Updated October 2023
Well, this is about the sixth or seventh time that I’ve revised this page over the years, and let me tell you… it doesn’t get easier with time. In fact, it’s only gotten harder as we’ve added family members, and as those family members have grown in maturity and complexity.
Thus, let’s start off with this: About Us is a great place to find a primer on my family’s history and structure, but it’s not a great example of my typical writing. (For that, you can check out Recommended Posts.) With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s dive in.
We (still!) live in Golden, Colorado — the proud home of Colorado School of Mines, from which both Taylor and I obtained Bachelor’s degrees in Chemical Engineering.
Upon his graduation in 2015, Taylor became gainfully employed at a medical device company in nearby Lakewood, where he is now the lead state machine engineer for a novel blood separation device. (…whatever that means.)
In contrast, upon my graduation in May 2017, I followed God’s call on our hearts and immediately conceived with the intent of becoming a stay-at-home mom. I gave birth nine months later to a beautiful and healthy baby boy whom we promptly damned with the name “Borealis” (“Bo” for short). You can read about his dramatic entrance into the world in my series The Birth of Borealis.
Bo has proven to be an intelligent child with all of my cheeky stubbornness and choleric temperament, plus all of Taylor’s mechanical inclination and single-tasking mindset. To our surprise, his recent pre-K tenure has completely flipped our perception of his social disposition. While he went into the year with all the hallmarks of Taylor’s aggressive introversion, he emerged as a very loud and very friendly extrovert.
We welcomed our daughter Australis (“Aza”) in November 2019. (This event is chronicled in my series The Birth of Australis.) She was everyone’s dream newborn: sweet, smiley, calm, and quiet. It helped that her arrival preceded the pandemic — you know, when everyone temporarily saw babies as virulent virus vectors.
As she entered toddlerhood, however, it became clear that our little angel had a sassy streak, too. She is incredibly full of life, and somehow balances many disparate traits: tyrannical and demanding, yet snuggly and empathetic; intensely girly, yet viciously tough; articulate and persuasive, yet often still incoherent and emotional. Basically, she’s the human Sour Patch Kid.
Our third child, Occidentalis, existed on earth for only a few weeks. We lost him in February 2021 — a tragedy that I recount in The Death of Occidentalis. Thus, my “junior year” of early-childhood parenting passed mostly in the shadows. Miscarriage is not easy to discuss, nor is it simple to understand, from the outside. Even so, the loss of my child was something that I had to put down in words — and yet, I couldn’t bear to do so until late winter 2022.
We stumbled into the start of our “senior year” barely a month later, with the arrival of our last genetic baby, Orientalis (“Rhys”). He crept up on everyone, even (or perhaps especially) on us. He was still a virtual secret until mere days before his arrival, which is currently only recorded in Cooler Genes Will Prevail. (Although, that list will eventually grow to include a complete birth story as well.)
Rhys has been the most surprising of our babies — joyful, and loving, and completely the opposite of the problem child we had timorously expected. He has an ever-increasing affection for his siblings, especially now that he can anticipate and dodge their puerile teasing. He seems to be the child most suited to sports and the great outdoors, although it’s still too early to tell whether he’ll actually have any real athletic aptitude.
And so, this is an interesting season for us: one of softness, and vulnerability, and healing. A passage from II Corinthians comes to mind: “We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed… struck down, but not destroyed” (4:8,9). And so, as we continue to walk forward in faith, we cling to the hope that we find in Jesus Christ.
Best,
Holly