Another Happy Birthday

Last week I talked about snowstorms in the Willamette Valley and that son was born during the second of three......the final one, naturally, was three years later when younger daughter was born on this date. I had the phone number for the local ambulance service next to the phone in case she decided to arrive while it was still so icy that getting out of our parking lot wasn't possible.

This baby girl was a delightful surprise – and yet she became the “finishing touch” to my family. She remains the best surprise I've ever received - I can't imagine not having her. In the early days, many hours were spent rocking her with 4-year-old sister on one knee and 3-year-old brother on the other. We were a warm, cuddly little bunch.

This little girl had such a unique personality. I was so pleasantly surprised when she started sleeping through the night when she was only two months old – neither of the other two cared about sleeping for months and months. She had such a docile, laid-back personality. Even when she was cutting teeth, she only kept me up one night.....and when I checked her in the light of day, she had five teeth coming in at once......FIVE! I would have cried too.

When she was three, she was really sick with pneumonia for quite some time. As most parents will tell you, it's really scary when a little one is sick. And that was truly a turning point in her little life. Up until that point, she was a very compliant little girl. If she cried, you could talk her out of it. If you needed her to do something, all you needed to do was ask. She seemed so happy just to be on this earth. Until the pneumonia. Somewhere during that siege, she learned how to say the word “no” - and mean it. I still clearly remember the first time it happened – I had given her some baby aspirin to help bring down her fever, along with some orange juice to wash them down. Within a few minutes, they came back up. The next time I tried to coax her into taking the aspirin, her memory kicked in and she said “no”. And I couldn't talk her into it.

Yet as good as she had always been, this was the child who glued my piano keys together. I sat down to practice one day and was more than a little surprised when the bass keys didn't move. I looked, and there was semi-dried Elmer's glue all over and between the keys. My only salvation was that it was old glue, really thick and tacky. It hadn't run down under the keyboard. I was able to take a thin paring knife and dig the glue out from between the keys and off the top. I asked her if she put glue on the piano, and she very honestly told me she had. When I asked her why, she said, “Because I was bored.” After I composed myself, I suggested that next time she was bored she should go play with her dolls. She brightened up and declared that was a really good idea.

She often tagged after her brother, playing football and basketball with the neighborhood boys. This had as much to do with her brother's friends having really cute younger brothers tagging along as it did with her being a tomboy. The only childhood broken bone we sustained came when she and her brother were having contests seeing who could jump off my kitchen stool the farthest - she broke her arm.

I don't think she realized all the perks that were associated with being the baby of the family. When she went to kindergarten, I was able to be a room mom. We went on a lot of field trips together. When the other two graduated and went to college, she had me all to herself for three years.

Like the two older kids, she checks in with me frequently. My “baby girl” is part of the tech generation – she calls me with the sync on her car on her way home from work almost every day. It's nice to know she enjoys having me keep her company on her commute!