Volume

☕ Sunday Briefing Issue #057

No checklist today just something I’ve been sitting with.

My son just had his fourth birthday party.

This year was Paw Patrol.

A few days before that, my daughter turned one. Somewhere in the middle of birthday candles, wrapping paper, toys covering every square inch of the living room, cleanup, bedtime negotiations, and complete household chaos, I had this weird realization hit me:

I can’t imagine life without them anymore.

But at the same time, I can’t really remember what life was before them either.

The house is louder now than it’s ever been. Not just physically loud. Emotionally loud. There’s always something happening.

Somebody’s crying because the water didn’t have flavoring in it. Somebody’s upset because the syrup touched the pancakes wrong. Somebody’s trying to turn the TV up to maximum volume while everyone else is sleeping. There are toys everywhere, tiny shoes in impossible places, and somehow half-finished snacks appearing in rooms nobody remembers bringing them into.

A few years ago, this kind of chaos bothered me more than I’d like to admit.

Honestly, that’s part of why I started Crosswind Chronicles in the first place. Issue #001 was called Cleared for Chaos. Back then I felt like I was constantly trying to manage the noise. Control it. Organize it. Reduce it. I think a lot of parents do that at first. You spend so much time trying to survive the chaos that you forget the chaos itself is the season.

And somehow over these last four years, without really noticing it happening, I’ve started learning how to live inside it instead of fighting it all the time.

Not perfectly, obviously.

There are still days where I feel completely overstimulated and exhausted. Days where I fantasize about drinking a cup of coffee in total silence without hearing “Dad watch this!” from another room every thirty seconds.

But now, underneath all the noise, there’s this strange awareness sitting there too:

One day this house will be quiet again.

And honestly, I kind of loathe the day that comes.

That part surprised me when I first felt it because when you’re deep in parenting young kids, you spend so much time craving peace that you don’t realize the noise itself slowly becomes part of your identity.

The mess becomes proof somebody lives here fully. The chaos becomes proof that life is happening in real time.

And one day the toys get put away for good. The birthday themes stop changing every year. The bedtime routines disappear. Nobody cries because the pancakes got touched by syrup wrong anymore.

I know that’s normal. I know that’s life. Kids grow up. Seasons change.

But man, there’s something cruel about parenting too.

Not cruel in a bad way. Cruel in the way time always is.

You finally learn how to love the chaos right around the time you realize it won’t last forever.

Four years have already gone by in a flash. If I’m being honest with myself, I know the next decade probably goes even faster.

That thought used to make me sad. Now it mostly reminds me to participate harder. To stop treating this season like something to survive and start treating it like something to experience fully while I still can.

So lately I’ve been trying to remind myself of something simple:

Turn up the volume.

Dance in the kitchen. Laugh harder at the nonsense. Say yes to one more game. Sit in the mess a little longer instead of rushing to clean every second of it up.

Because one day the house gets quiet again.

And I have a feeling I’ll miss the noise more than I can possibly understand right now.

Until the next leg,
Jake
First Officer, Dad, Human Trying Not to Stall