In my experience, parenting can be an all-consuming, and consequently lonely, task. In my pre-child days, I loved the chance to write out long updates on life in the hopes that someone might read them and benefit from them, that I might get the chance to catch up with far-flung friends from the past, and at the very least that I might make sense of my own life through the act of having to narrate it. However, those who received and followed these updates may have noticed that the birth of our oldest child coincided with an almost complete cessation of these updates. For years now, I’ve been hoping to resume this tradition, and for years, I have struggled with the realities of this season of life: that time and mental energy are at a premium, such that even things that I used to consider tiresome obligations, like an afternoon alone to vacuum the whole house, are now almost unimaginable luxuries; that the only time I have to devote to writing of any sort is after the kids are in bed and the dishes are done, at which point my creative juices have dried up to a sticky paste; that even when I could find both time and energy to write, I find that I feel I have little to say. A life counted in diapers changed, dishes washed, and clothes folded, with special occasions being trips to the grocery store or perhaps the library with kids in tow, is not necessarily a bad life, but it’s not the kind of life that lends itself well to journaling.

Nonetheless, I have been feeling the need for connection increasingly acutely and so, with your forbearance, I’d like to try to start again. So, without further ado, here is The Thomases in Tandem, now with Triple Trailer in Tow.

Unbelievably, Elsie, our oldest, is now six years old and in first grade. (Also unbelievably, given that the only associations anyone had with that name were elderly spinster aunts and Elsie the Borden Cow, we have also met a number of additional Elsies since we gave ours her “unique” name. Go figure.) Elsie contemplates everything. She is sweet, sensitive, conscientious; on other words, a stereotypical oldest child. After hearing Jenn and me talking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she got excited because she had a plan to stop the conflict: we would hire a plane to fly over Ukraine and drop notes saying that Putin wasn’t in charge, God was in charge, and after this chastening reminder the invaders would go home with their tails between their legs. Her sensitivity has its drawbacks, too; I got an earlier-than-anticipated introduction to the world of playground politics when, after school one day, she told me in tears that her friend had decided to play on the slide with another girl instead of swinging with her. Unsurprisingly, she LOVES weddings (although fortunately she is, for the moment, pretty ambivalent about boys), and as the token male in the house for the first four and a half years of her life, I have been tasked with marrying her more times than I can remember, both as officiant and as groom.

Because of my negative experiences with teaching in public schools, we have opted not to enroll her in our local elementary school. Last year, I was teaching at Cornerstone Christian Academy, so we were able to enroll her there for kindergarten. It was a good experience for her, but not for me, so this year, we are attempting to make the transition to home school.  We are doing a homeschool co-op called Classical Conversations one day a week, and the rest of the week are working from a homeschool curriculum. I bought a homeschooling curriculum for math and English to do on days that we don’t have our co-op, and we have been starting piano, reading through all the Chronicles of Narnia, listening to audiobooks and programs, and doing weekly science field trips with a retired biologist from our church. While Elsie hasn’t been showing a lot of enthusiasm for the “school” portion of home schooling, she is certainly reading (and probably writing and arithmetic-ing) much better than I was in first grade, so I’ll count that as a win.

Sophie, our middle child (and also our wild child/flower child/feral child), is a bundle of exuberant joy (most of the time). If Elsie contemplates everything, Sophie enthusiastically expresses everything at full volume, since she was evidently born without volume control. She began this process very early since she was talking in full sentences by about 14 months. This verbal precocity has given us a window into her developing mind, because though her ability to express her thoughts is far above average, the ability to form coherent thoughts to express is still very much in process. The result is a near-constant flow of Sophie-isms that make varying degrees of sense to the outside world and often feel like a particularly bad dubbing of a foreign movie. For example…

• “I am as high as a customer!” (while swinging when she was less than two years old. I’m not sure where the association of “high” and “customer” came from, since we don’t habitually frequent dispensaries.)
• “I made my bed for two weeks, and now I’ve got to sleep my time.” (Just after turning two).
• “You have a toilet face. A toilet face is a face that looks familiar. Interesting means that you have small eyes.”
• “Daddy, you are the bestest daddy I ever had. Because you are the only daddy I ever had. And if you die, then you won’t come back. But you will come back in heaven.” (Last fall.)
• If you get wet, then you get molecules –invisible molecules!—but they don’t make you die exactly. (After one of our science lessons earlier this spring.)

Sophie is not afraid to defy norms and expectations, and we have only recently convinced her to begin wearing clothes full-time around the house. However, in addition to her daring and adventurous nature, she is also showing a considerate and caring side that is wonderful to see. She and Elsie are best friends when they aren’t worst enemies, and she loves to help me around the house, especially in the kitchen. There are few who can make me laugh for pure joy like Sophie can.

Jack, or “John Michael”, turned two in January. It was a relief to no longer be the token male in an increasingly estrogen-saturated house, with even the dog contributing to the imbalance. However, I don’t think that any of us were prepared for quite how much boy we were getting. If Elsie contemplates everything, and Sophie expresses everything, then Jack explores everything (and for a two-year-old boy, more often than not this means “destroys everything.”) He did not start talking at all until he was nearly two, and his third word after “mama” and “dada” was “basketball.” Since he turned two he has started making multi-word sentences; however, a majority of those involve the words “poops” or “toots.” After passing gas particularly loudly at the table last week, he confidently tried to frame me for it: “Daddy toots!”

In spite of dropping off the growth charts due to a tongue tie in his first few months of life, he has been hitting physical milestones apace, and is already better at throwing, catching, and kicking a ball at the age of two than I was at the age of seven. He is a nonstop dynamo who is making me understand for the first time the importance of childproofing a house. He will point out every plane in the sky and every lawnmower in the neighborhood and will occasionally wander out to the garage, toddle back in lugging my leaf-blower, which is longer than he is, and deposit it at my feet in a not-too-subtle hint that it’s time for some loud power tools. However, he is also probably the snuggliest of our three and desperately wants to help in whatever way he can, with mopping and vacuuming being probably his favorite activities; I can only hope that this desire lasts until he is old enough that he actually can help.

Meanwhile, Jenn and I have settled into a 1950s-style division of domestic labor: I am Lucy, and she is Ricky. (Except for the swearing in Spanish; I’ve got that part covered.) By day, Jenn is a home health occupational therapist, which means going from house to house helping the injured and infirm relearn to do basic life tasks. It’s one part detective, one part counselor, one part social worker, and three-quarters of a part CNA: she must figure out what is inhibiting them from achieving independence in these Activities of Daily Living (“ADLs”, in OT-speak), strategize and prescribe a course of action to overcome these obstacles, convince her patients to follow through with this plan, connect them with available resources, and occasionally help them to wipe their bums. It’s not a job that I particularly envy or would be particularly good at, but fortunately for the rehab patients of the world, Jenn both enjoys her job and excels at it. When she gets home, unlike Ricky, she jumps in and helps with childcare and household maintenance, often has an hour or two of documentation to complete after children are in bed, and when the lights are low, she is free to indulge in her leisure time passion of dreaming about an extreme home makeover, Thomas-style. Finding the balance in all this has been tough, but I’m proud to be married to a superhero.

For me, the transition of these past few years has been difficult. Although being home with the kids has its beautiful moments, and many older and wiser people have testified that I will not regret any time spent with kids because “it goes so fast,” the fact remains that this is not where I thought I would be in this season of life. In many ways it feels less like an intended destination than the end of the line after a very long series of closed doors, missed opportunities, and professional failures. I will write more about this in some future missive, but for the moment, I would crave your prayers as well as any updates on your lives.

Until then, may the Lord bless you and keep you.