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As a child, did you dream of what you would be when you grew up? Mary Lou Retton and Sarah Hughes dreamed of Olympic gold. Others dream of seeing their name on the cover of a book or making closing arguments before a judge and jury. Some dream of a hut on a mission field or of typing President and CEO on their resume. I had one of those dreams. I saw myself as something like Susannah Wesley, with 13 children and an apron over her head while she prayed. I dreamed of a son or daughter who would, in the hands of God, impact the world. I dreamed by the adage, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world."

I married right out of Bible College and taught in a Christian school for two years. That was long enough to convince me I belonged at home with babies. At the end of my second year of teaching, God blessed my husband and me with a beautiful baby girl. My dreams were coming true. I truly LOVED being a full-time mom. I planned to stay home, feed my family only nutritional food, be frugal enough to live on one income, homeschool my children, and live happily ever after.

The first check point came when I tried to use cloth diapers. I had been given a few weeks worth of disposable diapers as gifts. As we neared the end of that supply, it was time to break out the good ol' cloth diapers. Four hours and 26 diaper changes later, I was faced with a choice: Invest in Dreft and pollute the remaining water supply in the state of Texas, or make Proctor and Gamble rich buying disposables and contribute significantly to a couple of landfills. I had to figure sanity was worth something in the equation-mine in having time between diaper changes to use the bathroom myself, and my husband's, who does not tolerate such things as a house smelling of wet diapers. The disposables won out.

Lesson #1: Your children will teach you more about parenting in one month than you learned in the previous 20 years.

So I began the journey of doing what I loved, what I was made to do. But the picture looked so different than I had expected.

Three years later, God blessed us with our second daughter. With this addition came another realization. While I might be a mom of 13 like Susannah Wesley, my husband was not the father of 13. I love Jim dearly, but it is true that opposites attract. It is one of Jim's unique characteristics that he needs, not likes or wants, NEEDS order. Did you ever notice that order and lots of kids do not tend to go together?

Our second daughter turned my husband's world (not to mention mine) upside down. By 3 weeks of age, she was crying all night. We assumed she had colic. When it didn't go away, we had to consider other options. We settled into a pattern and so did she. She slept from 8 a.m. until 11 a.m. every day. Then she was awake and progressively more distressed for the next 21 hours. When Lerryn was 4 ½ months old, we learned a new term-infant insomnia. There were days when this child was awake for 30 hours straight! Eventually, we did learn the source of her problems and she began sleeping but it was 7 more months before she was out of our bed and 2 years before she had good sleep patterns.

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