Daniel and I had my sisters Jane (15) and Annie (12) over to babysit last Saturday night after Charlie went to bed. At least, that was the plan. Charlie usually might wake up and cry once or twice after we’ve laid him down, but all it takes is for one of us to go in and either hold his hands or gently rock his cradle and he falls back asleep. That is what we told my sisters when we left, which was at 7:30, right after I had put him to bed.

Apparently, though, Charlie could sense that the person rocking his cradle was not Daniel or me. Jane ended up picking him up and taking him out to the living room with her because he just wouldn’t go back to sleep. I told her to take him back when he started to act sleepy, but that never happened; Charlie was still wide awake when we got home from our friends’ housewarming party at 9:30. Of course, I fed him again and laid him down as soon as I walked in the door, and he was out like a light.

So the “easy” babysitting job for my sisters didn’t quite work out like any of us had hoped.

On another subject, I feel like I am being kept so busy taking care of Charlie that I am beginning to wonder how in the world I am going to manage taking care of multiple kids at once someday in the not too distant future. As the oldest in a family of seven children, I have seen it done. But I am really becoming concerned as to how I am going to manage it. My mom is much more competent than I am—she is much better at juggling multiple things without getting distracted and wasting time, and she’s much better at seeing something that needs to be done and doing it right away rather than procrastinating. Maybe that’s just something that will come with time, and once I have to be taking care of two or three kids all at once I will get the hang of it…

Speaking of the future, I am realizing how very much Daniel and I have a tendency to spend a lot of time dreaming about “someday” and planning for things that we are nowhere near being able to do right now—financially speaking at least. A couple of years ago we were so anxious to get married and live together, and I guess I thought that once that happened that would be enough for me to learn to be patient. But now we are constantly talking about plans for our new house and how we can possibly be able to afford to build it, looking at bigger cars for when we will need to carry more carseats around, and dreaming about vacations we want to go on when Charlie is older, etc.

We also look to the past and ask ourselves whether we made the right decision in buying the land and house that we did, etc. Of course, if we hadn’t done things the way we did, a whole lot of things in our lives would be different. We might not even have Charlie. So obviously things happened the way they were supposed to happen…but does that necessarily mean that the decision we made two years ago was supposed to be a permanent decision? Should we try to sell our land and buy a smaller piece of property so that we can afford a bigger house sooner? And then we look out our living room window at the rolling hills and the pond and the horses across the street and we fall in love all over again. With the land I mean.

Sigh.

Oh well. We are really trying to remind ourselves that we need to live in the present and trust in God’s plan for our lives from this point forward, whatever it might be. So, I will end with a song by Natalie Grant. Thanks for keeping up with my stream of consciousness!

“You told me not to worry
About what lies ahead
So I am gonna focus on today instead
Making every moment count and counting
Every single blessing
I’m gonna set my mind on the
Here and the Now
This is what I want my life to be about
And this is How…

I’m gonna live for today
I’m gonna follow in your way
I’m gonna let my little light shine
Like there’s no tomorrow
I won’t worry about the past
I know my future is intact
So I’ll choose to live my life one way
I’m gonna live it for today.”