2016

I've written about this sort of thing often enough I know, but every now and then I feel so aware again of this strange sort of reconfiguring my brain is trying to manage. 

Maybe every parent experiences this to some degree. Of course they do. But it is a truth that I have spent years more than most in the thick of babies, and toddlers, and young children. Why, I've been a parent for 25 years now and I only just had the last of my children enter elementary school. 

Which means that certain things have sort of always been. Always there has been another child needing potty-trained, another child needing taught to count, another child needing the pair of snow boots that someone just outgrew, another child needing to do the same grade-specific school project that five kids have done already. 

And now, as I slowly move away (at least in some areas) from what has always been there's an unfamiliarity to my thoughts.

Going through a box while packing and realizing there's no need to hang on to multiple sizes of too-small swim trunks and swimsuits.

Hearing some of the cute things kids in Starling's class did for their "100 things" posters and thinking, "Oh, I'll need to remember that idea," and then realizing I actually don't need that idea (as nobody else will be making a "100 things" poster).

And what about the alphabet flash cards that I drew for Abe 24 years ago ... and then used to teach letters to nine more children over two decades? 

I realize that, as many of these things that have "always been" drop off at the younger end, we have been forming new "always beens" at the upper end. Now someone is always working on getting a driver's license, there's always another child figuring out middle-school lockers, another child getting ready for girls' camp or high adventure, another child needing help with taxes, another child taking the ACT.

And we are likely entering more fully into years of there always being another wedding, another child working on mission papers, another child expecting a child of their own.

So it certainly isn't as if these changes are all loss. (In fact there's no loss at all in: nobody else to potty train.)

Still, there was a little trend going about earlier this month--people posting 2016 photos. At first, I wasn't sure why. Then I realized that 2016, which feels like about three years ago to me, was a decade ago! That, combined with my own experience of late, has made me think back on life ten years ago.

A decade is really ... such a short chunk of time.

But also so much changes in every single decade!

In 2016 we were in the thick of these two babies:

(For years we took two strollers practically everywhere we went. In 2016 the kids also had the job of walking Tess around the block most evenings.)

(Mette had to wear this hip brace every night and for every nap for months.)

And really, when I look back at 2016, it feels to me like it was not just these two babies, but the middle of our wildest baby years. 

While it's true that neither Hans nor Starling were even here in 2016, I was expecting Hans throughout most of the year and Starling wasn't so very much later. 2016 was just right in the middle of this wild time of 4 babies in under 5 years.

And really 2016 was just a time of everyone being somewhat little! Because there were so many babies coming at that time, I sometimes forget that most of my kids were really still just little kids. 

These two boys for example:

(That was also the year that poor Jesse's eye allergies got so terrible that he rubbed a hole in his cornea. He's been seeing the same pediatric eye specialist ever since 2016.)

And Penny, who has always been the most middle child in our family--part of the older sisters, but also still young enough to have played constantly with the boys--was still pretty little herself:

These three were, with the addition of their tiny new sisters, in the process of becoming "the older three girls":

And even the three big kids were not really so very big:

(Abe was still only a 9th grader when the year began. By fall he'd just begun high school and had started using the homework spot on the edge of the kitchen table where he'd spend hours over the next few years. He'd also begun mountain biking for Weber High.)

(Goldie was still in elementary when the year started. Junior high by the end of the year.)

(Daisy was in junior high. She turned 14 that year.)

It was just a huge family of children still pretty fully dependent on me and Mike:

There were other significant events in 2016 as well. The biggest being that my dad died. I have lots of pictures of that time, but it makes me feel sad seeing my dad in that state. But I did, with lots of tending help from the older girls, spend a lot of fairly sacred time in the hospital with him:

And there was a month of St. Simon's Island that year:

How strange it is to think that in another decade I might be looking back nostalgically at this one and saying things like, "We still had seven kids at home! Only two kids were married! Most of our kids weren't even graduated yet!" A decade from now we very likely will only have Starling still at home!