The Salad Days

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Today is my last day off. Tomorrow, my primary role will once again shift back to income winner. I comfort my self by remembering that I still will have so much time with my family...weekends, vacations, etc.

When I returned to work after Corrie and Jack were born, it was hard, but this time its different. As I left my wife and infant son napping on the couch moments ago, I know that this time of our life is almost certainly over. I will have no more 3 week olds of which to speak. I will never again have the privilege of sleeping with such a tiny creature stuck to my chest, and having it be my child. I won't see the look in my daughter's eyes again that she had when we showed Wesley to her for the first time. I won't again hear my two year old boy stumble over trying to pronounce his little brother's name.

Of course I know that anything can happen. But the point is that Steph and I think this time of our life should come to a close. We have had such a great time welcoming these three lives into our family, and now, for the first time, we think we have a picture of what our family will finally look like.

But these initial weeks are always indescribable because they are so many things: momentous, quiet, tiring, confusing, emotional, fleeting. And because there is nothing else like them, it is addictive and you want it again. With Corrie and Jack, I assumed I would have it again. This time, I assume the opposite.

He already seems so big. He already isn't sleeping as much. He already is becoming his own little person. He has been baptized, he has lost his cord, he is eating well. Soon, he will smile. He will roll over. He will crawl. He will walk. Eventually, all three of these people will become men and women, and I hope that they are to able to follow Christ with all of their hearts. But there was a time when it was all quite simple. When all they wanted was milk, a clean diaper, and a person to snuggle.

I look forward to many adventures with my wife after my children are grown. Europe. Australia. New York. All the things that we cannot do because we have little children. But my hope is that when we lift that first glass of Bordeaux in Paris, that we can look at each other and realize that the greatest adventure we ever knew together was those three little ones. For however far and wide we may roam, the simple and awesome experience of holding our newborns can never eclipse any of it.