Lists.

I am a list person. To the extreme.

I have always been a list person. My dad loves to recall the to-do lists I would make as child. Back then, I'd have them right down to the minute "9:05 - 9:13 tidy up a bit" and so forth. I'm really not exaggerating. It was pretty bad. I spent way more time writing lists than actually doing anything.

And um, I think I still struggle with that. I have a notebook that I've been writing all my lists in and I have a lot of un-crossed-off line items. Page after page I just keep having to rewrite the same thing because I'm not getting it done. Of course I have to start new lists, half-completed lists are no way to start my day. I swear I've written "figure out food saver machine" on my to-do list for nine months.

Today I had a little freak out moment in accepting that I cannot get all I want to done. I cannot do everything I want. If I only did what I wanted to do every day, maybe I could try to master my lists. But if I want to be a good mom, I'm not going to accomplish as much every day. I will not get to complete everything.

Why this epiphany? Eli has been consistently having a two-hour afternoon nap every day. It's been great. I was getting pretty confident in this schedule, this long stretch of daily me-time. Today? Today Eli took one 45-minute nap. That's it. And I had such a looong list for my time today. Some boring things (make appointments, go through mail), some fun things (finish Eli's personalized family board book, work on free photo book, get my autumn decor out), some needed things (make supper, use up fresh stuff before it goes bad/find recipes, pick up Cheerios from floor) and on and on.

I have to choose, then, what gets done each day. What's important. I want a nice completed to-do list every day. But I need to accept that in this stage of life, that's probably not going to happen. And that's okay. [This is me telling myself that's okay.] I have an Eli and I'm a stay-at-home mom and that's pretty fan-flippin-tastic. I get to be gloriously busy and overwhelmed.

Sidenote: I do choose to do some selfish things to keep me sane like Pinterest and blogging and facebook... I could cut those out and get some more stuff done, but for now, the good of those outweighs the loss of time. Usually.

So I was going to edit this photo. I have quite a bit of photos to edit and organize, actually. And well, it's not going to happen anytime soon. So you get this really gray-ish photo. Oh well. It's us. Happy, blessed and glad to be alive.

Now who is going to come clean up these Cheerios?

-Heather