Tag: motherhood

How I get everything done with 2 kids 2 and under

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

Ha. Made you look.

I lied. I don’t get everything done. It takes two days for me to fold laundry. I have a package by the front door that’s been sitting there unopened for six days, and counting. I need to review a 5,000-word article my editor sent me, but I keep forgetting because I have no time during the day and by nighttime, all my brain has room for are murder novels and cookies.

Also my toddler is in school most days of the week, so for a good chunk of the day, it’s really just me and a 3-month-old.

But really. If you saw my IG stories of me baking bread and making pizza from scratch, it might seem like I’m a productive mother of two, an Asian Ballerina Farm, except way less attractive and graceful.

I watch YouTube while I work out. It’s good background noise for me. I work out as much as I can when Woori naps in the bassinet, which can range from 10 to 45 minutes, though most days it’s about 25 minutes. Because as a new mother I used to search for YouTube videos on what baby products to buy, YouTube’s algorithm now targets me with all these mommy influencers, and pretty much all of them seem to have at least several videos with similar titles as this blog post: “My productive morning with 5 kids.” “Making a week’s meals from scratch with 4 kids.” “How I get everything done with three kids 3 and under!” “Getting things done as a busy homeschooling mom of 7 kids!” Somehow they are all super fertile and love homeschooling.

There are influencers whose sole content is to parade their gaggle of children while they can apple butter, plant their own organic herbs, and make loads of money marketing electrolyte supplements on YouTube, all the while homeschooling their kids, breastfeeding their newborns, decorating their house with vintage finds, and sharing a chaste kiss with their husband in the kitchen.

I hate them. I love them. And I watch them and their lives, wondering how they can make sourdough blueberry bagels each week (I’ve tried making those bagels— they take soooo much time!) and homeschool their gazillion kids and create content and put on mascara every day and keep their cool while their toddlers grab at their apron strings whining and demanding (which must happen off-camera, because I’ve never heard a single whine from their children).

I know how social media works. I know that much of these content is performance and entertainment. These types of videos generate clicks and follows and income, because for people like me at least, it’s content that seem inspiring, even if it’s inspirational only as far as sparking the intent to be half as productive. In reality, these content, at least for me, is at best mindless entertainment and at worst a cesspool of jealousy and resentment.

That said, I do bake a lot. I bake because Woori won’t nap for long unless I’m holding her. But I can’t just hold her in a comfy chair; I gotta hold her and jiggle and walk around, further aggravating my degenerative disc disease. So rather than just walk around holding her while staring into space, I wear her in a wrap and bake and aggravate my degenerative disc disease.

I’ve baked sourdough whole wheat bread and Japanese milk bread and peanut butter oatmeal cookies and sourdough cornbread and sourdough Irish soda bread and sourdough pizza and coconut granola and sourdough brownies and sourdough blueberry bagels.

Yes, I bake a freaking lot. Partly because we love to eat those things, and David gets sad if there’s no homebaked cookie for his midday dessert. But mostly because I like feeling productive. I like the satisfaction of holding tangible edibles that I’ve made with my own hands, even if my son won’t eat them because he’s a punk who only eats cancer-laden treats that come out of plastic packages.

I am addicted to feeling productive. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I amount to something, like I’m not wasting my life.

But of course, it’s just a feeling. A temporary painkiller pill that prolongs my addiction to feeling productive but ultimately still wondering, in moments of clarity, what I’m really living for, where my time has gone.

I’m a womb Christian and a PK who has had the answer drilled into my brain for decades: I live for the glory of God! I live to know and become more like Christ each day! Because He lives, I can face tomorrow! Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders, let me walk upon the waters, wherever you would call me…so on and so on.

But on the micro level, my heart doesn’t reflect that. In those moments when I start thinking about where my life is and where it’s going, I feel stabs of panic: What am I doing? What have I accomplished?

Not too long ago my former editor called about something, and in that conversation, he asked me, “Where do you see your career going in the next few years?”

And I told him, “Oh, my career is a deep, dark hole right now.” I chuckled as I said this, but the truth of that statement struck anxiety in me. Is this the end of my career?

Before I had Woori, I made a list of things I want to do once I quit working and become a stay-at-home mother. That list is laughable now for its optimism. It included blogging once a week, journaling daily, going to the farmer’s market, going to the museum, doing art, working on a novel.

