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"Good morning, my baby girl." I gushed, my hair falling around my face as I reached into the cot and picked Malaika up. "Good morning. How are you today?"
My five month old smiled at me as I kissed her cheeks, the gorgeous sight spreading warmth through my chest. It had taken giving birth to an exact replica of me to finally understand Hasani's obsession with my dimples. Malaika was the only one of my children who'd inherited them, and I was obsessed, constantly doing things to put a smile on her face.
I crawled back into bed with her in my arms, trying to stretch out the last few moments of quiet before I went down to the chaos that awaited me. I sat Malaika in the crook of my arm and as she drank from the bottle of expressed breast milk I had waiting for her when she woke up, I stared down at her, eyes just like mine, skin rich and dark, dimples deep in her plump cheeks, soft coily hair fanning out around her face. Beautiful.
"You're so beautiful." I said. "I'm so happy to be your mommy. I'm grateful for every moment I share with you. I'm grateful that you're growing and you're healthy. Nakupenda, malaika wangu."
My baby girl sat cluelessly in my arms, happily drinking her breakfast bottle as I continued to speak from my heart to hers. This was an intention I'd set three years ago when my first baby came into the world. I vowed to love without restraint. No sugarcoating. No downplaying how grateful I was to have the family I'd hoped and prayed for with Hasani.
There would be gratitude and counting of blessings every single day before I made space or time for anything else, because this life I was living wasn't one I could have created without some extra help. Even if someone had handed me a pencil and a notepad, clay and water and air and whatever it actually took to sculpt a human being by hand, I wouldn't have been able to create my husband and my children. Not as perfectly and as miraculously as God himself had made them. I was blessed and would spend every moment of my life acknowledging that.
A while after Malaika had her fill and was rolling over on the bed and playing with one of her toys, commotion could be heard as Hasani made his way to our bedroom, the sound putting a smile on my face.
"Mommy!" Yankho shouted, running ahead of his dad and brother to greet me.
"Hey, Yaya." I said, reaching down to carry him off the floor. "Good morning."
"Good morning, Mommy." he said with a smile as he squeezed my neck in his tiny arms.
"Morning, baby." Hasani said, kissing the top of my head as he put a still sleepy Yamikani down on the bed next to me. "Did you sleep well?"
"So well." I smiled up at him, my eyes glued to him as he kissed Malaika on the cheek and sang her the famous African tune, 'Malaika... Nakupenda Malaika...' before he kissed me again and headed to the bathroom.
"And hello, Yami." I said to my one-year-old middle baby who had come to snuggle against me after Hasani left him on the bed and went into the bathroom.
