Some Journey

My kids

Well, surprisingly enough, this is my first blog entry about my kids. I'm sure it won't be the last. I've got five of 'em. Ages 2 thru 9. Anyway, they continually surprise me. I never planned on having kids, especially not five (!) of them, so it's been a truly fascinating learning experience for me. As someone who was not a "big family" person, I never cease to be amazed at the things I am learning about big families. I always thought that if you had a bunch of kids they would resent each other and feel a lack of attention. My kids are constantly begging us for another kid. They love having five kids in the family. The older kids take such good care of the younger kids (buddy system works great!), and the younger kids adore the older ones.

Anyway, between my two sisters and I there are 11 (about to be 12 in a week or so) grandchildren ages 9 and under. You would think that the fascination with babies would start to get old. But today our pastor and his wife (my friend Mako, mentioned in an earlier post) had their second baby and we went to see them. You would have thought it was their own sibling to watch my children and how excited they were. They each had to hold him, and talked about him all day. They were so proud. But what was particularly neat was that they paid just as much attention to Naoki, the baby's 2 year old brother. As adults, we always try to make a point to remind the older child that they are still loved even though there was a new baby around. My kids seemed to just do that intuitively. Naoki seemed to really feel special. Kids are just so much more complex and capable of being more than I ever realized. I learn so much more from them than I will ever be able to teach them.