Samantha Paige

Born April 20, 2013 at 11:03pm. 8 lbs 2 oz, 21 inches long. Absolutely beautiful.

Photos

So, I'm a little behind, but here are a few photos from Easter with our friends Nathan & Bailee.  All of these photos were taken by Kyle Harper, and are completely his property.  Thank you to him for allowing me to post them!!!

Patrick wins the award

For Best Husband & Father ever.

If you haven't been keeping up, I'm pretty much a whiny, pregnant mess.  I ache all day, and whine about it at every opportunity.  Simple tasks are exhausting, and . . . yeah.  You get the idea.

And Patrick - well, he has made the whole thing bearable.

Every morning, Patrick gets up and goes to the office and works his ass off to make sure we can pay the bills and eat and whatnot.  He comes home from a long, stressful day, and is often greeted by a cranky wife and a wired preschooler.  Most nights, he offers to make dinner, and (I hate to admit) I let him more often than not.

After dinner, he makes me a cup of cocoa, and then takes over child-entertaining almost exclusively until bedtime.  He does bath, because it's uncomfortable for me to sit in the bathroom.  He does bedtime because it's almost impossible for me to get up off the floor next to Miles' bed.  He does all of this without complaint, and indeed with more enthusiasm and fun than I can say.  Where he gets the energy, I'll never know.

After Miles is in bed, Patrick comes to make sure I'm comfortable for the night.  If I need a shower, Patrick will set up a stool in the tub for me, so I can enjoy the warm water a little longer.  While I'm showering, he fluffs the bed - which he has softened considerably by adding layers of comforters under the fitted sheets.  If it's cold, he'll take a hair dryer and warm the sheets to keep me from freezing.  Most nights, he rubs my back or my feet, trying to make me as comfortable as possible, so I can sleep.

Once I'm finally settled, he starts in on the chores, and the paperwork - doing laundry and paying bills until what must become the wee hours of the morning.  With all he does, I know he can't be getting more than a few hours of sleep a night.  Yet, he never complains.  He's rarely cranky.

Instead, he's ever-selfless.  Completely amazing.

(And probably completely embarrassed by this post. Love you, Honey!)

Blah.

I hate the weather.

I hate that it has such complete control over my mood right now.

I hate that for the first half of the week, it was sunny and bright and warm, and I felt fantastic and capable and awake.

I hate that now it's cold and dreary and overcast, and I feel exhausted and unmotivated and just plain tired.

I hate that I saw snowflakes this morning.

I hate that I have gone from sweating with the windows open to freezing with the heater on in a matter of two days.

And I especially hate that I'm losing my sense of humor about it.  No more cracks about Mother Nature needing some help for her mental disorder.  No more silliness about "only in the midwest".  Nope.  Now, I'm just grumpy and over it.

Woe.is.me. [dramatic fake-swoon]

Easter

First off, sorry about the last post.  I tried to do it from my phone, and apparently, all of the photos are grainy and awful, and I can't seem to get it fixed.  I will try to include those photos in a later post in higher res.

Now, onto Easter.

I love Easter.  I love welcoming Spring, and celebrating the Resurrection, and hunting eggs, and . . . well, all of it.  I love it for its Christian meaning, and for its Pagan roots.  And I love that the two have blended into a day that can be enjoyed by all ages, for a variety of reasons.

Growing up, my favorite part of Easter was our egg hunt.  Mom would stay up into the ungodly hours of the night preparing for it, I'm sure, but in my mind, it was totally worth it.  Each year, she would hand us a single plastic egg with a clue inside.  That clue told us where to find the next egg, and so on, until we found our Easter baskets, filled to brimming with chocolate and goodies.  I loved the challenge of it, and the excitement of the treasure hunt.  It was a tradition I always knew I'd pass on to our kids, someday.  Especially when I found out that Patrick's family had an almost-identical tradition.

Since Miles was born, I've spent each Easter pining for the day that he'd be old enough to do the treasure hunt.  I bemoaned the fact that it would be years before I could pass on this tradition.

Then, Saturday night, I had an epiphany.  Miles can't read, yet, and written clues - even if read aloud - would probably be a bit too difficult.  But the kid is awesome at pictures.  Maybe if I took pictures of the hiding places. . .

So, I took a ton of pictures and printed them out . . .

Then, I cut them up and put them in the eggs.  Each egg had a pictures of the hiding place of the next egg.  I got a tad carried away and did 20 clues, ending with the Easter basket hiding in a cabinet.  Patrick was skeptical that Miles would have the attention span for all 20, but I thought I could probably push him through the last 3-4 clues, and it would all work out.

We both underestimated our little treasure-hunter.

From the moment he opened the first egg, Miles was a bundle of smiles and concentration.  Sometimes, he immediately went to the hiding spot and picked up the egg.  Other times, he had to think for a few moments, puzzling out what that picture was portraying.  In a matter of minutes, though, he had flown through all of the clues, and found his basket.

"Where the egg?" he asked.  The chocolate bunny, the stickers - he didn't care too much about.  He wanted more clues.

I was thrilled.  Miles was thrilled.  Patrick was beaming.  It was a perfect start to a wonderful Easter.  I can't wait for next year. :)