Candyland... not a game for the weary....

Usually, I am not ready for my babies to come out.

I am just not one of those people impatiently counting the days down.  I am excited.  I like to imagine the baby.  I am ready to meet the baby, and hug it, and smell it.

But I am okay with it taking a few weeks longer.  I am okay with it not being quite time.

Because babies are harder when they come out.  They need to eat, they need to be changed, they cry and whine and moan.  They throw-up and poop and cause all sorts of awkward situations.

Besides, they have to - you know - actually come out.  And that is not all fun and sport either.

Nor is the exhaustion, hunger, and hormone delirium that comes with it.  (I don't like other people after 7:00 pm for about a month after I've had a baby.  Except maybe Justin.  On a good day.)

So, usually, I am just fine waiting for baby to come.  10 months... as I prefer to see it... is good with me.

This time, however, I am ready for baby to come out.

I have pretty much been pregnant with this little tyke for 15 months now.  With a brief "Candyland" hiatus in the middle where I got sent back to the beginning of the board game.

Seriously???? Does anyone like "Candyland"?  And isn't it for that very reason???  That game can last FOREVER.

FOR - EV - ER.

And February?  February seems very far away.

So, now I understand all those mommies who get sick of being pregnant at the end.  Still a month and a half to go.

Of course, they are cute when they come out:

Are You Okay?

When I was 16, I became a statistic.

Driving home from school on 3rd West in Downtown SL, I ran a red light and hit a truck with my mother's car.

I remember watching the hood crunch between me and the truck, amazed that this was actually happening, just like they'd said it would in Driver's Ed. (I have never owned a blue car since... BAD LUCK.)

I remember thinking the man who drove the truck I hit deserved 5 gold stars - count 'em - for walking across the intersection and ignoring me instead of - I don't know - screaming his head off at the stupid teenager who'd ran into his truck.

I remember going into a nearby business to call my mother and inform her I had totaled her only car. The one that she let me drive to school, while she rode the bus to work.

I remember the two kind men who stopped and told me that "this is what insurance is for, you know." That I "shouldn't worry." I remember thinking that they should date my sister because they were so nice.

But most of all, I remember what happened when my brother showed up to collect me.

You see, my brother Joey is 10 years older than me.
I am the only one who calls him Joey, but I think I deserve it. Consider the evidence:

1. When I was small, Joey used to chase me around the house with a porcelain rabbit my grandmother had given me. For some reason I was deathly afraid of this rabbit, a fact he was more than willing to take advantage of at any opportunity.

2. When I turned 8 and he baptized me, he threatened to hold me under the water where I couldn't breathe. And I think we all know how afraid of water I am.

3. His dog Murphy systematically chewed up all my prized stuffed animals when I was little. This is actually documented in photos. Bunny Care Bear with missing ears? Check out the Brittany Spaniel with the fuzz balls in his teeth. Do we doubt who took the pictures?

4. He regularly told me my entire body was covered in a birth mark, and that the small mark near my belly button was my only piece of "real" skin.

I could go on... but this is not the point.

Because that day, when I became a statistic, when I watched in slow motion my mother's car crunching to pieces, I didn't cry.

I calmly got out of the car.
I calmly made a phone call to my mother.
I calmly watched the police analyze the scene around me, and I calmly informed them that it was most definitely my fault.

And then, my brother came to get me.

I was waiting in the car. Staring at the hood.

Joey slid into the passenger seat, and he said:

"Are you okay?"

Because he loved me (full-skin birthmark and all).

And that is when I started crying.

****

When I was 28, I became a statistic.

And last week, when this happened, some poor college student was sent to deliver sandwiches to our house.

I opened the door and stared at him like he was insane.

"Yes," I said.

"I have a delivery," he said.

I - of course - hadn't ordered anything. But I can read - miracles of miracles - and I saw the message from the person who'd sent us a meal that day.

Poor delivery boy. He didn't have a clue what he should do.

Because that is when I started crying.

Kind of like when a friend agreed to make phone calls for me earlier in the day.
Or when a doctor we'd just met said, "No, it's not okay."
Or when E said, "Mom, why are you squeezing me so tight."
Or when M said, "Oh, I miss him."
Or when flowers and meals showed up.
Or when a mother at ballet asked for a hug.
Or when my sister called me - despite the fact that we don't make phone calls - and left a message - because guess who didn't answer her phone.
Or when my cousin told me to stock up on disgusting vegetable drinks.

Because they loved me (full-skin birthmark, and all).

And that may make me cry,

but it also means that I'm okay.

That's My M!

When I told M what we named the baby, she paused and then said - with a very serious look:

"I don't like the Clark part."

Then, she said: "And anyway, I want to name it Emma."

I said: "Well, we're pretty sure it was a boy."

And she said, with a long, drawn-out drawl: "No."

I said: "Yes."

She said: "No."

I said: "Yes."

Then she said: "Silly boy."

Like: What was he thinking, being a boy? Why, I oughta.

Later, when Justin talked to her about it, she commented, with a huge sigh:

"But she's a boy."

Funny girl.

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.

Watch Out

Today while Justin and I were involved in an emotionally charged "serious" conversation with someone outside our family, we all turned around to find that M was mooning us.

It is a full moon today, you know.

She further commented:

"I need to pull up my pants so she can't see my bum, huh?"

I think we all appreciated the lightening moment she gave us. Crazy little M.

(While she did this, E read her book in the corner... hello Jamie Robyn, and GQ licked the mirror in the room. Quite the trio.)