Girl Time - Appropo

It's been a while since I posted one of these... We almost forgot how to take these pictures...

That's right - we SMILE!

Of course, this was back when we had something to smile about... I can't remember when I shot these, but based on the bright eyed you I see, I know it was before you got the flu...

Believe it or not, the bags under my eyes got even worse after this picture. Maybe it was later that day, or a few days later, but at some point after these pictures, you got the flu. The one your brother had, and despite us trying to enforce a quarantine of sorts, the one you seemed determined to acquire for yourself.

And so we spent a whole night like we used to. Me holding you because that was the only way to get you to sleep. True, for a few hours at a time at least I was able to lay you down and crawl back down to the couch to catch a few zzzzs before you coughed yourself awake and cried out for me, but it reminded me so much of when you were a baby and we would spend entire nights cuddled up, and my arms were the only place you seemed to find peace.

My baby girl. 

Birthday Wrap Up

So... After birthday morning came work, followed by leaving early and walking in the door at about 4:30 to a boy poised over a tower of presents patiently waiting for my feet to cross the threshold before he could tear in because all day he had heard "you have to wait for mommy to get home before you can open them." I would have preferred he been told "you have to wait until mommy gets home, puts on a comfy set of jammies, runs to the potty and then settles on the couch after giving you tons of squeezes before you can dig in", because it would have saved me from having to be the bad guy for all of about 2.5 minutes, but, nonetheless... he waited for me. With MUCH anticipation...

Which is why, when I sat down to watch, and we said go ahead, and he picked up a present and Daphne looked at me and said "my presents?" while reaching for one of her own, and I said "no, baby, it's Cooper's birthday, these are his presents" and her little lower lip started quivering and I began to feel like a total ass for not seeing this coming and he stopped in his tracks and handed her a present and said "It's okay Daphne, you can open one. I just want you to be happy" I almost died of an exploded heart.

And so it went - for every present he opened, she also opened one. He kept handing one to her, and she would open it with such excitement. I later asked Steve if he had talked to Coop and prompted such unselfish behavior and he said no, he was just as surprised as I was. But then I always wonder why we are surprised. This is our Cooper. He is so full of wonderful surprises, you would think by now we would be used to it.

Then came the homemade cake, because.... tradition. And there was no way I was going to bake something substantial enough to feed the bajillion people that came to his birthday (or so it seemed that many...)

We settled on Transformers after MUCH hang wringing in the party store.

There were LOTS of decorations.

And there was a bounce house.

And a face painter/balloon artist, a fake tattoo station, a make your own sundae station, chicken strips and pizza and a fruit tray catered in... It was complete and total chaos... which is why I have pictures of none of it...

Just some of the before and after.

Due to my aforementioned paranoia about not enough people coming, I went ahead and invited Cooper's entire class. All 30 of them. Plus other friends... had they all come it could have been close to 75 people here (5 is still the age where parents stay, you see). Though, consistent with RSVP rates, we had about 1/2 of that, which, by the way, in our wonderful house, seemed like 1000 people. Some showed up early, a few stayed late. We had to block the stairs from one young kid who kept wanting to give the grand tour (seriously, I was brave enough to host these people, but I had to draw the line at letting them take over both floors).

I think I have just barely recovered, but I can totally say it was worth it.