I'm 25 weeks pregnant. I'm getting round, and gaining weight, and it's starting to get more noticeable in my daily life. I can't bend as well, I'm short of breath more frequently, I'm tired all the time, and between the hormones and the lack of sleep lately I'm also pretty cranky.
Yesterday was fantastic. Cooper had so much fun. All the other kids there were a fair bit older than him, but he had a good time anyway. He primarily hung out with his older aunts and cousins anyway. I'm talking the ones in high school or college. Jojo is his favorite person on the planet right now. He followed her around off and on all day in between activities. It was pretty cute. The party was fun. There wasn't a whole lot of non-dairy foods, so I was pretty hungry by the end, but Cooper loved it, and it was a blast watching him run and play and learn and get to experience the holiday fresh. He doesn't remember his first two Easters.
My family has a tradition for the egg hunt every year, called the booby egg. Basically, there are all the bright, pretty, candy-filled eggs for the hunt, and then there is one REALLY ugly hard-boiled egg. It's dyed to be as ugly and gross looking as possible. It's always the hardest egg to find, and some years it takes HOURS before some clever little kid unearths it's hiding spot. The person who does, gets a bunch of money. Since Cooper was the very youngest by a few years, he didn't even really understand the egg hunt. Instead of running around getting as many as he could, he was fixated on meticulously getting every egg that the faster kids had missed, and he opened them to find out their contents before putting them in his little bag. Of the nearly 500 eggs between 12 kids, he maybe got 25. But he got all the ones hidden in the trees that the other kids bolted past, all the ones tucked away in the flower beds or nestled in bushes. Once all the plastic eggs had been found, the hunt for the booby egg began, and all the bigger kids started searching high and low.
I told Cooper there were no more eggs to find, and that we should go play a game, and we started the walk around the VERY LARGE (about the size of my house) koi pond that had 7 or 8 HUGE koi fish. It was so big it was also stocked with crappie, and a bunch of the older kids and their parents were catch-and-release fishing earlier in the day, and catching craw dads. As we were walking around the pond, Cooper saw a pole that was still in the water. All the other had been packed up, and this one was still out in the water, unattended. Cooper LOVES fishing, and got so excited. We didn't bring his fishing pole because we didn't know there was going to be any fishing, so he didn't get to fish earlier. It was my uncle's pole, so I hollered up that Cooper wanted to fish, and asked if I could help him use Marshall's pole. He got a huge grin and he and my uncle Seth both hollered back to let him fish. So I did. I held the pole steady since it was much bigger than Cooper's little pole, and he reeled it in and was just tickled that he would get to cast it and catch some fish.
As he's reeling there is something silver on the end of the line, and I laughed and told him, "Look, baby! You caught a can! That's good. The fish don't like trash in their pond." Yeah. It wasn't a can. They had put the booby egg in a sandwich bag, then sealed it with duct tape, and put it at the end of the line, in the water. So Cooper found the booby egg. The bigger kids were PISSED, and kept trying to get him to give it to them, and kept asking me, "What is a baby going to do with all that money? You're his mom. You can tell him to give it to one of us." He just kept saying no, and went back to fishing. Meanwhile all the adults emptied their pockets of change and small bills into the pot as per tradition. Cooper made $24.09. I'm going to round it up to $25 and take him to get something special when we're in Boise on Thursday. Maybe I'll let him take it with him to his grandma's so she can take him to pick something out. Whatever he wants to do, really. It's his money. Little squirt found it fair and square.
After the party, Cooper was supposed to stay the night at my mom's, but she called around 9 and asked if she could bring him home, because he was homesick. After spending a few nights with dad and Jo he wanted to be home with us. I got on the phone and talked to him and he was so sad. He said he wanted to come home and wake up with momma and have dinner at the table and sleep in his bed. He was crying. So I told him he's ALWAYS allowed to come home, and to get his shoes on so grandma can bring him back. He wasn't eating at my mom's because he was so upset, so she picked up McDonalds on the way and we all had dinner when they got home. He was so happy to be home. He kept saying, "I missed you, momma! So bad!" I kept telling him he can always come home no matter what, because we loved and missed him, too. That seemed to make him feel better. He stayed up until after midnight watching movies with us in our bed. Then Brandon and I stayed up. And then Brandon couldn't sleep so I woke up to help him relax and got him the Tylenol for his broken tooth. And then this morning I got up, found his work stuff, and made his lunch. I'm tired and cranky today. It's been a lonnnggg day. One of those days where I have to remind myself to take a deep breath and not be a grouch.
I'm thinking I'm going to hit the hay early tonight. I need it.
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