Keal Family Letter, September 2007

Hello Friends and Family!

Happy September to you all!

We are officially OUT-NUMBERED! Two Parents vs. Three Kids... the Kids win.

I remember when we only had Thea. All we had to worry about was Thea. There were no other kids fighting in the background... just Thea. When she slept... we could sleep. We even had some free time left over because she slept more than we did. We didn't know how good we had it!

Then Cirdan came along. Thea was only 1 and 1/2, and fortunately just walking, but life was manageable because there was a parent for every child. At some points, if we were lucky, both kids would be asleep at the same time... and then there was much rejoicing.

But it seems that parenting gets exponentially harder with the addition of each new child. So far it seems that having 3 kids is twice as hard as having 2 kids... now is that really fair?! Thea and Cirdan are pretty independent little toddlers, which is good, but they still need supervision (Hey, I wish I had "super-vision," then maybe I could tell who really hit who first!). Thea doesn't nap anymore, and Cirdan is getting close to not napping anymore. For the past month, our life has had one purpose: Try to keep all three kids happy... with a side-order of "could we get some sleep" and maybe a small helping of movies.

Having three kids is sort of like juggling... we've reached that point where we are really parenting now. When you're juggling one or two balls, you're not really juggling, it's when you get to three balls that people are impressed. Or rather it's when people decide to hang around to see how long you can do it before you totally lose control. Parenting really feels like juggling sometimes. We often have to leave one kid "hanging in mid-air" and hope that they will come land right in our open hand.

But just like juggling... it's a lot of fun. I wouldn't trade my life for anything. Tirah and I like to watch Sci-Fi adventure movies. Lately, that's what we'll do in the evening, once all three kids are finally asleep, we'll turn on some Star Trek, or StarGate. It's kind of funny how, at the end of a long day filled with little beings who are fighting and screaming and stealing and talking gibberish, we like to flick on a movie filled with little beings who are fighting, screaming, stealing, and talking gibberish. Escapism? Really? I wonder.

Really I think it's just a different kind of adventure. We all like adventure in our lives, it's just that sometimes we get bored with the adventure that we are currently in, and we want to watch somebody else's adventure. Almost as if to say, "boy am I glad I'm not trying to save the world from alien invasion!" Or maybe as if to say, "boy I wish I could worry about alien invasion for a while, instead of three screaming kids!" Maybe, far away, on some distant planet, some futuristic alien super-hero is sitting back with a bag of chips, watching us through his "super-vision" telescope and saying, "boy, am I glad I'm not taking care of three kids right now. It's nice to relax and not worry about global annihilation for a few minutes!" Whatever it is... we humans like adventure. And I like the adventure that Tirah and I are living.

I've heard that it gets easier after 3 kids. But I don't know about that. I baby-sat for my sister the other day, so I was in charge of 4 toddlers for a couple hours. That was when I realized how good I had it with just 2 or 3. When you only have 2 or 3 kids, you never have to break up two different fights at once!

So, starting with the youngest: Jaden is almost a month old now. He's exactly 4 weeks today. Unfortunately it's been a rough month for him (and by association, for us too). He has had a very bad diaper rash all month. And he's also had a bad case of baby acne all over his body! It looks very uncomfortable... and by his fussiness, I think he agrees. He basically has three modes right now: Eat, Sleep, and Cry. Peaceful, non-meal, awake times are precious rare gems that we try to treasure. I got a brief smile from him early one morning, right before I changed his diaper. We're trying lots of things (diet, homeopathy, aloe vera, prayer) and we're hoping that we'll start to see some improvement soon. But amid all of the fussiness, he is the cutest little thing on the planet.

As I was watching him one time when he was staring at this brand new world, I couldn't help but wonder if that's what we look like to angels, when we wake up in the spiritual world after death. Wide-eyed brand new spiritual beings.

Cirdan is still in a violent phase. His default, if something doesn't go his way, is to hit the person closest to him. Even when he's playing nicely, he can be too rough sometimes. But over all, he's our little angel boy. While his actions don't always express his heart very well, his words do. He says the sweetest, nicest things to people. He's our little sunshine boy.

I wanted to share a very cute thing he said the other night: We were getting ready for bed, and while I was helping Thea get undressed, Cirdan was throwing stuffed animals up into the air as high as he could get them to go. One time, he threw an animal up into the air, and he didn't notice that it fell back down behind his crib, so he turned to me and said, "Uh oh, it went up to Heaven!"

