Dear, sweet Malindi.
Here you are, four years into the game. It's hard to believe our sweet second baby, with the cradle-cap scalp and stork-bitten forehead and insanely tangled mess of back-of-head hair is now a little girl, poised to enter junior kindergarten, long of leg and mischievous of temperament.
How was it, my love, to be a middle child? To bring up the rear (at least until your brother and baby sister came along) behind Kenya? Is that what's made you such a spirited, insistent, immovable force of girl? It's hard to never win the race, isn't it, my love? It's difficult to be sandwiched between such a victorious older sister and such a charming younger brother. And then the baby came, and you were squeezed even more.
You love to scream and to raise the roof with your efforts to be heard. To be noticed and responded to. Nothing's sweeter, as far as you're concerned, than pushing us to the very limits of tolerance. Daring us to lose it. Flirting with disaster. To you, my lovely, that kind of attention equals good attention. Somehow, you've learned that this is the point of childhood.
Just the same, you have a stillness to you, my lovely Malindi, that the others don't. You are patient and, for all your carryings-on, your temper is always contained well beneath the surface. You can play forever on your own, a sad legacy of a multiple-child family, perhaps, but useful just the same. And you have goodness in you. It lurks around your edges, spilling out when you're not paying attention and working to keep the bad-girl schtick in play. One day this week, you gave your archenemy, Finn, your new baton to keep him entertained, even though you'd barely had a chance yet to enjoy it yourself.
You love kitty cats and your best friend Chloe. You love cake and parties and books with hidden characters on every page. You love singing to yourself in the back of the car. But mostly you love private time with Mommy. "I don't want Finn there," you tell me. "Or Kenya either."
We had more than a year of private afternoons before Kai came along, with Kenya at school and Finn at Rita's. You'd lie on my bed and watch cartoons and eventually wander into my office to ask to do a craft. Sometimes I'd retire with you to the bedroom to watch A Baby Story. You always hated when I changed the channel, but you knew the sacrifice was worth it to have Mommy all to yourself. I will always treasure the memory of you during those private afternoons, stretched out on my bed with your arm around the cat.
Happy birthday, little girl. I love you as much (and more) as you need me to. I hope this coming year is our best yet.
