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Wes and Charlotte Charlton, with children Penn, Nora and Isaac.
Photo by Corey Miller
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Photo by Corey Miller
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Photo by Corey Miller
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Nora Charlton
Photo by Corey Miller
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Isaac Charlton
Photo by Corey Miller
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Penn Charlton
Photo by Corey Miller
Charlotte was one of 50 girls who made up the 200-person student body at Christchurch School in Urbanna back when the school was not yet fully co-ed and girls were accepted only as day students. Dr. David Charlton was Head of School, his son Wes was a boarding student and his wife, Wendy, served as a mentor to the girls. “I definitely fell in love with his Mom first,” Charlotte laughs.
The high school sweethearts met when Wes was 16 and Charlotte 15 and were together for 10 years before marrying in 2009. After graduating law school at the University of Richmond, Wes got a job offer in the Northern Neck and the couple settled in White Stone, happy because their parents were nearby and they wanted to start a family.
After several years of unsuccessful attempts and fertility treatments, they agreed that adoption was the logical next step. By Christmas 2012, Wes was in his first year of practicing law and the couple began the adoption paperwork after being told it could be a one- to two-year process. Seven months later, a birth mother chose them, and their daughter Nora was born at the end of July.
The Charltons have a solid relationship with Nora’s birth mother, emailing with her and meeting up a couple times a year. “It’s been really cool to talk to Nora about being adopted since she was a baby,” Wes says. “We wanted that to be woven into her self-identity from the start.”
Because they wanted two children, when Nora turned one, they began the paperwork for a second child, anticipating, again, that it could take up to two years. Instead, within weeks, a Florida birth mother chose them and their son Isaac was born 14 months after Nora.
Preparing for Isaac’s first birthday party, Charlotte felt like something was off. She was excited about the cupcakes being served, but turned off by the wine. The next day she pulled a pregnancy test out of the drawer—a remnant of the infertility years—on a hunch, took it and got positive results. She then took another test, which confirmed that she was eight weeks pregnant. Two weeks earlier, confident that they wouldn’t be adopting any more children, she’d given away all their baby clothes and paraphernalia. Son Penn was born in 2016.
“Had we not dealt with infertility, we wouldn’t have Nora, Isaac or Penn,” Charlotte says of the spacing.
“The kids are 5, 4 and 3, and we all laugh together and cry together,” Wes says of their hectic life. A lifelong musician who lived in Nashville before returning to Virginia to marry Charlotte, Wes has recorded three albums: “American Bittersweet,” “World on Fire” and his latest, “Morning Stars,” which was the Out of the Box CD of the Week on Paul Shugrue’s NPR radio show.
His passion for music has been passed on to their children who regularly put on concerts like Daddy does. He and daughter Nora have even begun writing songs together. “We have a huge fireplace and that’s their stage,”
Charlotte says. “Nora is the ringleader with the microphone, playing ukulele and Isaac is on drums. When she used to say ‘Hit it, Isaac,’ he would literally hit the fireplace, but now he gets it and begins.”
Music is Wes’s way to find personal time amid family responsibilities, writing songs, arranging the music and playing all the parts after the kids are in bed. Despite less time available to play shows, he’s still managed to perform in D.C., Richmond, Nashville and New York over the past two years. At Charlotte’s suggestion, he wrote songs for each of the children, all of whom know their namesake song by heart.
“With the kids being so young, we’re just coming out of survival mode,” Charlotte says of the time before both boys were sleeping through the night. “It’s been unspoken since then that we both need time for ourselves to decompress.” A former English teacher at St. Catherine’s School, Christchurch School and Middlesex County Schools, she uses her limited “me” time for exercise, listening to podcasts and engaging with other moms about parenting.
Because the children are in bed fairly early, the couple can sometimes plan dinner date nights at home. For their tenth anniversary, Wes took a week off from the position he took last year as Director of Advancement at Christchurch School so they could enjoy each other’s company. They speak by phone on his drive home from work to share the important parts of their day, knowing that it will be impossible at home. “We have to hustle to carve out time for each other,” he admits.
Charlotte feels lucky being able to stay home fulltime with the children, acknowledging that the two best resources possible are nearby. “Both our families are local and we love for the kids to have one-on-one quality time with their grandparents,” she explains. “And the natural resources here mean they can play make-believe games in the woods for hours without needing anything but imagination.”
Both agree it takes a team effort with three children under five, a Golden Retriever named Emmy Lou Harris and a kitten named Wolfie (short for Wolfman). “Charlotte is the glue that holds it all together,” Wes asserts. “But she’s better looking than glue.”
“My job is with the kids because this is their time,” Charlotte says of being able to see them grow and learn daily. “And that means constant intangible balls in the air.”