Janet
"Okay, Eissa. Smile." He put on a big smile, showing all of his teeth. "Good job. Happy Birthday, baby." He ran and hugged me. "How old are you?"
"Two." He jumped up and down.
"That's right."
"I big boy."
"Yep. A big boy." Today was Eissa's second birthday. Just like his first, we decided to keep it private. We let our families send him gifts, but we didn't have a big party. Mostly, because Eissa told us that he didn't want one. He just wanted to play with his sisters. "Okay, go let daddy clean your face and then we can play."
"Yay." He ran off towards the stairs. I cleaned up the mess from the cake and packaged up the last of it for later. Going around the living room, I picked up the wrapping paper and boxes from his gifts. Naturally, he had gotten a bunch, especially from Saleh and his uncles. Saleh had gotten him a bunch of action figures and comic books while his uncles got him different capes, masks and costumes. He was so excited to wear them. Mother and Denzel's mom had got him a bunch of different toys that he loved and my brothers sent him some instruments. He was so eager to play with everything that we could barely get everything out of the boxes. "Mama, I ready." He ran up to me.
"Okay, calm down." I went over to the girls' playpen and he followed me. He made faces at them as I took them out and laid them on their playmat. Once I had them all down, Eissa got on the floor with. Instantly, they started laughing and cooing at him. He laid on his stomach and played with the toys in front of them. The girls tried to reach and grab for the toys while laughing harder. He handed them the toys and they knocked them around. After a while, they stopped playing with the toys so Eissa got up and started dancing. The girls were beside themselves and Eissa was beaming.
I sat back on the couch while watching them. Eissa absolutely loved being a big brother and the girls loved him. So much to the point that they cried whenever he wasn't around. There were times where he was the only one that could calm them down. "Rah. Rah. Rah." He sang to them and they screamed. I couldn't help, but laugh.
"Hey, babe." Denzel came and sat next to me. "Well, what's going on here?" Eissa continued to dance and sing. The girls continued to scream and laugh.
"He wanted to play with his sisters." Denzel watched them and laughed.
"This is too cute."
"I know." He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me into him.
"Well, I know it's Eissa's day, but I have a little surprise for you." I snuggled into him more and looked at him.
"What?" He pulled something out of his pocket.
"This."
"What is this?"
"This is your appointment to go try on wedding dresses." I sat up.
"What?"
"Yeah, I remember you saying that you always wanted to go to a bridal shop, so I had LaToya make some calls and a bridal shop twenty minutes from here has agreed to close down for the day so you can go pick out a wedding dress and bridesmaid dresses and everything."
"Are you serious?"
"Yep. Our wedding can't have a bride who doesn't have a dress."
"But we haven't planned our wedding yet."
"Don't worry about it. All you need to do is show up and look beautiful."
"Brides are supposed to plan the weddings."
