Julian goes on an easter egg hunt

Julian seemed fine this morning, despite his sorry day yesterday. In retrospect, his persistent temperature all day with no other symptoms at all, all gone today, plus the hives on his hands, makes me wonder if something else is going on.

For the third Saturday in a row, Julian's soccer class hasn't happened. The first week, it was postponed, and the last two weeks, the rain-soaked soccer fields have been closed (is this what it's like to live in Seattle?).

It was cloudy and sprinkling this morning too. In the late morning, Dave took the boys outside to kick a ball around anyway, and I dejectedly checked email. Bing! Turns out, my 2004 mom's group, which is a much larger and more active group than my 2002 group, had an easter egg hunt and potluck scheduled this morning. I checked the clock -- it was 10:55am, and the gathering started at 11am, at a community room at a sports store in Sunnyvale (hastily relocated from a park due to weather). I quickly cut up a cantaloupe to bring for the potluck and grabbed Julian -- just in time actually, since Dave was about to take Gabriel on a bicycle ride.

The 2004 group has quite a few "senior citizens" like me, including two women who are 43 and 44 and who are both hoping to get pregnant with their 2nd. They both seemed genuinely happy for me about our little October surprise, which made me feel good. Unexpected pregnancy stories have to be hard on women who've gone through years of fertility treatment, but they were nothing but gracious and excited for me.

Most of the gathering was kids eating and moms (and a surprising number of dads) yakking, but the highlight was the Easter Egg Hunt. Egg hunts rarely last more than a few minutes, especially when the group of kids has a lot of very enterprising and determined little girls! Julian was his usual hesitant half-bewildered self when the kids were let loose in the area with eggs scattered around -- he just didn't know what to do. With my help, Julian came away with 4 eggs filled with cheerios and Goldfish, and he really liked carrying his paper-plate "basket" around. Toddlers can be tyrannical, but they are so cute carrying baskets!



I was very glad to have a fun thing for Julian to do on this rainy day. And it's always easier on us to have the boys apart, despite the fact that they play together, really together, happily more and more these days. Still, they might play great for an hour, but you never know when you have to drop everything to make sure no one's bleeding.