I'm totes working on your gift. I did make a delicious dessert in your honor but my family and I ate it.
In honor of your birth, I thought I'd share a little dream of our future.
Someday.
Someday, you and L will have children. Beautiful children. A girl, a boy, and a girl. And maybe, you'll be pregnant with your fourth child when I bring my children to visit you. You and L and your 3, almost 4, children live in a brownstone in some large city. Could be the cities, could be NYC. It's a dream. I don't ask questions.
So, one lovely summer day. I bring my 3 children, a boy, a girl, and a girl, to your brownstone. There are balloons tied to the black wrought iron fence. My children excitedly run up the steps to your front door to ring the doorbell. Before they can even press the lit button, your children answer the door, smiling, shouting, laughing. By the time I reach the top of the steps and you reach the front door, all of our children have disappeared to various parts of your home to renew their friendships.
We take a quiet moment to hug and catch up before we are once again peppered with questions from our young ones. I follow you into the kitchen and help you finish packing a picnic lunch for our day at the zoo. We laugh at our crazy ambition to successfully take 6 children to the public zoo on a Saturday.
Gathering our children, bending in knee length skirts to tie shoes and wipe faces with sunscreen, we hand off special items for them to carry. Blue water bottles. Pink and green binoculars. Bright yellow lanyards to hang around each neck. They buddy up and I lead them out the door with half our picnic lunch slung over my shoulder in a large carryall. A rolled up blanket in my arm. You follow them out, locking the door behind us.
We walk the few blocks to the zoo. Our children racing each other to the corner. The youngest girls laugh from the double stroller you push. I secure the hands of the eldest four in a long chain when we cross the street. Only one scraped knee makes for a successful transition to the zoo.
Our children clamor to go to the petting zoo. They willingly pose for pictures in front of each of their favorite enclosures. The boys run off to play hide and seek on more than one occasion, but I only have to raise my voice once when they attempt to hide up a tree near the lion enclosure.
The girls had their faces painted with butterflies and flowers. Our boys asked for superhero masks. It makes for super cute photos to frame for our walls.
We enjoy a picnic lunch by the pond where other families gather to eat as well. While we lounge, gathering our strength, the children eat their fill and then search out bugs and fish and chase the birds into flight.
You and I laugh and send praise heavenward for each of our special blessings.
Later in the afternoon, a meltdown and a small tantrum later, everyone is thoroughly exhausted and we sluggishly make our way back to your house. The youngest girls are put down immediately for naps. The older children congregate in the family room. I make you settle your pregnant self on the couch to read them a story while I put things away in the kitchen.
I return to the family room to find everyone asleep except my oldest girl. I settle into a chair and she snuggles under a blanket next to me and we talk about her favorite parts of our day.
She says she wishes we could spend every day with Auntie K, and I whisper "I do, too" as we both drift off into dreamland.
The End.
Miss you!
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