Emari-Melina Trinity Goodman-2 Going on 43

Yesterday was Marzipan's third birthday. All year long she has been maintaining that she was 42 years old and would hold up only 1 finger to prove it. Somehow she convinced you and you moved on with the conversation. Yes, they are conversations and sometimes you feel like she's just that old too.

In my mommy archives I always pull up the memories of the day of the prospective child's birth on the anniversary of it. My perspective is slightly different than everyone else's since obviously I had a starring role in the forthcoming project. Emari's birth was pretty interesting considering she was induced two weeks early and still weighed over 9 lbs. She then proceeded to get her head out, but being endowed with her daddy's wide shoulders decided to hang out in the birth canal for a little longer. One extremely scary obstetrical procedure later and she was out, both of us bearing the battle scars but an adventure we both shared.

On deciding her name Josh and I were both a little stumped because we really thought she was gonna be "the boy." When she presented herself in the ultrasound as another addition to our girl collection, I must admit, I cried the whole way home. All of the sudden, I was in the ranks of those women of old who just couldn't produce a male heir. Stupid, I know, and so very, very shallow, but man I was sad. Not an other girl...but we decided to stop the flow of our alphabetical naming of the Goodman offspring and shake things up a bit. We also had run out of family members who have passed on to name our children after, so this time we pulled from the living to immortalize.

She's named after her Papa Emory. It means "courageous leader." Melina means honey. God told us that if He had his way her middle name would be honey because she was going to be as sweet as honey, so we went Spanish on that one. Trinity was a throw back to a name we wanted to give to Taylor her older sister but the grandparents talked us out of it.

Turns out that in my pre-delivery praying I asked the Lord that if it was at all possible for Him to be present in the delivery room in all three of His forms, I would really appreciate the extra support. Rewind to the obstetrical procedure I mentioned earlier. That included mommy having her knees rammed all the way above her shoulders by daddy on one leg and a nurse on the other, then second helpful nurse pushes down on baby belly from above, all while mommy pushes as hard as she can and Dr. Wonderful works before mentioned stuck shoulders of baby Emari to an unstuck position. The Trinity was just what I needed for that delivery, I just couldn't do it on my own. Death loomed in our delivery room, but God brought us both through. Emari has been the exclamation point for our female assortment and I wouldn't trade her for any old boy at all.