My youngest daughter, Fiona, has a sweet spot for cats and babies. She can sit for hours with a baby, holding and caressing the baby. She can crouch down so calmly and patiently while she waits for the neighborhood cats to come up to her.
Before Fiona was born, I decided to do some research into what the third child of the family was like, since I grew up in a two child family. As more and more of my friends were having children, I started to notice a similar trend in personalities for all of our first borns, and then our second borns, so I started to look more seriously at the Birth Order theory. Three child families are not so common anymore, in fact, once we decided to have a third, most people were shocked, “Don’t you have enough?” “Why would you want more?” “Are you crazy?”
The baby or last born of the family is the child who tends to have a great sense of humor, be very social, outgoing, and a perceptive people person. They are affectionate and independent. They are the risk-takers who have a “burning desire to make an important contribution to the world” and they are usually the ones who do end up bringing great changes to the world.
When I looked at all of the qualities that are typical in a last born, I thought to myself, “We need more of that in our family!” Our family just felt incomplete, like one more person was waiting for us, waiting to be added to our family. And once Fiona was born, our family truly did feel complete.
This painting is for my third child, Fiona, for bring so much laughter and love to our family.
