The first text message comes in just after eleven that night. It hits both Rick and Kate's cellphones at nearly the same moment; mere seconds separate when each receives the text. They have been included in a group family chat that the message is attached too, along with Max's mom, dad, older brother, younger sister and a handful of both Alexis and Max's closest friends.
Rick looks away from the cooking show he's watching and, after unlocking his phone, reads the message before it is quickly swallowed up by excited replies from the others included in the conversation.
Heading to the hospital.
Alexis water broken.
Contractions every 8 or 9 mins.
Smiling, he sends words of love and support from their family before standing and turning off the TV. He closes up the house for the night: turning off lights and making sure the alarms are set and then climbs the stairs to bed.
An hour later, another message comes in.
Checked into the hospital.
Getting epidural soon.
Both mom and baby are doing fine.
No one slept much after that; they were just too anxious and excited.
By three in the morning Alexis was dilated to a seven and was trying to sleep as much as she could. Max was complaining that the chair the hospital gave him to sleep on was almost as bad as the bed in his dorm in college. But all his complaints were joking and didn't have much heat behind them.
Just before five, things were getting set up so Alexis could start pushing. Everyone waited with huge butterflies in their stomachs for the arrival announcement.
And at 6:26 in the morning on December 13th, Baby Girl Foster entered the world. Weighing in at six pounds three ounces and eighteen inches long, she was a tiny little thing, but absolutely perfect.
No name was announced for her yet, but that didn't matter once pictures began being posted. The tiny nose; her precious little hands and feet. So sweet.
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Later that morning as Rick and Kate got their own kids ready for school, they shared smiles over that mornings events.
"So guess what happened really early this morning?" Kate asked at the breakfast table, a cup of steaming coffee in her hand.
"What?" The kids asked, looking up at her.
"Alexis had her baby," She answered, her smile stretching ear to ear.
"Really!?" Liam was the first to jump up and come to his mom's side.
"Really," Kate answers, unlocking her cell phone and pulling up the first photos of the infant.
"Oh my gosh!" Liam squeals, jumping up and down with excitement.
"I want to see!" four other people call out, and so the phone gets passed around the table, with nearly the same reaction from the other quintuplets.
"She's so cute!" It's the general consensus around the table and Kate has to agree with her kids.
"What's her name?" Danielle asks, sitting up on her knees.
"We don't know yet. Alexis and Max are keeping it a secret.
"How come they didn't tell us?" Austin inquires. "We can keep a secret!"
"Because," Kate laughs, "it's their secret to have, not yours." The boy doesn't like that answer and pouts for a while. "Mia," Kate says, getting her daughter's attention.
"What?" The kindergartener answers, pushing her bangs out of her eyes.
"Guess what time the baby was born?"
"What?" She's smiling now.
"Six Two Six" Kate answers, smiling as it takes Miyana a minute to think about what that means.
"Stitch!" The girl cheers.
Kate had picked up on that ironic number since she read the announcement message. Of course Baby Girl was born at 6-2-6. Stitch had held a special place in Miyana's heart since the child was tiny; it was just fate the new baby was born with Stitch's numbers.
The rest of the morning as Mia got ready for school, she danced around singing "Baby Stitch" over and over again.
At the bus stop, the kids ran over to their friends and excitedly shared the news. The other parents standing around overheard the excited squeals and gave Rick and Kate smiles, and some even shared words of congratulations. Before long the school bus arrived, and all the parents got last minute hugs and called out words of love and to "Have a good day!" to their kiddos as they took the four steps and disappeared inside, some peeking out through the window. They waited until the bus turned a corner before heading in a million directions to continue on with their day.
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Not long after the kid left for school, Rick and Kate headed for the hospital; stopping at the mall for a last minute present and breakfast; as they had been asked to get if they could.
The elevator announced they had arrived at their destination in that cheerful, British, robotic voice.
A scrub clad nurse at the desk pointed them in the direction of Alexis' room, and as they walked the hall they saw new born babies being rolled to and from their parent's rooms in their bassinets and a new family leaving the hospital together for the first, and hopefully last, time.
Castle knocks on the door before peaking his head inside the room. "Can we come in?"
A voice on the other side grants them entrance and Rick pushes fully through the door, Kate on his heels. It is a very minimalistic room: the bed, a table and chair set, TV hung in one corner, and another door to the left of the one they enter that opens to the bathroom.
"Hey," Castle whispers, making a beeline for his eldest daughter and new grandbaby.
"Hi," Alexis replies, pulling her hospital gown around her chest where the baby is nursing; trying to not be fully exposed when it's not just her husband and daughter in the room.
Rick kisses Alexis' temple, running a hand down her arm to the baby's tiny toes, tickling them, causing the infant to flinch.
"How are you feeling?" He asks.
"I'm good," Alexis nods, meeting her dad's eyes. "She did great last night; let us get a few hours of sleep. They offered to take her to the nursery so we could sleep, but I didn't want to be away from her," she says looking down at her daughter who had unlatched herself and was falling asleep, a fist coming to her cheek.
