My girl, Vivi!

My girl. My little girl.

Yes, I know, I was anti-girl. When we walked out of the gender-revealing ultrasound, I was sad. I had high hopes for another boy. A buddy for Wally Ben. A little person that I knew how to take care of because I had been taking care of one just like him for 2 years.

The clothes helped me get over it a little. And everyone told me I was lucky to have one of each. “How perfect!” they’d say. So I started to believe them and agree. But a little part of me was sad to take out WV’s old newborn clothes and see how many I couldn’t use again. I even pulled several out—brown with dogs, light-ish blue with animals—and thought, these could work for a girl.

Then I had her. Our little Vivi (pronounced Vih-vee, not Vee-vee. Poor girl is set up for a lifetime of confusion over that!). It wasn’t immediate—it wasn’t an instant rush of warm gushy mushy love for her like I had felt with Wally Ben. Perhaps this is in part due to an interesting labor where I pushed once, was told she’d come out on the second push, and so tried so hard to push that I found myself waking up mid-push from a near faint—I had to remind myself, “Wake up, wake up, you’re having a baby!” So I was still a bit dizzy when we were done. Then my legs were so dead from my epidural that I had to be poured into my wheelchair like melting butter, and on the way to my recovery room, I had to tell the nurse pushing me, “I believe my foot fell off the rest and you are running it over right now…” Sure enough, she was. But it was such an easy labor and delivery (5 minutes of pushing!), such an easy pregnancy. I just had to love a baby that did me that favor.

So I loved her. But then, over the next day or so, I fell in love with her—deeply in love. My Donno (Wally 4’s grandma), when she met her, said, “You just love your girl, don’t you, Mollie. I knew you would just love a girl.” And she was right. There will be no brown PJs for this little darling—there will be pink and ruffles and ribbons and leggings and sugar and spice and everything nice.

Her squeals make me swoon. Her squeaks are infatuating. And at night, when I set her in her bassinet after feeding her, she makes this big, growling, grunting, wild yalp that is so funny and un-dainty that she makes me laugh.

And she is beautiful. Well, she looks like an alien still (in the way newborns tend to), but she has such pretty features that I can tell she is going to be beautiful. And I don’t think in a classic way—I think she’ll be spunky, scrappy, and interestingly pretty. I can’t wait to see what she looks like when she’s 2, 8, 16.

But I can wait. Because she is so nice, such a nice little baby. She makes me realize why some people love newborns. She has her fussy moments, here and there, and requires some rocking to go to sleep on occasion, but it’s so little compared to her fussy fusspot brother as a newborn that I still am waiting for the ball to drop. And that makes me love her even more.

I have my girl. And I can’t believe how much I love her. She just makes sense in our family of four. She completes us. So there you have it—the Otts are all present and accounted for! Our family has arrived!