My shadow. My joy.

This is where I like him . . . right along side me. Helping me do everything. Some days it feels like nothing gets done this way. But I'm really not too determined to keep a perfect house or be "super mom" running everywhere and doing everything.

Really, my prayer in the mornings is a simple plea for Him to love my little ones through me and keep Himself and my husband in front of my children. I am so prone to prideful ambition . . . even when it comes to what seems good and right. But if it's not of Him - in His order, His time, His way, abiding in Him . . . it is all evil, empty hypocrisy.

I want my little boy to know that he has the ability to work. And work well.

Not because I plan on having child after child after child and need him, as the eldest, to do the work of it for me.

Perish the thought!

I want to wet his appetite for real life. I want him to see by working with me that God's design of work and family is good. Very good. I have never met a happy lazy person.

God gave Adam work to do before the fall of man.

Work is not a curse.

Fruitless labor, pain, and death are.

For Ezekiel, "work" is more desired right now than play anyway. I have to tell him to stay in his room where there are toys before he will "play" in a traditional sense.

When we go in the yard he wastes no time in setting to work, watering my flowers.

I was working in the kitchen yesterday after I had set him at his table to do puzzles. A short time later I heard him go to the hall closet. I observed him pulling the broom out. He marched over to where his table was and began to pull the chairs out and sweep under them. It was downright cute! His table is right in front of a window and, everyday without fail, there are little tiny bugs that appear on the floor as soon as the sun comes out. I had failed to sweep them up yet. Apparently he was quite disturbed and unable to concentrate on his puzzles until he did a bit of cleaning. ;-)

No, I am not completely naive.

I know that the day will come when he would rather run with the boys then sweep up my bugs.

Those will be good days too.

Right now I am just blissfully basking in the fact that my bundle of joy wants to be with me and praying that no mater how much my work load increases, I will never stop wanting him there. In my way. Right under my feet.

All day long.