I haven’t cracked open my journal or sketchbook at all, I’ve still not been to the farmer’s market, nor gone to the museum, nor even started the brainstorming process for a novel. The only thing I did check off the list is baking.

And whenever I think of that list, most of it geared towards productivity and keeping my intellect stimulated and setting pathways to a future career, I feel discouraged.

Jeez, relax, I tell myself. Woori’s only three months old. You’re only three months postpartum! Give yourself a break! But I also know that as Woori gets older and begins crawling, it’s going to be harder for me to do any of those things on my list. Realistically, I won’t be able to get serious about my career until my kids are in school, and even then, that all depends on their extracurricular activities and my own energy. What if my writing gets stale by then? What if I’ve fallen so far off the scene that nobody wants to hire me? What if I sink so deeply into the daily grind of parenting and homemaking that I don’t realize how much time has passed until the kids are out of the house and I’m in retirement age?

Those are the questions that prick at me when I sit and think about my future. Perhaps mothers who are way ahead of me in life stage, who have older kids and have restarted their careers, will think I’m being silly or myopic. But at 37, with two kids 2 and under, and perhaps, hopefully, a third baby one day, the shelf life of my career feels very limited right now.

Maybe that’s why I watch those mommy influencers. Because they literally make parenthood and homemaking their career. They do all the tedious chores that we all do but can call it content. Changing diapers and making one-pot meals are accomplishments, because they literally make money off it. They have numbers they can track to feel accomplished and successful: 10,000 followers, 100,000 followers, 1 million followers. They know they’ve made it when they score partnerships with big brands, receive mountains of free products.

I don’t ever want to be an influencer, but I’m envious of them, envious of the clarity in their work, trackable by the income they bring, measurable by the business they’ve built. Envious…that they can seemingly do it all.

That’s why I was surprised when some people who saw my IG stories of my baked goods and homecooked meals told me they’re amazed at how much I get done. That was never the image I was trying to convey when I post what I thought were just fun random shots on social media. I cut down on posting those things because I didn’t want to create an illusion of myself, or make people feel the way I do watching YouTube mommy influencers.

The reality is, I often feel unproductive and unaccomplished, and have had to significantly cut down on my standards for what I can get done in a day. Just going to Costco is a big deal. Getting the laundry folded and tucked away in closets is worthy of self-applause.

And as much as I daily marvel at what I have— a good husband, beautiful healthy children, a warm house, and the privilege to buy 15-pound sacks of flour— sometimes, I despair at the fact that such small tasks as doing laundry have become my biggest accomplishment of the day. That my standards have dropped so drastically, but even more honestly and embarrassingly, that nobody cares about that except me. I have faded silently like mist into the shadows of full-time motherhood, and nobody is thinking, “Something’s missing. Where are Sophia Lee’s articles! God I need her writing!”

And therein says a lot about the condition of my heart— why on the macro level, I know what truly matters in life; I trust that God is sovereign and all things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose; I know that I’m called to be faithful and grateful in this season I’m in. And yet in the minutes of my day, I’m disappointed and insecure, and I wonder, “But is that it? What’s next? Surely this is not enough.”

How do I get everything done with two kids 2 and under? I don’t. I’ve seen so many videos with such titles and I still don’t know how they “do it all.”

And I think that’s the point. These videos are created because there’s a demand for it. Because most parents like me are struggling to get even one thing done, and in this modern day, productivity is an idol, a status, a social class, and when we watch these videos of beautiful, well-dressed women maintaining an organic garden, a tastefully decorated home, and an armful of well-behaved children, they become our aspiration. No longer am I proud of getting the laundry done; the bar has been raised, the standard for adequacy set higher.

I remember studying Nehemiah years ago. In chapter 3 of Nehemiah, there’s a long list of names that people typically just skip over. I do, at least. It’s just name after name after name of people who are mentioned once and never again in the Bible.

But still— their names are in the Bible, read (and glazed over) by millions of believers over centuries and centuries. It is a huge freaking deal. And for what? For helping repair a wall. For scavenging rocks and stamping mud bricks and installing bolts and bars by an entrance called the Dung Gate. For doing menial tasks and manual labor, they got their names inscribed for eternity into God’s Word. Why? They were faithful to the task God called them to do, as lowly and humble as it is.

