Overwhelmed

I have the opening line of the theme song for "The Wonder Years" stuck in my head this afternoon.  "What would you think if I sang out of tune, would you stand up and walk out on me?"  Would you think less of me if I told you that I'm a bit overwhelmed right now?  The very last thing in the world that I want to do is complain about my life.  I have a wonderful life, I just feel like I constantly and consistently fail at it.  My days are filled with a very vivacious 19-month-old (today!) who is exploding with words and new things she can do.  As her mommy, I feel like I am always struggling with how to channel this never ending energy into positive things and teach her well about the world around us.

My nights are filled with an extremely active little boy who is sitting pretty low at this point which means lots of trips to the bathroom and middle of the night stretching.  As his mommy, I feel like I do a bad job remembering that he's even there until he kicks me in the ribs because my mind is so occupied by his big sister.  I am always putting off what needs to be done and bought for him because his birth is still so far in the future in my mind.  It is hard to believe that he could be with us on the outside in as little as six or seven weeks!

In short, God has been so gracious and generous with me and I want to do what He's given me to do well and I just flat out don't know how to.  But I want to.  I pray for my children all the time, I just don't know what else to do to put them in the right paths.  So, if there are any seasoned moms out there reading this, what do you do in the day to day?  Activities for a toddler?  Advice for handling the day with more than one?  I know that it's a broad question, but any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks for (once again) listening.

This Guy

He has a birthday today.  He's not very psyched about his new age, but I rather think he keeps getting better, so I say, bring on those big(ger) numbers.  It's all relative anyway, right?

Eight years ago today, my family was right smack dab in the middle of Grace's adoption.  On that day, September 14, 2002, the social worker who was writing our home study was coming to have family dinner with us.  It was a rainy Saturday.  For my part, I made a chocolate chip cookie and whipped cream dessert.  She came, we had dinner and she went. But there was dessert left over.  Later on that evening, my little brother and some of his friends came over along with a couple of the youth workers from the church where he went to youth group.  I was excited because one of said youth workers was Brian, a guy I had met a couple of times and I thought he was really good looking and interesting.  And low and behold, it was his birthday!  The guys put candles in the rest of the chocolate chip cookie dessert I had made and we all sang "Happy Birthday" to him.

Two weeks later we went on our first date.

And I've made him birthday cakes ever since then.

Happy Birthday Babe!

The Ever Exciting Life of Els

Learning to love on babies

I may be a bit biased, but do they come any cuter than this?

The final voyage of Wanda the Honda

This girl loves to wear my shoes

"Don't even think about touching this spoon, Mommy.  I can feed myself!"

She loves muffins.  Especially when they have chocolate chips in them.