Tadhg Turns Three! (A Belated Birthday Post)

Blogging these days is hard. The boys are currently in the garden hunting for treasure (a.k.a baby potatoes that escaped detection during last year's harvest). Marnie is cooing at a plush dinosaur baby toy that used to be her brothers'. And I'm trying to click-clack at a fast clip, 

[And then life happened mid-sentence, as it usually does. Brother mediation. Discipline. Washing grubby hands and feet. Nursing a baby. Changing a two very stinky diaper diapers. Getting boys on couches with their requested book stacks for pre-nap wind down--Dr. Seuss for Pip and Jan Brett for Tadhg. Nursing again. Reading books. Singing songs. Putting everyone down for naps.]

Yeah. Blogging is hard these days.

As Tadhg and Pippin grow, good discipline and good conversation and good mothering require more time, more of myself. Less of myself? My self runs out fast, leaving me in a place of a) ugly sin or b) real-time learning that having everything we need for life and godliness in Christ is more than ink on paper. That any love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control my children receive really, truly is from God's Spirit and not from me. 

All of that was a bunny trail, though. 

The point of the post? Tadhg is now THREE!!!

He truly is our little philosopher these days. The questions come hard and heavy, and Rundy and I are loving them. His imagination keeps enlarging, and I am daring to hope that someday its boundaries will be as far-flung as some of his uncles'. He has a fiery temper, and he and I sin together and forgive together and grow together daily. His fire, inexplicably, is matched only by his tenderness. His ability to see outside himself can be uncanny at times. He can be all gentleness. He still needs 'nuggle time every morning, and nearly every morning after half an hour goes by I have to be the one to end it. 

"Tadhg, do you want to go play?"

"No. I want to 'nuggle more."

"Do you want to snuggle forever?"

"Yes."

Every once in a while Rundy or I will get a prolonged look inside his head when he's in just the right mood to talk for a long time. Most of the time he's definitely three, plain and simple. But in those moments? Moments when I realize how much thinking and imagining and puzzling over is in there that I'm clueless about? He seems about fifty. Those peeks are almost terrifying. I know my child; I don't know my child at all.

What a firstborn. What a heavy delight to get to raise him.

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It's been three years since he looked like this. What a strange thing time is.

The party day (represented by a bunch of blurry photos snapped on the fly). Colors chosen by Mr. Tadhg himself. He was fickle, thankfully; original picks included purple and black. 

He was so excited all morning he could hardly contain himself. There were birthday capes, see!

And cake! He said it was "pantastic!!" and "the most 'mazing cake"--how could you not spoil such a grateful boy on his birthday? The cake evolved that morning as I was making it. He wanted to add a river to his original vision (so that the vehicles would get stuck and have to be pulled out, of course). 

And cousins! 

And family galore!

He played with the cake for a good long time before we demolished it (the best parts aren't in the video, unfortunately). 

Digger delivering Tadhg's piece of cake, as promised.

And a very loved boy being given a veritable mountain of generous presents.

Tadhg has aunts and uncle 11-deep to spoil him just on one side. What does that mean, you ask? It means a KUBOTA REPLICA TRACTOR AND TRAILER. WITH A HITCH. AND A BUCKET. Pretty sure he was stunned by the magnitude of the gift. And the manliness of it all! His man-stature climbs to unheard of heights when he's using it. 

He also has cousins on the other side of the family who have taken to heart what it means to love unstintingly and sacrificially. Alas, I didn't get a photo of this particular gift-opening, but his boy cousins, Zeke and Aidan, were the possessors of a Super Amazing Thomas the Train Set with tracks and battery-powered engines. Tadhg loved that train set and has been enraptured by it on our last several visits to their house. What did they do?! They gave him the whole kit and caboodle. Not many boys are so loved. Thank you, Zeke and Aidan. Tadhg and Pippin play with it all the time, and you showed us so well what loving looks like (something Mama brings up at opportune moments when Selfishness rears its ugly head in our home). 

Tadhg had a fantastic party. Thank you to all who came, who showered him with such spoilage, and who love him so well. 

Post-party Pippin. 

Post-party Important Tractor Man.

Marnie's favorite part was when the streamers came down.

And one last thanks--to the Muffin-Makers, this one's for you. Yuuummm.