Meet the New Kid

by Donna Poole

Meet the New Kid

by Donna Poole

Her first three daughters looked enough alike to have been triplets.

“What do you have, some kind of mold and you just keep turning out look-alikes?” her friends teased.

The girls all took after the Scandinavian side of the family. Tall, quiet, straight blond hair; their mother almost always knew what her blue-eyed beauties were thinking. They were well mannered children and so predictable. Her friends were envious.

Not that her girls were perfect; they fussed a bit when teething, and one of the three protested a bit at potty training, but all of them sailed through the terrible twos as though it had no meaning for them. The mother often marveled at her good fortune.

The relatives adored the girls, called them “sweetheart,” “honey,” and “doll baby.”

And then came daughter number four. Had the mother not just gone through twenty-nine hours, fifty-three minutes, and forty-nine seconds of agonizing labor—the first three had been easy births—she would have sworn someone had switched babies and given her someone else’s child.

She blinked hard twice when a nurse showed her the new baby. Red faced, short, chubby, and squalling, the infant had a head full of dark curls.

The nurse had to shout to be heard over the babies screams.

“I guess she didn’t much like being disturbed from her comfy, warm home and doesn’t think much of this big world. What will you name her?”

The baby’s older sisters who had all come into the world without protest and had calmly surveyed the world around them had Scandinavian names: Astrid, Agnes, and Annika. This one was to have been Alma, but she didn’t look at all like an Alma.

The mother wished she could ask the baby’s dad, but this child had chosen to be born two weeks early and he was out of town on a business trip. She fell back on the pillow, exhausted.

“Name? I have no idea.”

Someone put her still screaming little infant in her arms. She laughed.

“Do most newborns cry this loudly?” she asked. “My first three didn’t.”

“Most don’t make quite that much noise.” The doctor laughed. “Maybe you have a drama queen on your hands.”

Waving her tiny fists in the air, the baby looked more furious by the second. The mom kissed her on the forehead. It did nothing to stop the noise.

“With those dark curls you certainly look like your father’s Italian grandma, my little drama queen,” she said. “I’m going to name you Sophia.”

“You look exhausted,” a nurse said sympathetically. “Don’t worry; she’ll fall asleep soon. All newborns do. And then you can get some sleep. Or do you want us to take her to the nursery?”

The mom shook her head. “I always keep my newborns with me. You’re right. I know she’ll sleep soon. All my others did.”

Sophia did not sleep soon. By the time the mother fell into an exhausted sleep she hoped for sweet dreams. She didn’t get them.

She dreamed of a little girl almost always stubborn and unpredictable. By the time she was eighteen months old she was already the definition of terrible two. Her manners left something to be desired because she was too outspoken. None of the relatives called her “sweetheart” or “honey,” or “doll baby.” They called her “that little spitfire.”

In her dream her friends weren’t envious anymore; they were shocked. They didn’t know quite what to make of the new baby, so different from her sisters. They said to each other, “Have you met the new kid?”

The mother woke to more screams. She looked at Sophia, once again flailing her arms, tiny red fists batting the air, face red with effort. She had a hunch her dream was going to become reality, but she didn’t care. She desperately loved this new baby, so different from her sisters, born October 20, 2022, ready to add her own color to the beautifully colored autumn world waiting for her.

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My new book baby is very different from my first three books; it had a mind of its own and took some unexpected twists and turns when I was writing it.  Meet the new kid: The Lights of Home published October 20, 2022. It’s available on Amazon. I hope you’ll like it. If you do, please leave me a review about the little spitfire.