happened to us at Ava's big birthday weekend sleepover. We had five girls, an assortment of hues and continents, and an old lady thought we were a low-rent Jolie and Pitt.

It's quite amazing how nosy people are. They will come right up and ask you if the kids are yours; who's the father, who's the mother. Of course I would love my kids whether they were genetically linked to me or not but I don't see how it is anybody's business but our own.

Has something like this ever happened to you?

Country Mouse/City Mouse

Trey — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 16:09:00 GMT

I flew down from Manhattan to celebrate Chet's actual 7th birthday with him down in Social Circle, GA, where he and Ava spend the month of August with their grandparents, my ex's mom and step dad and their cousins. My ex has also been living down there for the past two years, ever since I moved the kids to New York. I come for two days at Christmas and this year three days in the summer. These few days are the only time that the kids have their entire family all in one place. Two of the three cousins, pictured above, Athan and Jovan, are wonderful kids and probably Chet's best friends in the world. Chet, especially, adores it down there and said many times that his dream is for us all to move down there and live all together in this huge log cabin in the middle of the woods.

Though that is hardly my dream I have to say I love it down there too. It's so quiet, I routinely sleep ten hours a night. The lake is lovely. I saw a snowy egret patrolling the shore just the other day.

His birthday, Ava's and their grandma's all come in the summer so the grandma throws a huge summer celebration. Ava was her sous chef and made the caprese salad with cherry tomatoes fresh from the garden. There was also eggplant parmigiana with fresh garden eggplant, and melon right from the garden as well, plus hamburgers, chicken wings, rice, and for dessert an ice cream cake.

This is Chet's second birthday party. The first was at Dave & Buster's right after school let out with his school friends. Whenever the kids complain about how weird it is having a mom and dad in different states, I remind them that they are also lucky to have several birthday parties throughout the summer. Ava tried to complain about the celebration that it was too heavily weighted toward Chet until I reminded her that she already had two parties. The first one was a sleepover on Long Island, the second was in France.

For none of us is this the life we had expected, but it's usually pretty wonderful nonetheless.

Surviving Birthdays and Packing Again

Trey — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:44:00 GMT

It feels like I haven't had a moment's rest since coming back from Ethiopia. Chet's party was the day after and then two days later I was driving Ava and three of her best friends to the Hamptons for a slumber party. Ava'd been planning this for at least ten months, ever since I'd told her that my Uncle Billy was kind enough to allow us to use his beach house whenever we wanted. I also hit him up to borrow his big Mercedes so the girls got chauffered out there in style. It was Radio Disney on the radio and Nanny McPhee on the portable DVD player in the back for three hours. A and her daughter M and Chet drove in A's car. I was still a bit off balance, remembering that just a few days before I was watching donkeys pass through a traffic jam in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. If it weren't for A's help and M being the cute mascot to all the little girls I'd never have made it. I was also still battling my GI tract. It felt like a rabid family of ferrets were wrestling inside my stomach. But Ava had a great time, the ice cream cake and the pizza and the beach were just perfect. I hope she remembers it for years to come.

Now back in the city for a few days we have to pack tomorrow for two weeks in France. I'm not thrilled with the idea of getting back on a plane but the kids have been looking forward to the trip for months.

With the dollar so low I was on the verge of cancelling the vacation and staying in the city but we're flying on miles and staying with friends in Paris and then in the same little village, Ramamtuelle, that I've been visiting for the last fifteen years. I love France but I have to say that here in New York it's magical as well. Tonight I took Ava and her two best friends, Chet, A and M to a little restaurant inside Riverside Park overlooking the Hudson. I treated myself to a margarita and black angus kebobs and corn and after dinner the kids played for hours on the gymnastic rings and by the time we were walking out of the park it was dusk and the fireflies were everywhere. The kids went nuts and capered after them, catching them in their hands, begging me to take them home. I'd heard that fireflies had returned to New York City but growing up here I'd never once seen one. When I was a kid the last place you wanted to be was inside a park after dark.

Back from Ethiopia

Trey — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:49:00 GMT

I've been silent for a week but not out of laziness. I've been in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, helping them start up a film industry. The kids' mom flew up from Atlanta to watch them.

Here is one of my favorite buildings in the bustling city of five million, a bar shaped like the space shutte.

Here is a typical street scene

Here's my favorite photo from the teff grain store of the "Former Women's Wood Carrying Collective."

And here's just outside:

Most of the rest of the city is more chaotic and urban. I was just there a week but am already looking forward to coming back.

What I wasn't so much looking forward to was what's happening right now. After flying for twenty-one hours yesterday with a medium case of diarrhea I had to prepare for the Birthday Marathon.

The kids' birthdays are later in the summer when their friends aren't around so today, my first day back, I'm taking five of Chet's friends to Dave & Busters (Chuck E. Cheese on steroids) in Times Square. And then tomorrow morning A and I are driving Ava, Chet and three of Ava's best friends out to Long Island for a weekend-long sleepover in my uncle's beach house. As you can imagine the kids are out of their minds with excitement. I'm loopy with tiredness and still uncertain about my digestive tract.

Wish me luck!