Beginnings

Below is our family Valentine photo. I took these photos two weeks ago, and then had the kids make all the valentines last week. But, I'm sure you've noticed that I didn't actually send them. This was because there was something I wanted to send with them, but that I was pretty sure I couldn't.

I remember, when I was younger, that my mother told me there are times in your life when you turn a corner you didn't know was there, and everything is different afterward. That you don't know that the corner is coming, that it can't be changed, that it can't be taken back.

But sometimes, I've found, you know the corner is coming. You know for a long time. You're prepared for the corner by a loving Heavenly Father who knows that the corner will be a difficult one. For us, that corner came this Thursday.

Corners are not always bad. In fact, I am sure if we could understand completely, they are never truly bad, but that they are always for our good. Usually the change that comes with them is so meaningful, so huge, and so wonderful that you don't even know what you're getting yourself into.

Like the change that comes with your first baby.

When Elise Lora Wood came to us five years ago... I was still a baby myself. I remember they asked me if I wanted to hold her right after she was born and I thought... what???? I need to sit here and recover... I mean, I just had a baby come out of me... didn't you see????

But afterward, when I'd grown up a little and they handed her to me, Ellie just looked. Just looked and looked. Already she was Ellie, taking in the world completely. She always had her mouth open and her tongue out. We like to say that she was ready to talk from the beginning.

When Margaret Kathleen Wood came to this world, she decided doctors were optional. The nurse checked me, saw her little head crowning, yelled "stop," and ran from the room.

Meg and I decided to start saying "no" right from the beginning. It's been a running habit ever since.

And if you could say our Meggie slipped into this world - quickly and sneakily - you could say that Grant Quayle Wood did not. With Grant, I became one of those screaming mommies from the movies, my yells echoing down the halls. It was classic. A fact Justin used to comment on, until I told him he'd better stop commenting.

With all of my babies, I have had special dreams. I don't know whether they are perfect measures of my family, and I don't know if they will all come to be, but they are meaningful to me.

With Ellie, I had two dreams. One, where I knew she was a girl, and saw her for a moment. And another, where I had a dream of a red-head, jumping on her Daddy's lap. This, of course, was a dream of her sister.

With Meg, I had a dream of a little boy. Her brother to come next.

And with Grant, I had several dreams. A dream of a little boy in another room, that I couldn't see, but knew was there. A dream of a little boy lined up next to his siblings: 1, 2, 3, 4. Then, a last dream, just of the baby himself. Distinctly brown-eyed, arms and legs lifted, almost like Baby Moses looks in The Prince of Egypt as he is placed into his basket and allowed to slip away into the river, away from his mother, and onto the life he must live.

Last October, I knew I was pregnant almost immediately by the fact that I had another dream, about another baby. About the 5th.

But before that, of course, before that other precious child, the little boy I'd dreamed of with Grant needed to come.

This particular pregnancy was always different from the others. Meggie called the baby "Ennis," a word she made up, but that I found was a real name, its male version meaning: "The Only Choice." It felt fitting. I had known this pregnancy needed to happen when it did. I had actually changed an apointment because the timing had felt that it needed to be just so. That the timing had needed to be just now. The only choice.

I had known that there was certainly a plan for this child.

And by mid-January, our family began to realize -slowly and gently - what exactly this plan would be. That this little one, with his distinctive brown eyes, would not be coming to join our family here on Earth right now.

This past Thursday, at our 20 week ultrasound, this truth was confirmed. And on Friday, Justin and I went to the hospital to deliver our little one's body. All went well, and we were blessed to wrap a little blanket we'd made about him, and to let him know that we loved him.

Clark Ennis Wood was born at 8:20 pm on Friday, February 18th, 2011. I was glad that he came to us when Justin and I were alone together. And while we could not see him as he will one day be, we saw his little hand, and his perfect little spine, and loved him as we'd loved the others when they came to us as well.

Full of promise, full of eternal lfie.

Sitting in my room, I was glad to be in a place where nurses would leave our room to enter others and place squawking, screaming babes into the arms of their parents. Babes with rolls of fat, and rosy cheeks, and sweet-smelling heads. Babes that will keep their mothers and fathers awake for weeks, insist on wearing fully pink outfits - whether it looks like they're from the 80's or not, eat gum out of garbage cans, and become insanely excited when anything remotely similar to basketball comes on T.V.

For life is beautiful. So very beautiful.

And families - as I know for certain - are together forever.