The last person I kissed...

For most of my pregnancy with you, your name was Oliver. I think we got made fun of one too many times and a last minute decision via text message to your Daddy changed your name, forever, to Jack. Just Jack. After an Aidan, a Tristan, and a Rylan, people don't understand why we didn't choose Kieran or Julian to follow suit. But besides the fact that I was starting to get confused with all of the "an" names, you needed something different. Different, but classic. And of course, like most people, you grew right into your name. It has evolved over the years. Jackaroo. Jackaroni. Jackelope. Jackallopian Tube. Jackie. Jack-Jack. But mostly, just "baby." You'll be three in a few months. And you are still "the baby."

At first, I thought Rylan would be my last child. I was convinced. In fact, his birth announcements included the following quote:

"...the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that's love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she's gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She's the one you can't put down.”

― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

Except that when Rylan was around a year old, I started to realize that someone was missing. There was an empty chair at the dinner table. I'd look in the rear view mirror while driving our minivan and realize that there was an empty seat. Someonewasmissing Someonewasmissing Someonewasmissing. I began to know it and feel it with certainty. Our family was not complete.

Your poor father...I begged him for just one more and promised him it'd be the last time and of course he caved. You were my last stab at a daughter, but when the ultrasound revealed your gender, this time, I didn't cry. I just laughed and laughed.

Thinking that with the fourth baby, I'd have a lightning fast, easy-peasy birth, I was not prepared for the 22 hours of labor and your nearly-10-pound-body barreling out of me with searing pain that felt like all of my bones were going to crack right in half. This experience has now been overshadowed by the fact that you were born in my bedroom, into a pool of warm water, with a midwife standing by, watching, as I pulled your body from mine and lifted you onto my chest.

You are my little tow-headed boy. You are the one that clings to me, wrapping an arm and a leg around me while you sleep to make sure I won't slip away. You are dirty fingernails and bare feet and my days full of wonder and mischief. You are the entertainment, the amusement. You are the stubborn insistence. You are the one that gets toted around, carried, dragged, tickled to death and picked on. You are the mimic, the monkey, the laughter that carries us through each day. You belong, baby.

You are the toddler who cannot pronounce the hard "G" sound or the hard "K" sound. And so, at the most unexpected moments, you are the little one who stomps towards me with purpose and demands:

"Dimmy Tiss."

Your little pink lips purse and your eyes close, revealing your long, dark eyelashes. And I know, with absolute certainty, that my missing baby has been found, and I am helpless to do anything but obey your order.

With lots of love,

Your Mama (Rae)