And Now There are Three

Monday’s child is fair of face;
Tuesday’s child is full of grace;
Wednesday’s child is full of woe;
Thursday’s child has far to go;
Friday’s child is loving and giving;
Saturday’s child works hard for a living.
But the child that is born on the Sabbath day
is fair and wise, good and gay.

I was born on a Friday, as was my oldest son, who is indeed, without doubt, loving and giving.  My second boy was born on a Tuesday (like his father) . . . if “full of grace” means “full of mischief,” then they’ve got him pegged.  My little Thursday’s child, my third son, apparently has “far to go.”  I’ll take that to mean that he is starting out as a kid brother to two bruiser older brothers, and will forever be trying to keep up with them.  It is fitting, then, that he was born roughly toddler-sized.

When the big boys met him on the eve of his birth, they were excellent at being gentle while focused on him.  He was kissed gently (“I’m going to kiss you fwee times, Baby” said Liam, and he did it, and then he said “I’m going to kiss you TWENTY times, Mama,” and he did that, too!)  Tex’s soft spot – which they had obviously been warned about – was patted gently, oh so gently.  He was gently held by each brother in turn, his feet gently caressed, his hair gently tousled.  But as soon as they were done doing whatever they were doing (kissing, caressing, tousling), all gentleness ceased, of course.  In other words, there was a lot of collateral damage to poor Tex’s little baby body as a result of his brothers forgetting he was there.  They carelessly knocked him practically off the couch in order to fight with each other over fruit snacks, almost whacked him in the face swinging their truly disgusting and germ-riddled loveys, practically sat on him in their attempts to get to me.  This is all to be expected, of course, and Tex is neither the first nor will he be the last third son of a boisterous family, so I fully expect him to survive until he matches – or eclipses – his brothers in size one day.  But he does have “far to go” before he gets there, poor wee mite, even as big as he is!

When Tex was born, we still did not have a first name.  We brought with us a list of about thirty names to the hospital.  We each had our favorites, our frontrunners – I personally was pretty set on Seth, and my husband really liked the name Shaw.  We had some fairly traditional names (Robert, Alexander, Andrew, Nathaniel, Sean), slightly less traditional (Reid, Emmett, Alec, Gabriel, Cole), the Super Preppy Southern category (Pierce, Brooks, Hugh, Cameron), and a list of what I had come to think of as “the ridiculous Scottish names” (Lennox, Connall, Loch, Craig, Cormac).  As soon as I saw him I knew he wasn’t a Seth.  My husband, who had been totally set on Shaw, decided that that name was too ephemeral for such a substantial boy.  We narrowed it down to three, and kept coming back around to Craig.  Craig – a name that I had dismissed before he was born – just seemed to suit him.  It is solid, hardy.  It is, as my husband said, the name of the youngest boy in a family of boisterous boys.  This kid’s chest is 34 centimeters around – his shoulders look almost as broad as his big brother’s.  He can already hold up his head with some control.  He cannot be swaddled in the hospital blankets because they are too small.  He’s 24 hours old, and yet already reminds me of Ron Swanson.

So, we slowly worked ourselves around to Craig.  It took a while – it’s a weird thing, not to know your baby’s name when you meet him, trying on different ones each hour of his new life.  Jack was Jack and Liam was Liam before each was conceived – they were never going to be anyone else.  This kid was Alec for a while, then Brooks.  He was Shaw for a bit, then Reid, and Cam for a long time . . . but I kept looking at him and thinking CRAIG.  He is a craig, as in crag, as in solid rock – he’s big and broad and grounded and just . . . Craig.

So that’s his first name.  Craig.  His middle name, Edward, we already knew – it is to honor both my father (Edmond) and my mother (whose father’s middle name was Edward).  We thought about making Edward his first name and calling him Ted, but the evil doctor who was so mean to me on the day of the ice storm was named Ted.  That ruined that possibility.

We still say it a bit hesitantly.  Other people say it and it sounds weird.  But it’s his name, as sure as anything, and after a couple of days I know it will start to sound just exactly right.

So wee Craig is snoozing next to me while I sip somewhat disgusting hospital soup.   My sister has dubbed him “Cray Cray,” which I also call him, much like I call Liam “Li Li” and still call Jack “Baby Jay.”  (I vow now never to tell their future dates these nicknames, by the way.)  We had hoped to go home today, but various non-serious baby issues are keeping us here one more night.  So I am resigned to a couple more meals of hospital food, my saintly mother has one more night solo parenting the older boys (the Professor will go help her put them to bed and then stay), and wee Craig and I will be here still, in the building where he was born, passing the midnight hours together until the sun rises on the first day of a new month.

I am happy.