youngest child

My Sweet Baby May turned double digits last Sunday! (I've actually never called Elia that, but I kinda like it, which means she probably won't.) If you haven't yet had the pleasure of getting to know my Elia, let me introduce her to you.

The name Elia (pronounced A-leah, Allijah, or even Aliyah) was the end result and compromise of being married to a teacher, who has taught every name under the sun, and so associates names with students. Our dear friends have a grown daughter named Elia, and we both have always loved this name. The spelling is Greg's request, as it is the feminine of Elijah, which is a lovely sentiment, but also means that Elia will have to be called a lot of things from people who don't know her well. (I told Greg this would be "on his head" if she got frustrated with it--you know, good supportive spouse kind of talk.) May is my grandma Dykstra's middle name.

We always knew we wanted more than one kid, but had not necessarily planned to get pregnant during our trans-continental move with a one year old. In fact, I was so sure that this wouldn't happen (guess I missed some information somewhere), that I not only drank celebratory wine, I also smoked a celebratory cigar. This actually may help explain a lot! No, I jest, because of course Elia is nothing if not charming, energetic, creative, and a heavy cigar smoker. Hmm.

I sometimes joke (with my new friend Barbara at our local grocery store) that Elia would still be inside of me had I not evicted her. And I carry large, as in people started saying in

January, "Why are you still here?" when I showed up at church. JANUARY. It's a small wonder no one got hurt. (See photo on right, with 3 months left to go. Greg and I believe Elia was tippy-toeing it straight out, but we're not doctors, so who's to say?) So my hope to deliver early was not for convenience sake, it was so I could stand for more than one minute without my heart pounding and my sciatica kicking in.

I'll never forget the first time we met. Elia squinted up at me, with her little nose, and I said, "Oh, she's beautiful!" Then I started blacking out (I'd apparently lost a lot of blood). Anyhow, besides the blood transfusion and excruciating back spasms (they felt like electric shocks throughout my body every time I stood up), we were delighted with our new baby, who broke her sister's record by sleeping in one hour intervals for the first few weeks.

While I thought for sure my life might be over with Kate

(more on that next week), I knew what to expect this time, so the first six torturous weeks went by without a glitch. Elia and I watched true crime shows into the wee hours of the night, until I became super paranoid of Greg's intentions towards me, and thought for sure my dad had done away with my mom after he answered their phone twice in a row. But paranoia, hallucinations, and back spasms aside, having two kids was a breeze.

There is a reason why second (or in our case, last) children are, as a rule, more laid back than their sibling counterparts --their parents have given up! Just kidding, but parents are more relaxed about things the second time around. When my brother was a baby, my mom would sterilize everything he touched and puree organic fresh vegetables for him to eat. When I came along, when my aunt pointed out that I was sticking dirt in my mouth, my mom said, "Aw, a little dirt never hurt anyone!" So, to over-generalize, youngest children are quite often charming, persistant, confident, and attention-loving dirt eaters. Elia never had us to herself, but she has also never had to be

alone. There is something comforting in not always having to do things first, some of the pressure is off to free up time to be the life of the party! And Elia has certainly carried her weight in this area.

Elia is a mover. Elia grew up dancing to any beat inside or outside her head. Sometimes it was just the sound of the bread machine kneading, but she'd jump up on a something and

start bopping up and down. Elia had an affinity for taking her clothes off, until we finally started duct taping her diaper and pjs on her every night. She also showed no fear and would frequently belly flop off the couch onto the floor. She was always active, in a quiet, naughty, sort of way. One morning when she was three, she asked for juice for breakfast, then carefully placed her granola in her juice. I left

the room for a minute, and returned to find Silas's (the boy I was babysitting) pants, shoes, socks & sweater off and Elia putting them on herself. Soon after, she (accidentally?) spilled the honeycombs on the kitchen floor and started stepping on them while wearing Silas's boots. Sadly, this was neither ordinary nor extraordinary for this time of our lives. She would also pin Silas down and force hugs on him on a daily basis. Poor, sweet Silas.

Elia is brave. When the three of us went to get our ears pierced, Elia was the first to hop up on the chair and said, "I'm ready, let's do this," and gripped the arm rest. Or, last Tuesday, when she had to get her eye-teeth pulled (yes, both Kate and Elia had this done), she stoically laid there as the dentist gave her shots and removed her teeth without a stitch of laughing gas.