The world has their standards of accomplishment, and God has His. I suppose this is also what Jesus meant when he said, “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” God’s call for me isn’t to be a bestselling author, or a world-traveling journalist, or a supermommy. His standard for me is simply to be faithful to the task He’s laid in front of me today. And for now, it’s being a wife and a mother of two young kids.

I think back to my career as a journalist, and it’s humbling to remember how the amazing jobs I’ve had simply opened up to me, seemingly by chance. I had never heard of World Magazine until I started working for it. It wasn’t the job I had wanted, but it turned out to be the right one for me, and I had some terrific years there. And after I resigned, not having any jobs lined up, the CEO of Christianity Today called me to offer me a dream job, everything I’ve wished and prayed for. I didn’t go looking for those jobs— they came to me.

That’s a great track record of how God provided for me in those 11 years of my brief but fulfilling career. He’s been so faithful to me. So why wouldn’t He continue to be faithful? If He opened those doors for me, He can do so again five or ten years down the road.

And if my career has really ended for good, that’s OK. It means God has other tasks for me in mind, and they might seem lowly and mundane, invisible and unacknowledged to the eyes of others, but God sees.

He saw Shallum son of Hallohesh and his daughters as they repaired the wall by the Tower of the Ovens. He saw Malchijah the goldsmith, and Pedaiah son of Parosh. Which means He also sees Sophia Lee, wife of David, mother of Tov and Woori, as she tries to finish folding laundry while Tov literally climbs over her and Woori wails and wails on her bouncer, and at the end of the day, He celebrates with her that she somehow survived yet another day.

How we spend our Saturday with a toddler and a newborn

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

It is a well-known fact among working parents of young kids that weekends are now your work days. Your kids are not in daycare or school. In fact, your children have this innate ability to sense when it’s the weekend, because once Saturday morning rolls in, they somehow instinctively wake up before the sun even peeks out.

One day, when my children are much older and I have to shove them out of bed to wake them up, I might forget what these weekends are like, so I decided to record a typical Saturday for us with a 2-year-old and a newborn.

5 am: I hear Woori stirring. I climb out of bed shivering. My postpartum night sweats have been cooling down, but I still wake up with my hair and clothes kind of damp, and because we sleep with the windows open, it’s freezing.

I change into a dry T-shirt then stumble to the kitchen to grab my pump and warm up a bottle of refrigerated breastmilk. I bottlefeed Woori while I pump, nodding off to the sounds of her sucking.

5:30 am: I finish pumping. I throw the bottle and pump parts into the kitchen sink. Too sleepy to wash them. I swaddle Woori and place her back into her bassinet. Climb back into bed. She’s a little fussy still but I pass out and eventually, so does she.

6:30 am: Tov’s up! David gets up and turns on the TV for Tov. Saturday mornings, we allow Tov some screen time. He’s currently obsessed with a YouTube channel in which some brilliant guy’s making tens of thousands of bucks by creating videos of trucks and police toy cars driving around and getting into glorious accidents.

“Oh no!” Tov yells at the screen every time a truck crashes.

7 am: David heads downstairs to the gym to work out. Tov gets bored of his show so gallops over to my bed and starts making enough ruckus to awaken both Woori and me.

Welp, time to get up.

7:30 am: I make a matcha latte and try to nurse Woori while Tov literally climbs all over me. He grabs my hand and tries to drag me to his room, but I’m still feeding Woori. He begins whining.

Then he suddenly remembers he has a little sister and grins at her. “Aaaaaay!” He says, rubbing his hand all over her face while she’s trying to feed. Poor Woori. She tolerates a lot from her big brother.

I try to listen to a devotional podcast called The Daily Liturgy (my favorite) while nursing, but with Tov yelling and running all over the place and grabbing at me, I am so distracted that I have to rewind over and over. I also fall asleep while breastfeeding despite all the noises Tov’s making. As soon as the podcast is over, I forget everything except “His steadfast love endures forever.” Or something like that. Amen.

8:30 am: I try to eat breakfast. It almost always includes three soft-boiled eggs. The problem is Tov loves cracking and peeling eggs. As I’m peeling the eggs, he scampers over and asks for an egg to peel, too.

I give him an egg. He screams and cries. He wants a different egg. Fine. I give him another egg. He seems content with that one. He peels it but doesn’t eat it. It rolls on the floor, coating itself with dirt and crumbs.

