Our Tender Mercy

Here is Brady Hawk Ellsworth. He is our tender mercy from the Lord. We tried for years to get pregnant and never could. We KNOW its not a coincidence that we were able to have Brady soon after losing our Ethan. (I was six months pregnant when Ethan passed away). Our Heavenly Father knows each of us individually and knows what we stand in need of. We need Brady right now. Just like we need Parker and Madilyn. Our children have saved us during this time. They are all tender mercies. Just the fact that we are blessed and able to have children is a miracle. Brady helps us keep our minds focused on the important things in life. We love having him in our home. He is very happy and really doesn't give us a hard time. However, we realize this probably won't last, so we are taking it all in while we have it. He sleeps well at night for mom :) Brady reminds us of Parker with how his eyes are...they are always taking in what is happening. He doesn't miss a learning moment (or so it seems, how do we really know?). And he reminds us of Ethan because of how happy he is and how he gets excited about everything! Again, we just love having him here and blessing our home with his sweet spirit from heaven.

For those of you who don't know where his name came from, here is the explanation of that: Ethan told us his name was going to be Hawk. Madilyn said it was going to be Sunshine. I remember the weekend before Ethan went into the hospital my sister calling me and saying "Okay, so your baby's name is going to be Sunshine Hawk?" I confirmed it was NOT going to be Sunshine Hawk, but that is what the kids were hoping. After Ethan died we were searching for names for Brady. We decided we HAD to use Hawk. It must mean something, right? I searched and searched for a cool name that could mean Sunshine because I didn't want to let Madilyn down either. However, coming up with anything that means sunshine that didn't sound too foreign was impossible, so I gave up. I then searched for "football" because Ethan was obsessed with football. Nothing. Brady was the name of one of Ethan's best friends; it is also the last name of the quarterback of Ethan's favorite football team. So, we came up with it! Brady Hawk. It was quite a project agreeing, but it always is with our kid's names. Marcus and I can never agree on that--it takes us ALL 9 months, if not longer to come up with something we can both like.

We are lucky parents. We love being parents and hope we do okay at it. We hope our kids don't have too much to blame on us later, and that they grow up to be close to the Lord. If they love close to the Lord, other things will fall into place like they should. We are so happy to have Brady! We are so happy to have Parker and Madilyn! We are very happy we were able to raise Ethan for as long as we did on this earth. We hope Brady knows how much his brother in heaven loves him and that he will always carry the name his brother wanted for him.