Happy Birthday, Ben!

This past Sunday we celebrated Benjamin's 2nd birthday. It was a fun day with a few of our closest friends with us to make the day extra special, and Aunt Claire was gracious to host the party at her house. Ben still has no idea about birthdays, but he did enjoy the balloons, cake and new toys! For the occasion, as a new mommy I could not help myself but dress the boys in matching outfits, hoping for a cute photo with my two beloved sons together, Ben holding Sam in his lap...this is what I got. Ben would have absolutely nothing to do with posing, or even sitting next to his baby brother! He was more interested in Aunt Claire's clock - he was quite sure that it needed to be closely inspected. Sam behaved quite well in his corner of the chair, and was content to sit with his Daddy for while, too.

Sam is now 2 months old - we laugh to think that we now have a 2-year-old and a 2-month-old. You can imagine our exhaustion. It is certainly wise on God's part to not allow us to know the utter exhaustion that awaits us as parents, or else we'd never have children. We love our boys so much and would never change anything, but we do look forward to a time when we can sleep for longer than 2 consecutive hours at a time.

Okay, back to Ben's birthday...I was excited to order an Elmo cake for Ben, since he really likes that little red monster. Score double for Mom that Elmo was riding in a car on top of the cake!! (Ben's second love is cars.) I had thought I'd be "Martha Stewart" and make the cake...but I didn't have the energy or the time (since Bryan had to spend the weekend replacing the doors that the burglars had kicked in the week prior, so I had both boys all weekend without much break)...so Safeway was my Martha Stewart, and I was not ashamed.

Ben is such a fun little guy. He is busy -- so very busy -- constantly. He is talking more and more, and repeats nearly everything that we say. When we think back to when he was born, and how he's grown in the past 2 years, it's unbelievable. Unbelievable that we are parents...unbelievable that Ben is a real little person (with a very real will of his own)...unbelievable that he's survived our parenting! Ha! (We have no idea what we're doing.) And it's unbelievable what a blessing he is to us, and how we ever did NOT have him in our lives - and now little Sam, too. How boring life was - what did we do without our boys? We probably slept more, but other than that...nothing else could be more important.

With that thought (and I know it isn't a very well put-together one)...this tired Mommy is heading for bed, to grab some sleep while she can.