No promises that this will be all that inspired, since I am still wrestling with setting this thing up. But I just looked at the date on this and realized (not for the first time today!) that it is my eldest daughter's birthday. It takes the mind back nineteen years, to that little apartment we had when we first got married, and our first night home with the very first baby. She was so tiny, and perfect, and horribly loud. Little did we know she would scream like that for more than five months. It was a lovely time... being tired, and happy, and not knowing we wouldn't sleep for a very long time. Having babies... or bringing children home through adoption is like that. No one can prepare you for what it is really like. You can take classes, and practice breathing, or therapeutic parenting, or whatever... but no one can tell you what it really feels like. Or how hard it is. Nineteen years later, and six more children home, and the sad truth is, that it is not even nine o'clock and I am ready to head to bed. There are no babies crying through the night at the moment, but I am still tired.
