The Kiddos

Even through all of this difficulty, there are so many things for which to be thankful. I am ridiculously happy that we have the opportunity to watch my nieces and nephews so Amy can focus all of her energy in supporting David in any way he needs. Unfortunately, that does mean their brood doesn’t have an opportunity to spend time with their mom and dad. Because of the current situation, the kids have also missed out on a lot of opportunities to spend time with those outside of the family. To help bridge that disconnect, I thought I would provide an update on each of these angels (I say angels, but oh brother, have there been some times over the past week where they may have lost their halo’s for a moment).

Ethan has been perfect, in every way imaginable. He has been getting into a tiny bit of mischief, but his little crawling legs can only get him so far, so he’s easy to catch. Katy and I capped ourselves out at three kids, and our youngest is fast approaching four years old. To have a giggling baby in the house again has made me question if we really are done or not 🙂 We have gotten better at his CF treatments and it’s running a little more smoothly today than it was last week.

Caleb and our youngest, Ben, have been inseparable. With all the rain we’ve been receiving lately, they have had an incredible time playing in the various puddles around the house (much to our chagrin). Caleb has been enjoying some time with his grandma and has been staying generally well behaved, unless it comes to nerf gun bullets and his insatiable desire to horde them in his toy dump truck. Ben and Caleb got into a little bit of trouble on Sunday. While getting ready for church, I heard what sounded like marbles rolling around on our kitchen floor. I came out of our room to find a gumball machine Eli and Josh had received on Christmas open, with a hundred gumballs scattered from one end of the kitchen to the other. After spending 10 minutes cleaning them up, I went to pick up the gumball machine. As I was lifting it up to put on the top of the refrigerator, the top came off and all of our hard work went scattering across the floor once again. Have you ever seen a grown man weep while cleaning up gumballs? It’s not pretty.

Grace has turned into a little spitfire! Don’t let her cute smile fool you, she always has a plan she’s worked out in her head, and she recruits the younger kids to help enact those plans. Most of the time she is successful, but every once in a while we might be able to intercept her mid-plotting. She has been such a cutie around the house, and has played the “innocent” role very well. As we’re telling the kids to knock it off, or clean up the messes they’ve made, Grace will always be standing a short distance behind you yelling “Yeah, guys! Do what unco Kiwrk say!” However, that innocence only goes skin deep. After cleaning up the gumballs a second time, I put the gumball machine carefully on the fridge and went back to getting ready for church. I soon hear whispering from the kitchen and snuck out to see what kind of mischief was being plotted. I found Grace and Josh standing on the counter, taking gum out of the gumball machine and shoving as much as they could in their mouths. “Joshua! Grace! Get down from there!” my voice squeaked. They jumped from the counter and scattered like cockroaches when you first turn on a light in the middle of the night. Just as zebras have stripes to confuse the lions as they’re being hunted, Josh and Grace used their sheer speed and ran in opposite directions, so I couldn’t snatch either of them. I grabbed the gumball machine in a huff from the fridge to put in the pantry… *CRASH* 100 gumballs stream across the floor. It was at that moment that I decided Katy and I made the right decision to stop having kids.

Tony and Grace, I believe, have the same Cesolini gene – those genes couldn’t possibly come from the Somero side of the family. Tony has busied himself with watching youtube videos and seeing how many deck cushions he can fling over the deck before getting caught. He and Josh seem to have grown closer together over the past week, and you can often find them playing around in the yard. I think Tony will grow up to be a real sweetheart. The first day they spent at our house, Tony was misbehaving and testing his boundaries. I tell this story and hope you understand that I have never full on spanked a child in my life. I asked Tony to do something several times, and he just wouldn’t listen. From the other room, Micah shouted “Tony! You better do what uncle Kirk says, or he’ll call mommy.” “Mommy?” I shouted back with a smile, “I can whup on him just as well as your mommy can.” (I did it in my patented ‘southern drawl’ voice). Tony shot up from where he was sitting, “No whooping! No whooping! I do what you say!” He covered his tooshie and didn’t turn his back to me as he backed his way out of the room. I think he and I have found common ground. Does he listen? No. But I’d like to think he’ll hesitate maybe even a little bit before doing something he knows uncle Kirk would disapprove of.

Micah has been mostly quiet over the past several days. I think he understands that his daddy is sick, and he’s spending some time processing what that means. That’s not to say that he doesn’t get riled up while he’s playing with his cousins, because he does, but he is just as content sitting on the couch playing video games or spending some time by himself. We were driving to the store the other day, and he started asking me questions about the hospital – nothing specific about his dad, just how many rooms are in hospitals and how many people work there. I think his daddy is front and center on his mind.

Paul has been extremely helpful around the house over these past few days. That isn’t to say he doesn’t cause a little grief for his brothers and sisters, but he has been listening really well and spending a lot of time talking to his friends on the PS4 while playing Fortnite. Overhearing some of those conversations have been heart-wrenching, but it’s wonderful to know, even at that young age, he has peers he can reach out to and help process his feelings. Paul and Eli have been playing quite a bit together since the cousins got here, and it reminds me of the time I got to spend with my cousins, growing up in Florida. It’s wonderful when your best friends are also family.

Caitlyn. What do you say about Caitlyn? I think she pretends to be oblivious to what’s going on around her. She has been stuck on sour cream lately – and I don’t even know if she likes sour cream. Ask her what she wants on her sandwich? Sour cream. Ask her what she wants for dessert? A bucket of sour cream. She and Anna have been behaving well together lately, mostly just keeping out of each others way. You can see, though, that they will be best of friends as they get older; they’re just in different places right now. I know my brother and I went through a phase when we were growing up where there was absolutely no seeing eye to eye, and look how perfect and saintly we turned out! The only difficult decision I have to make right now is if she’s getting the one gallon tub, or five gallon bucket of sour cream for her birthday.

Anna, the oldest of the tribe. Anna has been reading books, talking to friends, and doing everything a typical girl of her age does. Like Caitlyn, she has been a tremendous help around the house. When we have our hands full and something goes *crash*, they don’t hesitate when you ask them to help out. Anna has been keeping a lot of her emotions to herself, but you can see the concern in her eyes. We’ve been working hard on keeping her occupied during this time, just so she can focus on external things. I don’t know if it’s for her benefit, or our own, but it seems to be working for all of us. Anna and I have been working on designing thank you cards to send out to those that have supported the family through prayer or donation, and it’s been a lot of fun getting to spend some one-on-one time with her.

These kids, each and every one of them, are a real blessing from God. When there are fires to put out every minute of the day, it’s easy to get lost in the smoke, but these kids have supported us just as much as we have been supporting them. Mealtimes might be a disaster, bedtimes might be classified as a national emergency, but I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. I think I can speak for the entire family when I say that each of these little angels have done their part to make sure all of the adults here are taken care of. In the quiet times and in the loud, God has been very good over the past week.