Annabeth,

"This almost makes me want another baby."

I looked to my sister-in-law, Dana, and it was hard to remember that this was my baby shower, not the one I went to years ago when she was pregnant with Sam.

I was five months along with our little bundle-of-joy, and it had gotten hard to hide my pregnancy bump. Eventually, I gave up, and I went to… the store.

There is nothing like a maternity store to give you a break-down, especially when you are a hormonal pregnant woman. But there is also no comfort like pregnancy jeans with elastic and the wrap dresses that feel like they were tailored to me.

Dana handled my baby shower, and I had to admit that it was adorable.

And I even liked the crème colored top she threw me this morning when she told me my suit was too business and that I needed to have some fun.

Fun, I had thought, My outfit will not make me have fun at this thing. Noah and Percy? They are going for ice cream and the aquarium with Poseidon. They will have more fun than me.

My mom loved the idea of getting a grandchild, and she already loved our little bun-in-the-oven. But she was not partial to the new wedding band on my finger, even if it did make her grandchild legitimate.

As my mother of course, I had to have her here. And Sally, and Thalia. Reyna and Piper, too. Hazel and Juniper. Dana and a few work friends. Rachel had to come, and even Drew and Clarisse (who strangely had a baby of her own, four year old baby Silena Rodriguez) scored an invite to the baby shower.

After the last hour of cute little games and picking out names (Kate loved the name Zoe and Juniper wanted me to name my child something that she could have all by herself instead of having to share it with someone from our past), I was finally free, and I used the excuse that my phone was ringing to get out.

The truth was that name-picking-out had been hard on me.

All of those memories swarmed around me.

Luke. Zoe. Beckendorf. Silena. And everyone else in between.

It was enough to make me sick for more than just the fact that the baby had made it clear that it did not like the fruity grapefruit drinks that Dana had.

Dana found me, knowing what was wrong with me because she remembered how it had felt to have her first baby shower.

She was a half-blood.

A daughter of Demeter that had been raised by a man who never complained. He never smoked or drank. He was an angel who fell in love with Demeter and thought he had found the one before she showed up one day with a baby in a pink blanket and tears in her golden eyes.

Things weren't that easy for Dana. Her father didn't want to tell her, and he didn't tell her about her mother until she was sixteen. Instead, he kept things a secret. At the birth of her daughter, Demeter gave her a blessing to be protected until she was eighteen. Her father tried his hardest, keeping her in a small town far away from New York City and the reality of the gods.

It wasn't until she was seventeen that she joined us at Camp Half-Blood, but she spent so much time working in the kitchen that Malcolm didn't really meet her until his first day of college when they ran into each other with their boxes and he accidentally picked up one of her boxes of cookbooks.

She didn't know everything like we did or understand all the tears, but she had her share.

Picking out Samuel's name had been a long and horrible process full of me coming home after a day with Dana and needing to hide in Percy's arms to keep from sobbing after being reminded of everyone we had lost.

Finally, it took the nurse staring at all of us with a birth certificate with "_ _ Moore" ready for us to insert his name for us to name him after her father.

If it wasn't for Dana now, I wasn't sure how I would be able to handle all of this.

I had been dreading my baby shower for this very reason, and I began to pray that the next four months would just hurry up so that I could put down a name already.

"Another baby, eh?"

"I said almost, Annabeth," she smiled, "Whenever I'm in the baby mood, I can always come visit my niece or nephew and leave when I want sleep. Do you realize that my kids just reached the point where they actually sleep at night? I'm not screwing that up."

I laughed, and I couldn't hold it back.

From everyone, I had gotten a different answer, and Dana was the only one left to ask.

"What is it like?" I blurted out before I could consider stopping myself.

"Kids?" she asked, knowing instantly what I meant.

I nodded, and she shrugged as she looked out to the party, where Kate was spinning around with Hazel. After a while, she looked back to me.

"You already know."

I stared at Dana, who had that "Mother-Knows-Best-Smile" that every mother has at one point or another, most of the time actually.

"Kate and Sam didn't get to choose me. But Noah chose you out of everyone. You're great with him, and I'm sure you'll be great with him or her, too," Dana smiled.

But that smile evaporated following the crash of something glass and the squeak of Kate's voice saying she was sorry. Dana mumbled a few curses in Greek under her breath, and she let out an apologetic smile before running off to her daughter.

I smiled to myself and let myself think it over.

I can do this, this time the voice in my head seemed more resolute, I really can.

I walked back to the party, and Hazel smiled as she held up a cupcake decorated in pink and blue.

"I think I want a baby now if it comes with the cupcakes," she smiled happily, and I rolled my eyes.

"Gods, did everyone suddenly decide to have a baby?"

"We're at that age," Hazel shrugged, "Well, I'm about seventy plus that age. But basically that age."

"Even Reyna is thinking about having a baby, and Clarisse already had one!"

