Family Christmas Letter
I’ve held off writing a Christmas letter column for a long time now. It’s going to sound strange to those of you who read this column regularly, but I didn’t want to share too much about my kids.
I’m still
struggling with the balance between this column and my kids’ privacy. And yet, after
all that, this year I’m doing it anyway.
If I understand correctly
the point of these sorts of Christmas letters is to give a general update about
your family while also managing to subtly (or not so subtly) include humble
brags about your kids. Bonus points are given for a light and whimsical tone
and humor.
I’ll skip the
whole general update part since that would just be a summary of the prior 12
month’s columns.
The
14-year-old is all knees and elbows this year. If you need to find his knee,
find the 12-year-old’s head and you’re probably close. I don’t know how he’s
doing it but the number of times he has legitimately accidentally kneed his
brother in the head is amazing. The 14-year-old is the most helpful kid and has
really raised the bar of what being helpful to the family means. Amongst other
things, he cooks dinner once a week. And when I say cooks I don’t mean a frozen
dinner or sandwiches. He’s cooking real scratch meals like lasagna, stuffed
peppers and shepherd’s pie.
He
and the 12-year-old’s lawn mowing business really took off this year. I’m happy
to see the pride they put into their work and their willingness to save their
money. And with a new baseball card shop in Pflugerville you can be sure they’re
being sorely tried.
Aside from being
kneed in the head by his older brother, the 12-year-old can be found reading,
building Legos, or otherwise inventing things. Like overalls that you create by…wearing
jeans on your arms? Yeah, I still don’t know what he was talking about with
that one, but if this becomes a thing in 10 years you heard it here first. And
with his ingenuity and creativity I wouldn’t put some sort of future well-known
invention past that kid.
The 10-year-old still
loves baseball and is still playing baseball overly competitively. For example,
he was involved in a collision trying to catch a ball between second and first
base this year. That sort of thing does happen, but not usually when you’re playing
on the other side of the field at shortstop. My best memory of him this year might
have to be seeing him celebrate the Dodgers winning the World Series in the 10th
inning of game 7 at 11:15 p.m. It almost made suffering through another
Dodgers World Series worth it.
The 9-year-old
also played baseball this year, albeit less competitively. I’ve never seen a
kid so comfortable not knowing what was going on in the field. I didn’t coach
and instead suffered the fate of all overly-involved dads biting my tongue in
the bleachers. Watching the 9-year-old I now know why so many of the parents
were shouting “baseball ready!” at the entire team when I was coaching. It was
to get their kid’s attention.
Aside from
baseball, the 9-year-old has shown a strong interest in drawing and seems to
have an eye for detail. In drawing. Not in other things for which an eye for
detail would also be helpful like: cleaning his room, picking up his dirty
clothes, wearing socks that match and a handful of things that fall under the
category I’ll call bathroom accuracy.
The 7-year-old is
on the cusp of becoming something…but I’m not sure what. He’s Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde with his overeagerness to help with anything I’m working on and his
absolute recalcitrance to clean up after himself. He’s the most likely to
volunteer to pick something up and also the most likely to shove everything he
picked up (toys, games, trash, a banana?) into the most unlikely and certainly
incorrect spot. His nickname of The Beaver might stick. It’s not just that he
likes the show Leave it to Beaver but because anytime we’re near the creek he’s
dragging logs about and trying to make dams.
The 5-year-old
continues to model the saying, 10lbs of energy in a 5lb sack. He’s accepted the
role of spirited youngest brother who gets into mischief and is doing his best
to solidify himself in the hall of fame for that role. He has an oversize
presence on the domestic environment and with that great power has come (almost)
no responsibility. There are times I wonder if that don’t hit your brother rule
was impressed a bit too strongly on his older brothers…
To be fair, he’s
also the most affectionate of the kids and is more mischief than malice. The
second half of the year has been better and turning five has been a big change
for several of the boys so maybe it will be for him too. One of the keys to
this may be, similar to a spirited horse, giving him lots of exercise and room
to run. That kid sure does like to run and will go outside in any weather.
Well, not if it’s thundering. He really is like a young horse.
My sweet little
2-year-old has grown up too quickly. She certainly has a will of her own and
the ability to communicate it in a way her brothers didn’t at that age. If I’m
working from home and come out of the study at any time she runs up and asks,
“You off work? We go on a walk?” She loves to be outside and go on walks and
showed she can handle hikes when she walked for over a mile on one (while
holding the 12-year-old’s hand) recently. She loves her brothers and it’s
interesting to see how she relates to the two oldest boys more like they’re
adults than fellow kids. To her they might as well be grown ups.
All of us –
grownups, littles, and bigs, -- send our love and wish you a Merry Christmas and
a Happy New Year. Solo Deo Gloria!