Usually Tov doesn’t eat breakfast, so we stopped offering it to him unless he asks for something. But today he seems hungry, because he ate most of my eggs.

9 am: I try to give Woori some tummy time. She screams. I try to give her some face time, attempting to get her to smile. She shoots me an expression of pure disgust. Babies are delightful.

9:30 am: David trots up sweaty from his workout. It’s my turn to work out now. This is Mr favorite part about weekends now— I can leave Woori with David and get a full workout, instead of cutting it short because Woori decided to take a 15-minute nap, which is almost every day.

10 am: Welp, never mind. Woori is screaming her head off and David can’t get her to settle down because his man boobs are useless, so I cut my workout short and rush up to nurse her again. I’m kind of resentful that my husband got a 90-minute workout while I got barely 30 minutes.

11:30 am: Shower. Woori is perky and content now so she lies without fussing on her changing pad on the floor while I rinse off and do my morning skincare routine.

12:30 pm: I don’t know where the time has gone. We are dashing about preparing snacks, changing diapers and pull-ups, getting ready to leave.

We have a special treat for Tov today. We are going to Irvine Park Railroad! It’s a kids amusement park that offers train rides and paddle boats. I saw it on Instagram and we knew Tov would love it.

Problem is, Tov doesn’t know that we have a whole wonderful afternoon planned for him. We have to physically wrestle him to get him ready.

While David puts Woori into her car seat, I’m trying to cajole Tov to go down the stairs with me while I struggle with two heavy bags filled with essentials for baby and toddler. He wants me to carry him. I hoist him up on my other shoulder and say a little prayer for protection for my bad back. I have a feeling it’s only a matter of time before I hurt my back again.

1 pm: We somehow managed to all pile into the car. Both kids are strapped into their car seats. Tov has snacks. Woori is throwing a fit. She’s tired and hates the car seat.

We start driving east towards Irvine while Woori shrieks and yowls her displeasure. And then Tov starts screaming as well because he spotted David drinking a can of Waterloo sparkling peach drink and he wants it too.

The GPS says it’ll take us 2 hours to reach Irvine Park Railroad. Thankfully, Woori eventually tires herself out and pass out. Tov passes out too. So do I.

2:30 pm: We are getting close to the railroad park, only to discover that every entrance into the park has a half-mile-long line of vehicles waiting to get in. GPS says it’ll take us 40 minutes just to move 0.8 miles. WTF.

Turns out, it’s pumpkin patch season. We chose the worst possible time to come here. We jettison our plan and scramble for Plan B. We decide to turn around and go to Heritage Park in Irvine instead.

3 pm: I find a public library in which I can nurse Woori, while David takes Tov for a romp around the park. Pretty much every single person I see in that park is Asian. If I see a white person, 10/10 they are married to an Asian.

David and Tov find a water play fountain by the lake. Tov gets soaked. He is the only one splashing. The other kids are apparently not allowed to get wet. They eye Tov from their safe dry spot with envy.

We change Tov into dry clothes and look at the clock. 4 pm and more than an hour away from home. What the heck is there to do in Irvine?

4:30 pm: We head to Spectrum Center, a massive outdoor shopping center. Maybe we can get some coffee and a nice dinner? So exciting. Things we could have done at home without the waste of time and gas money.

Spectrum Center is packed as well. Lots of young couples and families. But Tov is the only child insisting on dunking half his body into every fountain in that center. And there are a lot of fountains. They’re beckoning to Tov from every corner. How can he resist? How can he not run screaming “Wawa!!!” to every fountain and dip his forearm into the pool?

When he’s not chasing fountains, he’s insisting on pushing Woori’s stroller, getting upset when we try to steer him away from people, bushes, and poles. When we finally snatch the stroller away from him, he flings himself onto the floor, prostrating like a professional mourner and wails. Fat globes of tears roll down his cheeks.

After 40 minutes of this, we’ve finally had it. Forget dinner! We are returning home!

5:15 pm: But first, coffee. We stop by the Citibank Cafe since David gets a discount with his credit card. He gets a coffee, I get a matcha latte. Tov points at a sugar-crusted almond croissant. He orders, “This!”

I order him a zero-sugar protein strawberry yogurt instead. He polishes it off.

My stomach growls. I realize I haven’t had time for lunch and Tov had eaten most of my breakfast.

