Birthday Tidings

  

 

Our youngest is one year old today. While this isn’t the first one-year old birthday we’ve celebrated (that was Benjamin), or the first one-year old girl’s birthday (that was Lily), or the first twin birthday (that was Abraham and Miriam), it is the first for Eden. And while she does come after quite a few others, she is by no means a repeat.

   

Eden Quinn Mable Allison … her name reflects our fetish with Old Testament names that (sort of) rhyme with Allison (OK, so Lily Ann and Abraham and Miriam are kind of stretches but just go with slant rhyme on those). The “Quinn” is to make the part that rhymes with “Allison” three syllables long, and it means “fifth.” “Mable” is for my maternal grandmother, who always explained, “It’s ‘Mable’ like ‘table.’”

  

But she rarely gets called “Eden Quinn Mable,” "Eden Quinn," or even “Eden.” It’s usually “Edee” (after a friend of ours), “Edee Beety,” “Eetle Beetle,” or “Eedles.” She’s the happiest baby we’ve ever had…and I mean genuinely happy. There were others who were quieter or more content or more complacent…but she is downright happy. She chuckles almost constantly. She finds it absolutely hysterical to pretend she doesn’t hear when I’m saying her name. She is definitely a papa’s girl and has been from birth. In her first-day newborn pictures from the hospital, she is smiling. Broadly. She was the first baby of the day to be photographed, and the photographer could not get over her smiles. “Those are real…I can’t believe this…what a ham she is!”

    

Edee loves her siblings and loves to rile them up. Her nightly routine is to grab Miriam’s baby doll from her toddler bed and try to run out the door with it before we catch her. She cuddles right up to Benjamin as he gives her a drink and reads to her. Lily likes to comfort her, picking her up when she’s crying and giving her a grandiose, “Oh, my poor baby,” that just feeds the drama queen in her baby heart. She currently looks most like Abraham with her round cheeks and open smile, and he will let me know, “Edee’s crying” when she wakes from her nap.

    

We’ve loved getting to know her. She makes our days happier and our nights welcomer (in all honesty, even good babies are better asleep!). Her happy toddle from room to room, usually carrying her baby doll and kidnapping someone else’s, brings smiles to our faces. Her warm snuggle down into the crook of Ethan’s arm, a huge smile across her face and her index finger headed upside-down into its semi-permanent place in her mouth, is a picture I will treasure for as long as I can remember it.

  

Happy birthday, baby girl!