Our Summer with Elijah

For most of the summer, we’ve had a sweet little newborn to care for. It was a wonderful experience having Elijah in our home, and we were sad to see him go, but realize the best thing for him is to go back with his mom and dad.

Elijah’s journey began back in May, when my brother and his wife welcomed their beautiful new baby boy. Elijah’s mom was struggling with some personal matters, and needed to get some help. My brother was thrust into temporary single-dad mode, and needed people to step up and lend him a hand too.

After our quick trip to Rocky Mountain National Park, we found out that my mom was trying to take care of little Elijah during this tough time. However, both Manina and I knew that wasn’t going to work. We didn’t really need to discuss it a whole lot, we both just kind of looked at each other and said, “we need to help out here.” Elijah was family, and we were clearly in the best position to take care of him.

The next day, Elijah came to stay at our house.

His first day with us was June 16, as a three-week old infant. He was a pretty good baby from the very start. He wasn’t fussy much and was generally pretty happy when not sleeping or eating.

At first, Manina got up with him usually twice each night, but after several weeks, she was able to get him to wake up only once each night. With everything else on her plate, it was remarkable to see how much time, love, and attention Manina could give to Elijah.

Manina cried when Elijah left. Throughout Elijah’s stay, Manina insisted she “wouldn’t become attached” and that she’d be “ready to have her life back” when it was time for Elijah to go back home. But, Manina invested and sacrificed and loved like she has with each one of our kids—like all moms do for their children. I don’t know how they do it, these mothers. Even knowing it was temporary, Manina gave Elijah everything she could, and it was neat to see her back in action mothering an infant.

The rest of us also really liked having Elijah around. Our older girls loved holding and feeding him, especially at first. The novelty wore off a little bit, but there were still fights over who got to hold him.

Jacob and Megan feigned disinterest, but almost always helped with Elijah when asked, and sometimes even when not asked (as long as no one was looking).

Katelyn and Claire had a special bond with Elijah and were great little caretakers when Manina needed some help.

Since we had all of our kids pretty close together, none of them really had a chance to learn how to care for a baby, since they were practically babies themselves. So it was a great learning experience for them.

Perhaps the cutest relationship was between Elijah and Drew. Drew quickly figured out the role of big brother. When coming and going as six-year-olds do, he would always stop what he was doing and sit down with Elijah for a few moments. Usually dropping to his knees and holding Elijah’s little hand, often giving him a little kiss on the forehead before running back out to play.

Ellie, of course, practically smothered poor Elijah. To her, Elijah was a real-life dolly. A baby that she could hold and snuggle and lay next to. Ellie would often cuddle up to Elijah where there wasn’t room, once even collapsing a little bouncy seat (no harm was done).

Elijah came with us practically everywhere, but he was such a good sport. He really did mostly just sleep and eat. His crying was very limited and he was usually pretty easy to cart around to whatever events we had going on.

Bottom line is we all loved having little Elijah with us for the summer. We miss having that little dude around.