My Name Is Four

"Behold, children are a gift of the LORD; The fruit of the womb is a reward." - Psalm 127:3

Recently my wife returned to the world of full time work. It's been a transition in our household, with tasks and chores being shifted around, schedules being changed and a little unexpected chaos as the Captain of the U.S.S. Casa-Faggioli has been forced to leave by 7:30am each morning.

The kids and I braced for this change. None of us knew what to make of it, with Dad doing a school drop-off here or there, almost all the school pickups and - joy of all joys - the kids learning that having a self-employed father means, well, you get to go back to work with him after school for three hours each day.  God willing we'll be staffed back up in my office soon but until then, each day as we load up into my car after school I call a huddle, hands to the center, and the kids and I give a shout out as to how many days we have "survived" this routine. Yesterday was "10".

I feared this change would be a burden. Instead the Lord has made it a blessing. It's been revealed to me that before I wasn't just missing out on some things in my children's lives, but a lot of things. For example, I never knew what a zombie Sophia was when waking up every morning for school and I have taken great pleasure in doing the "good morning" dance for her each day, complete with out-of-key singing (most of you will have a hard time picturing me singing and dancing...trust me, you don't want to, it's pretty bad). If this doesn't work I flick the lightswitch on and off until she flies out of bed with her little paws up for a fight. She LITERALLY growls at me, with her hair in fifty directions and her eyes all puffy. Then, in spite of herself, she starts to laugh.

I also love hearing about their day; the way the girl that Anthony has a crush on perplexes him ("Dad, why is it that girls act differently around their friends than they do when it's just you and them?"), or what Sophia really thinks about this whole "color card" system in kindergarten ("It's not that hard Dad, you just don't get in trouble. But there's this one boy, he just doooooeeeesn't get it.").

I now get the chance to slip a little note in Sophie's lunch box or pep-talk Anthony the morning before a big test. They, in turn, can give me a head start on my day as well. Like yesterday, when I was leaving the house early and I saw a post-it note from Sophia that read : MY NAME IS FOUR. I had no idea what she was talking about, or what it meant, but it made me chuckle nearly the whole drive to work.