The other day, just after Jaden emptied a little spit-up onto my shirt, Cirdan asked me with concern in his voice: "Papa, what is that coming out of Jaden's face?"

Cirdan also has a very short attention span right now. He's curious, but not curious enough to hear a full answer. He'll very often ask us a question, but before we can truly answer him, he looks away, and is on to something else. The look on his face reminds me of the windows that sometimes pop up on my computer: "Application has unexpectedly quit. Data may have been lost. Would you like to save and restart?" No... never mind.

Cirdan has an interesting concept of time. It used to be that when he was referring to something that happened in the past, he would refer to it as happening "yesterday." "Yesterday" simply meant "in the past." I wasn't born yesterday, but Cirdan was, according to him. Well, lately he has graduated. Now things that happened in the past are referred to as happening "Last Week." "Mama and Papa, when you got married last week, was it at the big church?" It's almost like his concept of time is broadening as he gets older. It used to be that he took life day by day. Now he understands the concept of a week's worth of time. Last month? Forget it... Does Not Compute. It reminds me a little of adult's concepts of time. The longer I live, the more I understand what long periods of time are like. It used to be that I didn't remember much from a decade ago, but now I do. I can even remember some things that happened over 20 years ago. And yet, I'm only 30 years old. Unlike a 60 year old, I cannot remember 30 years ago. Angels in heaven can remember hundreds of years into their past. They undoubtedly have a better perspective on eternity.

Moving on to Thea: Thea has the opposite situation to Cirdan. While Thea's actions reveal her angelic heart, her words do not. Thea, being a strong-willed child, likes to feel like she is in control and has freedom. Ultimately she wants to be recognized for the valuable member of the family that she is. So if we aren't doing that , by not giving her choices and quality time, she assumes that we aren't being good parents and so she takes over. Her latest favorite phrases are: "No, you're wrong!" and "Papa, it's too late!" or "No, wait, here's the deal.." or even "I don't love you!" or "I don't want to be your daughter anymore!" It's hard knowing that Jaden's presence is probably the hardest for Thea to deal with, because she craves quality time, and we don't have a lot of time to give. But it's all part of the adventure.

Thea loves to sing. In fact she doesn't like silence, and she tries to fill silence with whatever words or songs she can think of. She tends to commentate her life in song. This can be very cute at times, and very annoying at other times. Lately Thea and I have been going shopping together while Cirdan naps at home with Mama and Jaden. This has been some very good quality time for her. But it's a funny mix. She's a chatterbox, and I'm a quiet guy. So she spends most of the shopping trip singing our adventures to the nearest listener. Well, one time she had to go potty. So I took her into the men's room. There was somebody else in one of the other stalls. So here I was standing in a stall, with my 4 year old girl sitting on the potty, and she was singing a song about "Going Potty" at the top of her lungs, with another man in the stall next to us. It was one of those times when I was simultaneously tickled pink, and thoroughly embarrassed at the same time.

But as I said, Thea's actions reveal her heart. She loves to help people. What a great trait to nurture!

Tirah is probably the most sleep-deprived of the two of us. And it's a little hard right now because Jaden only likes Mama. Especially when he's upset, I have a hard time calming him down... only mama can do that. It's amazing how quickly he knows he's in mama's arms... it must be the smell. That glorious smell of mama, versus that weird smell of papa. Tirah is definitely enjoying her maternity leave, but also anxious about having to go back to work next month.

I haven't had much chance to work on music lately, although I did manage to create a new page on my website that features some clips of some of the music that I've been working on in my studio this year. Things like the flute and piano album, and the Glencairn Documentary. You can check it out at: http://www.solomonkeal.com/listen/studio.

We are thinking more and more about trying to buy a house, rather than rent one. The people in Virginville still haven't called about that rental place. So maybe with the help of Providence we will be able to buy our own house soon. We know so little about the whole process, so we're trying to learn. We'll see what happens.

I wanted to share a quote that Tirah and I heard in a Joel Osteen sermon: "Don't tell your God how big your problems are... tell your problems how big your God is!"

So that's all for this time. This month is the last month of Tirah's maternity leave, so the adventure continues! Tune in next time for the continuation of the adventures of Solomon and Tirah and Family.

Love,

Solomon, Tirah, Thea, Cirdan and Jaden.