Just the Four of Us

My mom picked Jaxon up from my house before I got home on Tuesday. He had baseball practice and had to be in town before I was even leaving.

When I got home, Alyssa hugged me tight and said, “That boy is a lot of work.”

I laughed and asked her if he was more work than her sister.

Alyssa thought about this as she sat next to me on the porch watching her dad and that very sister ride around in circles on the bike.

Finally she answered, “It’s not that he’s more work, it’s just that I’m used to Livie. She’s a lot of work too but she’ll also sit next to me on the couch and just be there. That boy has to talk all day long. And he expects a response to every single thing he says. If you don’t answer him, he’ll repeat himself over and over, ending each question or statement with, ‘Right Lyssie? Did you hear me Lyssie? Right Lyssie?’“

I laughed and hugged her. “You’re a good cousin.”

“I know,” she declared before bounding off to join Tom and Olivia as they biked the driveway.

This girl…she just keeps getting better. She was such an awesome baby, a precocious toddler with an enormous vocabulary and the wit to wield that vocabulary hilariously. When Tom and I decided to try to have another baby I felt like we were being selfish. We’d been given such an amazing daughter the first time around, how could we possibly ask for more?

We asked for more because we wanted more for her, that perfect, awesome little girl who is not so little now and still amazing me every single day. Yes, I wanted another baby for me, but I also wanted that for Alyssa. I wanted her to have a sibling, someone to commiserate with later in life when I’m old and really annoying. Someone to push her buttons and teach her that sometimes, it really isn’t all about her. Someone who looks up to her and thinks that actually it is all about the big sister.

Later that evening, she leaned her head on my right shoulder. Olivia was asleep against my left leg.

Alyssa said dreamily, “I like it when it’s just the four of us. You and me and Livie and Dad. We’re just right, aren’t we?”

I hugged my girl close and told her yes, we are just right.