We sit down for 5 minutes at the cafe but Tov, high on yogurt, hops and skips and yoddles and climbs all around as though the cafe is his personal play gym. I see a young Asian couple give him the stink eye and then glare at us.

I was you just five years ago, I want to tell that couple. Just you wait.

I grab Tov by the hand and we leave.

It takes us another 20 minutes to make it to the parking lot because Tov kept grabbing for Woori’s stroller and then running off with it as though drunk and drugged.

We speed home in roads that are surprisingly low traffic (prime dinner time), playing obnoxious Cocomelon songs to keep Tov quiet, and make it home by 7.

7 pm: I am ravenous by that point, but Woori is also starving so I run up with her to feed her again, but I also really need to pee, so I set her down on our bed and then rush to the bathroom.

As I leave the bathroom, I hear a BOOM!

Woori had fallen off the bed and when I run over, she’s on the floor with her head bang on the hardwood floor, screaming. I must have put her too close to the edge, and as she was jostling about, she must have slid off the bed covers.

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” I yell, scooping her up to check on her.

David sprints over to see what’s going on. “What? What happened?”

Woori is startled but otherwise seems OK. Babies have pretty sturdy heads. My heart, however, takes a good 10 minutes to finally slow down as I rock her and nurse her. Meanwhile, Tov climbs up and down my legs while I feed Woori.

Stomach growls again. I really need to eat something.

7:45 pm: We have leftover eggplant pasta for dinner. I wolf mine down over the kitchen counter while holding Woori with one arm.

We clean up while Tov makes more messes. It’s a never ending cycle.

8:30 pm: Bedtime for the kids. Our favorite time of the day! Cue hallelujah songs.

We bathe them both. David puts Tov down, while I put Woori down. Tov passes out the moment his head touches the mattress, but Woori wakes and cries a few times and needs me to rock her back to sleep.

9:15 pm: Me time. Me time. ME ME ME ME TIME!

Also the time when I consume the bulk of my calories. When I don’t have to shovel food into my mouth because the baby is crying. When I can sit and enjoy each bite while reading a novel. When no grubby little hands are grabbing for me, demanding attention. When my brain is not aching from overstimulation. When my ears are at rest because it’s all…quiet. Aaaah.

And because this time is so precious, I drag it for as long as possible. Which is why…

1:30 am: Go to bed. I am so exhausted the marrow of my bones are aching.

But this is the real reason why I’m sleep-deprived. I can’t blame the newborn. She’s a wonderful sleeper once she settles into the night. Every day, given the choice between recharging from more sleep or recharging from more quiet time, I choose the latter every single day. Hands down.

And just like that, a Saturday is gone.

What did I used to do on Saturdays before I had kids? Sleep in? Movie nights? Concerts? Dinner out with friends? All that seems like a distant dream a long long time ago from a land far far away.

And yet. Maybe one day I’ll read this post and remember it with fondness.

Nah. Who am I kidding. Definitely not.

Tov goes to school

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

OK, Tov is only 2, so it’s not really school. It’s more like a glorified daycare, except we still pay for his daycare to take loads of time off for every holiday including Columbus Day, spring break, summer break, and winter break.

Clearly, I have progressive ideas for workers’ rights until it inconveniences me. But seriously, we love Tov’s school, Valor Christian Academy. We love everyone who works there. They deserve a pay raise and all the rest they need, because they’ve created an environment in which Tov can really thrive.

David and I were nervous about sending Tov to school. He’s a very affectionate child and has had a hard time being detached from us since he was a baby. For countless Sundays, we’d drop him off at the Kids Ministry only to have a volunteer call us back because he would not stop crying.

The first time we tried to send him to daycare, he got kicked out within two weeks. We were so confident when we dropped him off, too. We had found a small, intimate mother-daughter-run home daycare that had terrific reviews. It seemed like the perfect transition for Tov from nanny to daycare. That first day, as Tov screamed and reached for me, the caretaker assured me that he’d adjust soon enough.

Nope. Every day I had to go pick him up early. The second week, the caretaker messaged us, saying Tov might just not be ready for daycare. He won’t stop crying, he won’t hang out with the other kids, he won’t eat, and because he commandeered all the attention of the one caretaker, the other caretaker had to mind all the other children by herself, and she was getting exhausted. We went back to the nanny. Tov was just not ready.