Elia is fun. She's almost always up for whatever her sister has in mind (which included an awful lot of Barney reenactments for a couple of years, this particular skit is called "Waiting for Santa," and I highly recommend it.)

Elia is friendly. She would stun people with her "bright

blue eyes" and her singing (of slightly inappropriate) songs. Or, at age two by shouting, "What your name?" "What my name?" "What Kate name?"

Elia is stubborn. Two-year-old Elia was coloring on a marker board we had on our wall, and Greg warned her to be careful to only color on the board. She stared right at him, turned the marker around, and colored her shirt. (Does this remind you of a story I told recently about Greg at about the same age? Cause it should.)

Elia is empathetic. Last fall when we told her that the teacher at Greg's school (Kevin Witte) had died, leaving behind his three young kids, she sobbed, lamenting them not being able to see their dad anymore. And then she said, with tears streaming down her cheeks, that we have to pay their mortgage. (This caught me off guard, as it's unusual for a nine-year-old's mind to go straight to the mortgage, and I was afraid she was getting a premonition from the Lord.) She loves fiercely and feels deeply the pain of others.

Elia is (brutally) honest. Once, while laying in her bed together I said, "If you could have chosen from heaven, do you think you would have picked me from a line up of moms?" (What, is that a weird question?) She quickly started to say, "Ye--" but then paused a second. "Well, I mean, probably, but what are my choices exactly?" (She has carried the dream of having a blond mom for quite some time.) And a couple weeks ago when I was kissing her goodnight and definitely smelled banana breath, I said, "Did you brush your teeth?" "Yes." "With toothpaste?" "Yes." "...And a toothbrush?" Silence. (Now, do you see why I am the way I am?) Several years ago Elia woke me up to the sound of her Marcel The Shell voice, saying, "I have to tell you something, sometimes I don't brush my teeth when you tell me to, and I haven't changed my underwear in a week...I apologized to God and he forgave me, but He said I should tell you too." This was all before I opened my eyes, mind you.

Elia is insightful. Whenever I'm getting the house ready for company, she does an impersonation of me, "Hi, I'm Sarah, I need my house to be perfect so all my friends come over and say, 'Oh, Sarah, I don't know how you do it!'" This sounds a bit disrespectful as I write it, but I take it in the manner in which it's intended--a satirical commentary on the state of humanity, with just enough biting honesty to make you really stop and think. Another time when she found out I'd recycled some of her art work, she impersonated me chewing gum, explaining, "Yeah, it just wasn't my taste!"

Elia keeps us laughing. Here are some of our favorites from when she was still a kid:

"Sometimes I pretend my fingernails are food."

"No, I don't need a keenex, I have a magic finger--abracadabracazoo...." (as she flung her booger off her finger. I was lying next to her at the time.)

(When she was walking outside at my friend Rachel's house, and smelled the air, thick with the scent of freshly laid manure.) "Wow, you can smell my mom's cooking from here!"

(To her kindergarten teacher after one Wednesday night when Greg accidentally took both sets of car keys and left for Grand Rapids, so the girls and I couldn't go to our church for pizza night.) "My dad left, and wouldn't let us go to church or eat pizza!"

And finally, Elia is creative. Besides the slide-show of Harry Potter she's been working on since yesterday (for a HP club she's organizing), or the skeins of knitting she's done, or the fort she's working on outside, or this

wood thing she nailed together, she can work with any medium. She also loves to write, and to plan writing various books, movies and blogs. She's currently working on her first blog post entitled "figuring it out at ten." I'm trying to find it, but now I'm afraid I recycled it. (Maybe it just wasn't my taste.) So, instead, I'll end with the closing paragraph from the letter I wrote to Elia one month before she was born:

My pregnancy complaints: insomnia from 4-6 a.m. most mornings....(for reals, I wrote this, I go on for a bit)...But you're worth it! I hope you don't feel like we always compare you to Kate, though she's our only measuring board for what it's like to have a baby (we're hoping you sleep better!) I know you'll have your own talents, personality, and spunk. All your relatives are so excited to meet you! I can't believe it could be any time now...Just know that you have always been loved!

Mom.