Voices

Weekend mornings are the best.  The pace of the morning is so much slower, as we're not in an all out sprint to get up, shower, make breakfast for the boys, get them to school and get ourselves to work.

One of my favorite things to do is listen to the boys talk to each other, as they wake up on a Saturday or Sunday morning, before they come downstairs and get into our bed to read and play on JP's iPad.  We still have the baby monitor set up in Joe's room, so as it turns out we can hear pretty much everything going on in both rooms.  Handy.

At bedtime, Jude always tells the boys what time they can get up the next morning.  Occasionally, there's some negotiation involved but most of the time, they're fine with what she says.  Like clockwork, they start talking 10 or 15 minutes before 7 a.m. (today's time) or whatever other time they're supposed to get up.  Usually, Joe starts talking to JP first, JP answers and away they go.

On mornings like this morning, their conversations are hilarious.  Sometimes, Jude and I just lay in bed and laugh.  I wish I could record their conversations and listen to them 10 years from now.

As I got dressed this morning after taking a shower, listening to the boys jabber back and forth, I was struck by how different JP's life would be - and ours, too - if we hadn't have had Joe.  When Jude and I talked about having another child after JP was born, we always came back around to the thought that we wanted JP to have a sibling.  I thought, in our world, this was even more important because we were older parents.  I was worried about JP having to deal with Jude and me as senior citizens without any help or, more importantly, without anyone to talk to as he watched us grow older.

JP's life (and our, of course) has been enriched in so many ways by Joe.  Being a big brother is a role that JP assumes naturally.  He's good at it, almost all of the time.  Joe's inquisitive nature requires JP to answer an endless stream of questions, which he does with patience.  Somehow, Joe seems to complement and enhance all of the best things about JP's personality.  I also think Joe fills in gaps for JP, engaging him in conversation and discussion when he (JP) might tend to be more quiet and contemplative.

It's hard to imagine JP without Joe, getting up in the morning in solitude and quietly walking downstairs to our bedroom.  That would be so strange.  They're like peanut butter and jelly.  They just go together, a perfect match for our family.