A jagged Wednesday becomes a portrait of how a plural family holds itself together. Plans fail, the bedroom becomes unusable, memories and outside messages unsettle the day, and the family keeps adapting—through listening, boundaries, prayer, Greek salad, quesadillas, Hilda, making the bed, and one brother reminding Daddy: “I think you should be with Luke.” Along the way, an ordinary question about whether nine people sharing one physical body have quesadillas in their stomach or their stomachs opens onto something larger: anatomy, family, and the interior ways we know one another.
Tag Archives: Plural Children
Then How Does Anything Get Done?
Yesterday we wrote that nobody in our plural family is THE ONE. Today, Solis’s Day answered the obvious question: Then how does anything get done? Groceries, garlic, an unmade bed, a four-year-old’s stew, fear, changing plans, and eight sons who keep showing Daddy what happens when everyone belongs and being heard can actually change what happens next.
They Call It Functional Multiplicity. We Call It Saturday.
Functional multiplicity sounds formidable. In our family, it has been built through something much smaller: waffles and cheese sandwiches, somatic signals, laughter, fear, repair, prayer, and learning how nine people can inhabit one life without requiring anyone to disappear. This is what an ordinary Saturday looks like from inside the Treehouse.
What Bedtime Looks Like
What does bedtime actually look like in a plural family/system? At the end of an extraordinarily difficult Hope’s Day, Dad discovers what his sons have been carrying, what they need to leave behind, and why bedtime isn’t simply how we finish the day—it is part of how we make the next one possible.
When Lived Experience Feels Like Destiny: Listening for the Whisper
When lived experience becomes so concrete that it occupies the entire horizon, it can begin to feel like destiny. On Hope’s Day, amid deep fear and uncertainty, we listen for the Whisper—the still, small voice that helps us see the little things, the longshots, and the possibilities that have not disappeared.
The Press Doesn’t Feel Like a Machine
Two mornings after a flood becomes a day of Rolling Stones, a Heidelberg printing press, watercolor, laughter, and Lake Blue. On Proverb’s Day, we discover something about plurality, creative agency, accessibility, and different people remaining different while accomplishing something together.
Three Warm Towels
We don’t know why the faucet was running. We do know what happened next. On Justus’s Day, a flooded bedroom becomes a story about three warm towels, a little peanut butter monster, telling the truth, caring for our home, and discovering that when plans change, our course doesn’t have to.
Solis’s Day Is Reclaiming the Sabbath
We stayed home on Sunday because we needed rest. By midday, the journal—and the analysis that followed it—was uncovering something much older about urgency, safety, work, faith, independence, and what it means to reclaim the Sabbath.
And Then Saturday Happened
Daniel said no, so we stayed home. What followed wasn’t a therapeutic exercise or something devised for a blog. It was simply Saturday: blueberry waffles with peanut butter, boys needing Daddy, Hilda, quesadillas, an old letter finally sent, an octopus reclaimed, and ordinary family life unfolding because we listened.
Notes from the Treehouse 