Now, almost a year later, Tov seems finally ready to fly the coop, at least for seven hours a day.

Before I gave birth to Woori, I had one full week with Tov after I stopped working and we let go of the nanny. That week, Tov was in heaven. I thought he might miss the nanny, but he didn’t seem to with all the omma time he was getting. We baked bread and muffins and cookies together. Walked to the library. Walked to the farmers market. Read tons of books. Went swimming. Had a playdate with the neighbor. Baked some more. He got fiercely attached to me then. One night, when it was David’s turn to put him to bed, he even pushed David out the door, saying, “Bye abba.”

David gaped at him: “You don’t love me anymore?”

“Toddlers his age just randomly do that some days,” I comforted David. (Sure enough, once Woori was born and Tov got a lot more one-on-one time with David, he told me bye too. Traitor.)

Despite my aching back and sciatica, I enjoyed those one-on-one moments with Tov. I knew I won’t get that back once Woori comes, and once Tov goes to school. He will be 26 months for only so long, that tender age when he’s still sweet and cuddly and in awe of me, not yet opinionated and manipulative enough to be called the dreaded three-nager.

That first day, both David and I went to drop him off while my parents, who were visiting to meet Woori, watched Tov’s little sister. Woori was two weeks that day— which means two weeks after one of the biggest changes to Tov’s life, he was about to face another huge transition.

We were both nervous and curious. How would Tov handle it?

We led him into the preschool area, with its big sandbox and playground and countless toys, and Tov sensed something was coming. Something he won’t like. He wanted to go play, but he clung onto us, making sure we were close by him.

OK. Time to split. We hugged him. We told him we love him and have to go, but we’ll be back. “We will always come back,” David told Tov. “Mom and dad will always come back.” Tov looked at David blankly.

“Bye, Tov!” I said.

“Bye, Tov!” David said.

Tears began spilling. Tov grabbed onto us, wailing, salty tears dribbling into his open mouth. He tried chasing us as we walked towards the gate, but one of the teachers came and lifted him up into her arms.

The next morning, we dropped him off together again, and once again, he screamed and cried.

It’s a little heartbreaking, but what can we do, but harden our hearts and walk away while our firstborn’s screams leave our ears and hearts pounding?

That first week, we picked him up a little earlier, right after his nap time. The second week, we picked him up later at our normal pickup time, closer to 4:30 pm, right before dinner time.

One afternoon, I entered the classroom as they were having music time. The children were sitting in a circle around a woman who was singing, with a few kids singing along. Tov didn’t see me, so I stood by the door, watching.

As a parent, I have tunnel vision. I walk into a room full of kids and all I see is our son; every other kid are just faceless, nameless blobs. I spotted Tov right away. He was sitting in a daze, staring into space, looking rather miserable, really, and not following along with the music at all.

Just then, he looked around and spotted me. He burst into tears. “Hi! Hi! Hi!” He yelled, jumped up, and ran towards me, arms stretched out, tears and snot dripping.

Up till then I’d been pretty stoic, but seeing Tov race towards me as though I’m his savior just shattered my heart. I wrapped him in my arms, kissed his face all over, and scooped him up.

I wasn’t sad because he’s in school, away from me for most of the day. I wasn’t sad because he was crying and having a tough time adjusting at first. I knew school is good for him; I knew he’d adjust soon enough.

My heart broke because I wondered when he’d stop running towards me with his arms out with this kind of desperate childlike need for me. I knew this period is short, and I wanted to engrave these moments into my memory, my heart.

Yet at the same time, my heart also sang because Tov knows me. Just like I had tunnel vision for him, he saw my face and immediately reached out because he recognizes me as his safe space, his home, a place to which he belongs. It is one of the best gifts I can give him as a mother: That our son knows he belongs somewhere, to someone. That he has a home where he can let down his walls and let loose his vulnerabilities.

No wonder God is so attentive to the orphans. We all need that place to call home. And for Tov, David and I are his home.

It’s been five weeks since Tov has been in school, and today, he loves school.

He still cries a bit when I drop him off, but as soon as I’m gone, he’s too busy having fun with his teachers and Big Buddies. He wakes up every morning eager to go to school.

Yesterday I went to pick him up and he was grinning and having a jolly time. He no longer cries when he sees me at pickup time, but— thank God for these sweet moments— he still runs into my arms when I arrive, delighted to see me, knowing home has come.