Dear Middlechild,

Last night at four AM you woke crying for a drink of water. Your skin burned against mine as I kissed your forehead. You drank your water and laid close talking to me in your little baby voice, your breath fever hot and scented with the cherry medicine that you cried about having to drink between sips of water.

I rocked with you, your legs straddling mine and your head against my collarbone in the same way that I wore you in a wrap for nearly the first year of your life.

Your breathing slowed and cooled against my chest as your fever receded and you fell back into a fitful sleep.

Sickness is hard on you, little one. You burn up with a fever over the smallest of things as your body wages all out war against whatever it is that is troubling you. I’ve learned that tipping point where your fever starts to go up up up and then we dropper-feed you some medicine that you refuse to drink otherwise, and it cuts off the top of that fever that would otherwise spike up to the scary numbers as it has twice before with the smallest most minor of things.

Everything about you is strong and swift with little in-between. Your joys are boundless, your temper runs deep. Your fevers burn hot. You are my little thunderstorm, complete with the mellowness of those brooding skies and the sudden breaking into sunshine with rainbows. Even your birth fit this pattern- a week where I was convinced that you would never be born and that my body would reabsorb you, followed by three hours of labor before you shot into the world having clearly pulled that “eject” lever. Each of your siblings took much longer, have more shades of gray. You are the blonde-haired child with the dark haired siblings. The oomph. The sweetly determined dear little boychild who speaks both Russian and English with a smattering of sign language, and who does it very well and with an amusing randomness and mischeivous-heavy-lidded long-lashed blue eyes with a splash of brown that you inexplicably inherited from your gramma despite both your father and I having blue eyes.

You are amazingly independent and determined that ALEXANDER DO IT. Not mommy do it. Not daddy do it. Not gramma do it. Not Grampa do it. And most certainly not your big brother Isaac. Absolutely. Not. Alexander do it. Even when “it” is beyond your abilities at this point in your life.

When you are fever-hot, though, you revert to dependence, you cling, you snuggle, you spread your body across mine and let your heat seep into my skin from yours and sync your breathing to mine. We fall back into the rhythms of your babyhood where you stay near, sleep near, cry for our arms, and find peace and comfort there.

This is how you were meant to be. While I am grateful that you mostly sleep through the night now, I am also grateful that you seek out our arms when you need them. Our patterns of comfort which started when you were a tiny newborn have carried forwards to now. You soothe from a nightmare, relax from fright, ease in pain, and seek our nearness when you are sick. I am grateful for these patterns we formed back then, as they help me comfort you now. Each moment of your infancy forms building blocks for your todays and your tomorrows. You will not need to learn to accept comfort later in life, as you have been learning since the moment that you were born, and since you have been teaching us to comfort you since then as well.

Thank you for the lessons you teach me in love, closeness and trust. In responding to your needs I more fully understand my own. And I always welcome the chance to snuggle you some more.

I love you. Deeply. (Even if you did wake me up this morning by kicking me in the head as you woke up.)

❤ Mama