Happy Birthday Roo-Roo!

Andrew as a newborn Alexis with her new brother
Andrew today!
I didn't have time to make a cake *darn!* but we did find a perfect one for him at the store...

My son turns two today. We celebrated with my father and family yesterday with a corn maze/petting farm/hayride and cake, and today we are celebrating his birthday on our own. I took the kids up to the store and let Andrew pick out a few gifts he'd like and he is happily playing with his new set of little firetrucks, ambulances, 'coptors, police cars, and construction vehicles. I also bought the kids a wooden block playset and a little "activity pack" for playdoh that has a rolling pin, cookie cutters, scissors and other things made just for the play doh.

I made a present for him also - a book about trucks and tractors. A few years back my husband worked for a trucking company that gave out truck cards (think baseball cards, with a truck on the front and owner/truck info on the back). He collected all of them and I was thinking at first i"d make a matching game for the kids out of them because there were a lot of duplicates. Then I decided I'd just laminate 6 to a page (setting out the duplicates, not sure what I'll do with them yet), and use last years firestation calendar (laminted and cut to fit), then I went through the catalogs/magazines we have set aside for our ABC scrapbook and I cut out all the trucks, tractors and other transportation and laminated a sheet of them. Then I comb bound all of the pages. The lamination SHOULD hold up to my sons abuse... He has been in love with this. My family got him a lot of truck/vehicle activity books also, so now he'll have something to "do" while i'm schooling Alexis. He REALLY wants to be a part of schooling and is not happy unless he's at the table doing something with us :-)

I had to stop by Once Upon A Child to get my son some shoes (and I was hoping to find some gifts there also, but didn't see anything he'd like). I made a SUPER find on some shoes for him - FIRETRUCK sneakers that are black and white with firetrucks on the side. They're velcro to boot, so he can put his own shoes on now :-) One thing I didn't realise until after I left the store was that they're the kind that light up when you run around. I'm not a huge fan of them, but I'll deal with it because my son is in love with his shoes that feature his passion. And plus, the light up portion includes tiny lightbulbs where the lights on the firetruck are and it does look kinda cool up close.

As I think any mom does on the birthday of her children, I've been replaying the labor and birth and early postpartum hours when he was born. He was born before 6am, at home. My husband caught him with my midwives here to help. Alexis once again slept through the birth and woke up around 8am or so. I was already in bed with my son when she woke up and the look on her face when she saw her new brother was amazing. She didn't really understand what was going on - she was about 18 months at the time - but she knew there was someone there smaller than her and she liked him. She took to him right away! I thought the early days were kind of rough because of the two being so close in age, my daughter being needy, and my husband having a hard time playing Mr. Mom. I look back on those days and can't imagine how I could think it was so hard, considering now we have three under three and a half - it must have been a bigger adjustment going from one to two, as opposed to two to three.

Time goes so fast. I can't believe my son is already two years old and is such a big boy. I am truley thankful that my husband keeps me home to be with the kids while he works. Not only because I feel that I am becoming the wife and mother God intended for me to be, but because I can be with my children every day and watch them as they grow. I have no regrets about wishing I could spend more time with them. This is time going by that we'll never get back. Each day comes and goes, and all we are left with are the memories. I pray that the memories my children have growing up are good ones, and I pray I can lead them on the right path as they grow up, being able to say no to evil and having the wisdom to know what is good and bad. Most of all I pray they come to know God, truley know Him, as a result of how Bret and I are raising them. I pray we are giving them the knowledge and tools that they need to develop their own relationship with Him - the belief that Jesus is their savior and this world isn't, a love for His word, a desire to talk to Him, knowing that all decisions must first be discussed with Him and ears and hearts must be open to listen for the answer, the strength to say no to things that go against His word and the ability to stay strong in faith when Satan sends non-believers their way. I pray they are a blessing to everyone else as much as they are to me, and that they make a positive difference in this sometimes dark world.