Stained Glass Eyes and Colorful Tears

29 - Finale

Tony and I are currently both lying down in bed together, him on his side, me on mine, and our daughter in the middle of us. We've been laying here for hours, just staring at her while she sleeps. I keep putting my index finger in her little hand, causing her to close her fist around my finger whenever she's awake, which honestly hasn't been much. For someone who was just born, she sure does sleep a lot.

"I still can't believe it." I whisper to Tony as I keep my eyes on our daughter.

"I know, me neither." he whispers back, looking at her too.

"Like, we made this."

"Yeah, and we did a damn good job too." he says.

 I know every parent says that their baby is cute, but I swear ours is. She has dark hair from both Tony and I. She actually came out with a full head of hair too, which was a nice surprise. She has a fair complexion, but Tony says she'll grow out of that. I've had to remind him that neither him or I are that tan to begin with, but he tells me that she wont "disappoint her ancestors like we have."

"She's so small." I whisper to Tony.

When she was born she weighed in at 6 pounds and 10 ounces. I was worried that I did something wrong which resulted in her being so small, but the nurses and doctor assured me that I did nothing wrong and that sometimes babies are just small like that. They told me that she would also take after Tony and I, are neither of us are that big in height, which is why our daughter is so tiny.

"I'm kind of afraid that I'll accidentally break her or something." Tony admits with a shy laugh.

"Oh my God, I know, right?" I say, excited to learn that I'm not alone in feeling that way. "The other day I picked her up a little weird and I got so nervous that I accidentally broke her little arm."

"I've watched 20 videos on how to properly pick up a newborn. Sometimes I'll watch one and follow it step by step."

"The other day I made my mom come over and help me bathe her because I was too nervous that she would slip out of her little bathing tub."

We both laugh at one another's stupid anxieties over our baby. I think being a little nervous about what we're doing, no matter how stupid it may seem, is a good thing. It means we both care enough to try, and to me that's the biggest part about being a parent, is just trying. We try to keep her safe and make sure she doesn't get hurt. We try to do our best for one another and for her. 

"You're a good mom." Tony says to me, almost as if he had been reading my mind.

I smile at him, loving that compliment. Pretty and fun are no longer words I need to hear about myself, but being a good parent? That's something I can hear on a loop every day for the rest of my life and I know I'll never get sick of it.

"You're a good dad." I say to Tony, because truly he is.

"I love you." he says. He leans in and places a sweet, gentle kiss on my lips. When he pulls back, his eyes go back to our daughter. "And I love you too, little Mia Perry."

"Her name suits her, don't you think?"

"Mia Solana Perry." Tony says, trying the name out.

The name Mia was an easy choice for both Tony and I. We took to the baby books and started a list, but when we heard the name Mia we both knew that that would be the name we'd name our daughter. When it came to the middle name, though? We struggled hard. We weren't sure if we wanted a middle name that had to do with someone in our lives. We toyed with the idea of Jaime for my brother, but at the end of the day, we decided a middle name that had no ties would be better. And then we stumbled upon the name Solana the next day and we both liked it, and then Mia Solana Perry was named. 

I know she's just a baby, but I can already tell that she's going to do wonders. Just lying here looking at her it's obvious that she's extraordinary. I can't wait to watch her grown into herself.

"So," Tony says, a mischievous smile on his face. "When do we start on the next one?"

"Are you kidding me? It hasn't even been a week since she was born."

"I know. Seeing you be such a good mom has ...inspired me."

"Get uninspired." I tell him as I give him a little shove.

"No, Mia, do you see that?" Tony says as he gently grabs her little foot. "Your mom is hurting me."

"Hey, don't get her on your side! She's a neutral third party."

"No, she's a daddy's girl. Look, even her shirt says so."

The day after she was born, Tony went out and bought a ton of little outfits for her, all of them saying something about how she prefers her dad. Since then he's delighted in dressing her in a new outfit each day. He even went out and bought himself some shirts so that they match hers. And to his credit, he did buy some outfits that say Mommy's favourite girl on them. Sometimes I wake up earlier than him and put Mia in one of those outfits. I love seeing his pretend hurt face when we wake him up wearing a Mommy shirt.

"You rigged that." I say to Tony with a laugh. 

He shrugs at me. "The shirt says what the shirt says, rigged or not."

The one thing I'll never tell him is that I love how he's bought all those outfits for her. I love seeing him show her off with such pride. He wants to bring her everywhere with him, and on days that he's out, he comes racing home just to see us. It's brought such happiness to me that I can't even begin to fathom that there was a time where Tony and I might not have had this.

The past year has been the hardest hurdle that Tony and I have had to get over in our relationship and for a long time there I didn't think we would even last through this difficult time, but we managed to stick together and pull through it. That's not to say it didn't suck; it did. Every counselling session we did was harder than the last, until one day it wasn't, and then just like that we were us again. And then Mia was born and I've never felt closer to Tony than I do now. Sometimes you need to go through the hard things to get to a better place, a place where you know that you're going to be in forever with the person you love.

At the end of the day, I wouldn't trade it for anything. If we hadn't gone through this hard time we might not have Mia, and we might not have had one another either. But now we're all together, just us three, or until we decide to have another. 

I can't wait to see how it all turns out.