Im having a bit of trouble lately with my work/school/homework/housework/life balance. Why I chose now to commit to daily blogging is beyond me. I guess maybe I hoped that a writing discipline might help me focus my energy and allow me to explore the reasons I'm struggling this way.

In any case, I had a very busy day. We took the girls to church. We essentially had a prayer service this morning, where an hour of the service was spent in individual prayer. I have to admit, I have prayer ADD. This is the kind of thing that makes me cringe when I hear "spiritual, but not religious." Because I am decidedly religious, but not so much spiritual. I did my very best to stay focused during prayer, but spent a lot of time reading the Bible in an attempt to at least not start thinking about completely unrelated things. I'm sure it's a good practice for me, though, so I will look forward to our next opportunity to spend that time in silent prayer.

When we got home, I made lunch, then got the girls down for their naps. Once they were down, I left Andrés with them while I went to the public library to get some books for a research project I'm preparing to write. For the first time since I was a child, I applied for a library card. It was pretty exciting. I came home with plenty of research material and some not-really-leisure-but-also-not-for-an-assignment reading.

When I came home, I made coconut, chocolate chip, oatmeal cookies for Andrés, who was spoiled by them while my mom was in town. Now I must avoid the cookies like the plague.

I also did about six loads of laundry and did the always dreaded try-to-find-all-the-clothes-the-baby-has-grown-out-of-so-that-you-can-put-them-away-for-good dance. I'm sure as soon as I send Andrés out to storage with the bins of outgrown clothes, I'll find twenty 3-6 month onesies, but for now I'm pretending I've found them all and stowed them away.

What I didn't do was write my thesis proposal. (Why, you may be asking yourself, would anyone write a thesis proposal if they weren't intending to write a thesis? This would be a good question. But my degree program is sadistic and requires even non thesis writers to take Thesis 1.) It's due tomorrow, so I suppose I'll have to try to get it done between morning and evening classes.

Let it not be said, however, that Andrés doesn't help around here. He helped get the girls dressed and down for nap. He took clean laundry to the bedroom so I could deal with it there later. He ate cookies. He even helped put away clothes, a chore he hates completely and for which he generally lets me be responsible.

He starts his job on Wednesday and may be leaving me (alone!) with my children for a week(!) as soon as next week. What will I do when that happens? Will I be able to maintain the blog? Will my homework get done? Will the children go feral? Stay tuned to find out!