The Koop family, unmasked!

(Brendan)

Up until now, there really hasn't been much in the way of pictures of our family on this blog, and that hasn't been intentional or a result of some sort of paranoia. We simply didn't have a good, recent family picture, and when you have kids this young, it means that a good family picture from just a year ago is already woefully obsolete (kind of like your cell phone). But, we have a family tradition of doing a full-out photo shoot about 4-5 months after every baby with a family friend of ours who is a photographer. We did this about a month ago, since Max was 5 months old, and just got the pictures back. We thought you might like to see a few pics of our young family.

Here's our oldest, Clara, who is 5. She is in kindergarten in our homeschool and doing fantastically well. She is by far the most responsible child in our family (even when controlling for age, just trust me), and will soon fill the role of junior mom, we are sure. She has told us, unprompted, and on multiple occasions (the latest being yesterday), that she would like to be a nun. We always tell her to continue to pray for God's will for her, and that if being a nun is what God desires for her then that's what she should be. We have found her praying alone at different times and asked what she's praying about, and she says, "I'm praying about my wish. I'm asking God to help me to be a nun." As Molly says, it makes you get a little misty sometimes.
Our next blessing is Aidan, who is 3. He has an absurd amount of energy, and an absurdly sharp mind. He is the proverbial "human tornado," capable of totally deconstructing a room within 5 minutes of unsupervision without even realizing what he just did. He is very bright though; by osmosis he has learned quite a bit just from being around Clara while she is homeschooled. Part of Clara's curriculum is memorized poetry, and Aidan simply listens in. When it's finally time for Clara to perform her latest poem in front of the family, if she stumbles or forgets a line Aidan always corrects her! Or he'll give her the first few words of the next line to get her going.
Next is Eleanor, who just turned 2 on September 27th. Eleanor has a very similar temperament to Aidan, except she is by far the most bossy of the kids. She's told Aidan or Clara to "stay on timeout!" on occasion, and frequently makes use of the phrases, "No! Mine!", "No I not!", and "No, Daddy do it!" She loves to laugh, and is our only child who has dimples in her cheeks when she smiles. She and Clara share a room currently and spend lots of sister-time together.
Maximilian, who is now 6 months old, is our easiest baby to date. All three other children, especially Eleanor, were very high-maintenance babies. Max is a very relaxed, go-with-the-flow baby, who is mostly just happy about life. He also simply needs to watch the chaos going on around him to be entertained, so there's no reason for him to be bored. He puts up with a lot of "glomming-on" by his siblings; Eleanor has had to be corrected of her habit of sitting on him recently, and Aidan is always in his face. Clara, though, has been quite helpful in holding him on occasion, or even entertaining him for a half-hour at a time. Max is our biggest baby, and will probably be our earliest crawler, which is coming up soon (yikes)!
And here's the Koop family together:
Praise the Lord for His many blessings and the gift of life!