Seven of Seven, Still Loved

Today, the baby is two.  Specifically, in about 8 hours and 50 (ish) minutes, the baby turns two.  That means we have had two whole years of loving that girl so much, my heart actually aches at the end of the day, and I could not possible be more grateful.

You don't really know Eve, so let me tell you about her. 

Eve Cahill is the youngest, our seven of seven.  She's short and round with reddish hair and the beginnings of light brown freckles across her nose and on her arms.  She has light gray eyes, like her dad, and bright pink lips (helped, naturally, by the fact that the rest of her is so very fair.)  She has a small vascular imperfection on her left side, which always makes it look like he has a bite mark, and two toes on her right foot which are party fused.  She has short, chubby fingers and even shorter legs.  She's got a round little belly, which she sticks out when she walks, and the world's smallest baby buttocks, which she tucks when she runs. 

She is very opinionated and very outspoken.  Being the youngest has made her determined not to be unheard, and she'll repeat herself with abandon, and progressively more loudly, until her point is made.  She likes to roam freely, "I walk, Mom.  I walk.  No, I walk," and  isn't really excited about being told what to do. 

She loves to eat.  And eat.  And eat.  She loves granola bars and yogurt and pasta.  Sushi, seafood, Japanese pho.  Deli meat, bean burritos, cheeseburgers.  Fish and chips.  Breadsticks.  Crudites. Fried chicken.  If you've got it, she wants it.  If you steal a bite, she will attempt to retrieve it from your esophagus.  (I'm really not kidding here.  She will try to reach down your throat and get it back.  We don't touch her food.) 

She loves to take baths, but only if someone is joining her, and usually if that someone is Annie.  She loves bath bombs and salts and foot scrubs.  (Sometimes, the three of us get in the tub together and soak for hours.  I'll nurse Eve and she'll start to fall asleep and I'll try to hold on to the same memory of doing the same thing when she was brand new and I was still healing and leaking and all my parts were still swollen.)

Eve loves her siblings.  Annie, her favorite, she calls "E."  Next is "Eo."  She likes to tattle on Hatch for things nobody can understand, and Patrick is another parent to her, holding her and changing diapers and making sure she doesn't fall down the stairs.  (Once, he had to give her the Heimlich.  I had taken the kids out to eat and three of them had to go to the bathroom.  I left Patrick at the table with Eve and she choked on her food.  He was hysterical when I came out, and people had come to help him, but, damnit, he did it.)

Her siblings love her, too.  In fact, Eve is the family favorite.  She might always be. 

She's two.  Tiny and mighty.  Funny and expressive.  Happy.  Cherished.  Loved with all our hearts.