He's home.

In the past few years, Jon has had to travel three or four times each year to the States. Usually those trips are from five to seven days. We are always fine while he is gone. Fine meaning able to get through the day to day routine of life without needing any help. Benjamin and I together can even handle the super heavy and amazed bags of trash. We eat. We play. We learn. We have fun. We even sleep, mostly crowded together in the same bed, but we sleep. We can do life on our own. We don't need him to do life with us. But without him, there are several things missing daddy's good morning hugs, his silly and slightly insane laughter, kissy slams, wrestling matches, and a sense of wholeness that all of us together creates. We may not need him, but we want him.

He just got back from one of those trips. It was twelve days long. Much too long. By the second day, Logan was marking out all of the days left on the calendar hoping that real life would follow his commands, and daddy would come back tomorrow. The first night he was home again I could feel the difference. It's as if we had all been holding our breath without even knowing it,and we finally were able to let it out. The bed was really crowded that night as one by one the kids snuck in to be together.