It is not entirely unheard of to have children in one’s twenties. Â I’m 27. Â By this time in my dad’s life, he had two kids (me and my sister). Â It is not as common to have three sons all over the age of 14 at this point in one’s life. Â In fact, I hope it is super uncommon. Â Thirteen year olds should not, as a rule, have children.My eldest son is Nathan. Â He’s only about 5 years younger than I am. Â He adopted Amy and I as parents shortly after we got married while we were attending church at Waterloo. Â I can’t remember the exact circumstances of the adoption but for a while, he called us mom and dad. Â This stopped around the time that his actual dad passed away (at Christmas time, no less). Â Nathan (well, his wife) is going to have an actual squalling and messy biological child this year, so that is pretty exciting. Â I am kind of glad he doesn’t call me dad anymore because, though I am balding, 27 is far too young to be a grandparent.
My second son is one of the students at Amy’s school. Â We’ve been supervising the dormitories on long weekends since the year Amy first started teaching. Â Dominic has stayed with us almost every weekend since then and has started calling us mom and dad on occasion. Â He will sometimes call Amy ‘mom’ at school and one of the other long weekend students started calling her ‘mommy’ which is just kind of weird. Â Dominic’s birthday is a week after mine (as is Brian’s, another of the long weekend students) so we all went out for sushi together last year to celebrate.
My third and youngest son I have not yet met. Â His name is Daniel or Danny. Â He’s from Columbia and will be here this coming Sunday for a month. Â He is coming as part of an exchange through Red Leaf Student Programs with a group of about 20 other students for a fairly intensive ESL program. Â They’re going to get to do a whole bunch of touristy stuff up here and make some friends. Â Amy has been corresponding with him via e-mail and she thinks we will get along well as we are both into all kinds of music. Â Amy’s spent a good chunk of her March Break getting the spare room ready for him. Â I know almost nothing about Columbian culture so this should be an interesting learning experience.