As the season changes...

So does my perspective. Suddenly I looked at my belly yesterday and said, I'm sick of this, I want to see this child. This little person who is jabbing my side with his/her heel while sticking his/her butt up like a tower, might have hair right now and I want to know if it's a tow head like the other three. Is it a boy or a girl? What will it's name be? Are the toes just piled together like a haystack like the others? When it's been this long, it's hard to believe that this one might look just like the others. Every two years I cranked out a blonde haired blue eyed jewel... will this one wonder if he/she is even related? I remember being convinced as a child that I was adopted and my parents just weren't telling me the truth for some reason. My fantastical theory was based on the fact that my older siblings were more solidly built and had brown hair and I was a complete waif with pale blonde hair. I was sure that I was not related to them and anxiously waited for the day that Mom would sit me down to tell me where I came from. It never resonated with me that they were a normal size because they ate and I wasn't because I refused to eat. I think my perspective was that parents just told you things like that to make you eat. One day it occurred to me that perhaps there was a picture of Mom pregnant with me, if I were truly their child. I went through every picture album they had and found naught. Sometimes I would ask my mom about all of her pregnancies, little things just to see if she would slip up. If she voluntarily brought up her pregnancy with me I would listen very attentively for any contradictions or evidence. I honestly believed she was spinning a tale to convince me I belonged to them. I think I wanted to be adopted, probably so that my speculations would all be justified. I even came right out and asked Mom and Dad why I had blonde hair and they both always just laughed and said they had blonde hair when they were little too. I didn't believe them because Louis and Ginny had never had blonde hair in my memory. Then finally, when I was seven years old, my longstanding secret suspicion was put to rest. My mom had a baby and THIS baby had strawberry blonde hair and he was a giant baby weighing in at 11 pounds 5 ounces. Absolutely ANYTHING could come out of my parents, I was now thoroghly convinced.
Call me silly, but now that the girls are in school, I don't feel like such a spectacle. Walking around hugely pregnant holding a little boy's hand feels so normal. People assume he's my only child and that I'm overdue. It's a lovely charade, but only until people speak to me but because I am an attention hog. I always correct them and say that this is my fourth child and that I have several weeks left until my due date. It paralyzes most peoples vocal chords but they usually choke out a congratulation somehow.

I read a fairy book today

Nick asked me to read one of Eden's fairy books the other day and it was a real struggle. When a four year old has the attention span to listen to a 75 page book of drivel, you really do have to go ahead and read the whole thing because of the crestfallen expression if you don't. I tried to quit. I finally realized towards the end that half of the battled was me trying to sink back into the couch with the baby compressing my lungs making me feel like I was gasping for air as I read. We went on to read "Oh the Places You'll Go" which was fine because I crouched in front of the couch and I like that book. After that I was done but Nick had arranged 5 more books on the couch in what I suppose he fancied as a compelling display. We read all day it seems. Then Kait and Eden come home. Thank God Eden is reading books to herself but I have to read with Kait for a minimum of 25 minutes and go over all of her sight words two or three times and try to keep track of the weekly homework and monthly homework assignments for both of them. It seems like it would be more fun if I were able to read books about birth or novels by Francine Rivers to the kids instead of the 6,348th reading of "Green Eggs and Ham". I shouldn't really say that stuff should I? Scratch all of that, nothing fulfills me more than reading to my children, reading and reading and reading.
We are in the middle of a perfect family holiday weekend. We have done home projects, let the kids have sleepovers, played clue, roasted marshmallows, scored free tickets to the Rockies game and still plan to squeeze in a bit more! Jody took an extra day off of work and I think he's going to take the girls to school early Tuesday so they can all go to breakfast then spend the morning with Nick and me, then hang with Nick all afternoon while I fulfill school obligations then hit the Valmont Bike Park as a family when the girls get home from school. I wish that were a typical Tuesday for us. It has been the most relaxing, happy weekend in the world. I must go eat my grilled brat.