"Almost two, I bet. Did you see the way she is scarfing down those cupcakes? You can be hungry, and you can be pregnant hungry. It won't be that long before little Silena gets a sibling," Hazel bit into her cupcake as I grabbed one.

"Oh my gods, these are good!" I smiled.

"I know. This table has strawberry," she pointed to the pure pink cupcakes, and her finger moved to blue ones, "These are blueberry. And the mixed blue and pink are a mixture."

"Are you pregnancy hungry?" I raised my eyebrows, and Hazel quickly shook her head.

"Y-You're kidding me, right? I mean, me? Me?" Hazel laughed nervously, and I continued to stare.

She moaned.

"I don't know. I might be. If I am, it's too early to tell."

"He'll be happy," I motioned for her wedding band, and she let out a small smile.

"Now, Annabeth," she scolded me like a little kid, "Don't you tell anyone."

"See? The Mommy-Instincts already kicked in."

"Hey, those look good, too," Hazel went off to the smell of chocolate chip cookies, and I followed right aft her.

Percy,

"Do you want the instructions?"

"It's a crib. I've put one together before," I told my wife like I knew what I was doing.

Annabeth rolled her eyes, reclining into a white rocking chair. The walls of the baby's room hadn't been painted yet, but the baby shower had given us so much stuff that we decided to go ahead and put some of it together.

Well, Annabeth decided and I put it together.

No, I tried to put it all together.

The black playpen in the corner had been easy, and the cute little toy box was filled with teddy bears and baby toys for when the baby was older. And I had a high chair set up in the kitchen, which I happened to run into every night now when Annabeth woke me up for cravings. Most of the stuff had been what you saw in the movies where you take pictures and laugh and get excited for the birth of your new born child.

Then she handed me the box with the crib.

Suddenly, the easiness evaporated and left me with an impossible-to-put-together crib.

For the last hour, Annabeth had been trying to get me to read the instructions, but now it was just the principle of the thing.

"I'm going to get started on dinner."

I looked away from the crib to Annabeth as she stood.

"I am going to order dinner," Annabeth clarified.

I nodded, and I went back to failing miserably while she went off to the kitchen.

I was beginning to worry that I was about to break the stupid crib and have to endure that look when we would have to get a new one.

My mind began to drift to Annabeth's, "You-Should-Have-Listened-to-Me" look and triumphant smirk.

"Daddy?"

I jumped, hitting myself with a piece of the crib by accident.

Noah stood at the door, staring at me.

He was still in his school uniform after not having to go to soccer practice today due to two months off, and his hands were covered in pen marks from finishing his homework earlier.

He grew last night, I noticed.

Noah seemed to look more and more like me every day, and I could tell he was getting older every day, too. No matter how many times he ran around in his Mickey Mouse pajamas in the morning and watched Spongebob, I couldn't escape that my baby boy was getting older.

Seeing him with Kate made things even more obvious to admit for me.

Kate had always been like Annabeth, and Noah had always been like me. But seeing them yesterday working on homework had basically thrown it into my face. Teasing my son that he would marry Kate and give us some adorable grandchildren had suddenly stopped being such a joke, and I found myself thinking about the real possibility.

"Hey, Noah," I rubbed the back of my head.

"You can look at the instructions."

"Noah, I can do this-"

"She just left to pick up Thai food."

I lunged for the pamphlet Annabeth had been taunting me with for the last hour or so, and Noah laughed at me.

"So why haven't you painted yet?" Noah asked as he sat down on the rocking chair with his adorable goofy grin.

"Well, we still have a while," I happily began making the crib correctly, "And we won't know if the baby is a girl or boy. I mean, we don't want to paint the room hot pink and have a boy."

Noah's head perked up.

"I thought you guys were having a girl."

"Well, we might. Annabeth is sure we will. But, you know, you could be getting a little brother in a few months."

I began to grin as the pieces of the crib fit together, and Noah shrank back in the rocking chair.

"Another boy?"

"Yeah, that'd be kind of fun, right?"

Noah looked to the door, and my eyes drifted to him, realizing how down his face was.

He tapped his thigh nervously (a trait of his when he was thinking a lot), and I opened my mouth to say something. But I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to tell him.

I had never been through any of this.

My mom and Paul adopted my little half-sister, Bay, but that was when I was nineteen and she was eleven. I was already out of the house when another kid came around, and it wasn't the baby of my mother's long-lost love who she just married and was crazy about.

I would love Noah just as much as I loved the new baby, and I had told him a million times.

But I began to wonder if he really knew that or not.

Before I could find something to say and comfort him, the front door opened, and I threw the instructions back to where it had been and went back to working on the crib.

Annabeth strolled into the nursery, my ex-office, and she happily held up a bag of Thai food.

"Who's hungry?"

"Yum," Noah stood, painting on a smile, and I smiled as well.

"Sounds great."