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Izzy giggled.
“It’ll be our secret,” I said and Izzy bobbed her head.
“This is why you two are my favorites.” With that, Jeremy slipped out as quietly as he’d come in, leaving Izzy and I to sip our hot cocoa. While there was a lot of prep to do, I didn’t want to rush her. Especially because her lower lip was still a bit wobbly and the tears on her face were still damp.
After helping her balance her hot cocoa cup, I took a sip of my own. It was like a chocolate orgasm and I sighed at the breathless bit of peppermint adding its soothing kiss to the bomb of chocolate. The whip cream crowned it all with sweetness.
“You have whip cream on your lip, Mommy,” Izzy warned in a too solemn voice.
“Hmm.” I licked it off. “I was saving it for later.”
That made her laugh all over again. So we sat there in the quiet room, just savoring the hot cocoa and the cuddles. When she finished her whole cup, she curled up with her head on my shoulder. “What if the babies are a girl?”
“Then you’re going to have little sisters,” I told her. We hadn’t told them that we knew one was a girl. Our second little nugget was quite shy apparently. The doctor offered to do a blood test and if our next scan continued to keep the mystery for us, well… then we’d discuss it.
“But if they’re boys, then I will have four baby brothers.” She didn’t sound terribly certain of that fate.
“This is also true.” I waited her out. When she set her hand against the bump, she bit her lip. “Was the bad dream about the babies?”
I’d been known to have them myself. Especially with Izzy, the dreams hadn’t been as bad with Josh or Charlie. Maybe because I’d relaxed? I didn’t know. I hadn’t had any this time around, but the fact Izzy was worried kept me focused on her.
“Kind of,” she admitted. “Are the babies asleep right now?” Her favorite thing to do when I’d been pregnant with Charlie was “talk” to him when he was awake, but she always whispered if she thought he was asleep.
“Maybe.” I was twenty-six weeks and I’d been feeling them for a bit now. But not at the moment. Twins meant the bump grew faster than my earlier pregnancies, still, we were doing all right.
“Okay,” she said, pitching her voice a little lower. “Do you want boys or girls, Mommy?”
“I want healthy babies,” I told her honestly. “Boys or girls or both, I’ll love them for being them. Just like I love you and the boys.”
“Will you be mad if I kind of want them to be boys?”
“Why would I be mad about that?” I wasn’t going to laugh at her or tease her, not yet. Izzy was being so serious. Sometimes, she took after Ian in how hard she would look at something before she decided. If she wanted to ask me this question, then it was important.
“Because maybe you want girls.”
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”
She shook her head.
“Do you not want a baby sister or two?”
Guilt filled her eyes and I wrapped her up in a hug. “I—in my dream it was a girl and I wasn’t special anymore. No one paid any attention to me. Not Daddy or Papa or Dad or Pop.” She swallowed hard. “You just played with her and kept calling her your favorite little girl…”
Setting my hot cocoa aside, I curled Izzy to me closer and pressed my lips to the top of her head. “Izzy, baby, there are three things I need you to remember for Mommy.”
“Okay,” she snuffled the word. My baby was trying to be so brave.
“One,” I said, leaning back so she and I could look each other in the eye. “No one can replace my Izzy-belle. No one. You are my baby, you will always be my baby. You are my favorite Izzy ever. Girls or not, I am not going to love you any less. I didn’t with Charlie or Josh, did I?”
“But they’re boys, Mommy,” she told me in all seriousness.
“This is true, we have a lot of boys in this house, so maybe another girl or two will help us keep them on their toes.”
That gave her a beat and she looked surprised.
“Two,” I continued before she could latch onto that. “Daddy, Papa, Dad, and Pop have so much love in them they could never not find time for you or love for you. They adore you. If I have more girls or even just one, they are going to need you even more.”
Confusion filled her eyes. “Because I’m already a girl.”