"And you?" Kate asks Max, the new dad looking a little ruffled in the feathers.
"Oh I'm fine," he answers with a smile.
"We brought breakfast," Kate tells him, putting the bags on the table and empting their contents. "We didn't know what you wanted so we got a bit of everything.
"Great! Thank you," Max says, hugging his mother-in-law around her shoulders. He makes a plate for Alexis first and then himself, and then trades the food for the sleeping baby.
"Oh, she is just beautiful," Kate breathes, finally getting a good look. She runs a finger over the tiny face, studying every feature.
"She has blonde hair!" Max laughs, slipping of the cap revealing the pale blonde hair on top of his daughter's head.
"So what do you think: will she have red hair like her mom or brown like her dad?" Kate questions, looking at the new parents.
"I think she'll have brown hair," Alexis answers. "Every one of Max's nieces and nephews has brown hair so I'm sure she will too."
"Do you want to hold her?" Max asks Kate. When she nods, her hands over the baby, who whines in protest but soon quiets down again when Kate starts murmuring to her. Rick goes to his wife's side, doing the same thing to his granddaughter as Kate had done minutes before.
"So what's her name?" Castle asks.
"McKenna Jo," Max answers for the both of them.
At the sound of the infants' name, Kate's stomach drops and she looks up at Alexis. The new mom meets Kate's eyes and sends her a half smile and a shrug as if to say, "She's your family too; think of her name how you want."
"Any significance?" Rick presses on, not noticing the silent exchange between the two moms.
"My godmother is named Jocelynn and we just fell in love with McKenna," Max shrugs, not really having a giant backstory to his daughter's name.
"She's beautiful," Rick says, taking McKenna from Kate, taking his turn to hold her.
They stay to see Max's parents, brother and sister, and their families, arrive from their flights from North Carolina, Colorado and Georgia respectively. Max's mom, Terri, cries at the sight of her granddaughter; overwhelmed at the sight of her. His niece, Sierra, begs to hold her new cousin, and after sitting on a chair with a pillow in her lap, gets McKenna placed in her lap.
Pictures are snapped of the sight and Sierra's bother, Bryce, accidently pokes the new baby in the eye causing her to immediately start to wail and the young boy to jump back, scared he had broken the baby.
Rick and Kate leave just after three to meet the kids' bus by three thirty, but promise they would be back.
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"Mommy!"
"Hey, buddy! Did you have a good day?" Kate asks, catching her son at her knees.
"Uh-huh," the five year old replies. "Can we see the baby now?"
"Yeah, can we?" His sister asks, coming out of a swarm of kids getting of the bus. Her pigtail braids, that were perfect that morning, had come undone and sections of hair were sticking out of them at odd angles.
"Once everyone gets out, we can," Kate answers them, looking for her other three kids. "Here: go wait in the car with Daddy," she says, pointing them a little ways down the sidewalk to where Castle is parked. The two race down the path, yelling and screaming the whole way.
Kate joins them a few minutes later with the other kids and five minutes later the family is off to the hospital.
"Here, Mia," Kate says, handing back the wrapped present she had at her feet since that morning. "When we get to the hospital you give this to Alexis, okay?"
"Okay," the girl nods, her siblings raising their voices in protest.
"No!"
"Mommy!"
"Why does she get too?"
"It's not fair!"
"I want to do it!"
"It's Miyana's present to give. You guys already gave Alexis your present. This one is special."
That doesn't end the pretests; just quiets them down a bit. A fight erupts between Miyana, Liam and Danielle which results in Kate taking the gift back until they get there and the kids pouting and angry.
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"Okay, when we go in there, you have to be very quiet, understand? Baby McKenna might be asleep." The parents lead their kids down the hospital hallway, each hand occupied with a child's; Finn trails behind, obviously tired after a day at school.
A knock on the wood door and they enter, sunset streaming in through the window.
"Be gentle!" Castle says as his kids rush towards their older sister and baby niece.
Alexis does so good with her siblings. She holds the baby low so they can see and touch her, moving the blankets aside so all of her face is exposed.
"Smell her," she tells them with a smile. "It's the best smell in the world.
The five inhale deeply that intoxicating baby smell, each one wanting a chance to explore the baby.
"What do you got there, Mia girl?" Alexis asks her sister, sitting up again.
"A present for Baby McKenna," Mia answers, handing over the gift bag and moving closer to the hospital bed.
"Well let's see here," Alexis pulls out layers of tissue paper, crumpling them up and tossing them at the kids making them squeal and laugh; just as she had done hours before with Max's nieces and nephews.
Finally she gets to the present. She reads the card first: a sweet message with Precious Moments characters on the front; and then pulls out the stuffed animal at the bottom. It's tiny and blue, with a tuft of blue fluff for hair. Stitch.
Alexis laughs, tears coming to her eyes, a hand covering her mouth. "Oh, Mia," she whispers, hugging her sister close. "It's great. Thank you."
"You're welcome," Mia says, going to her mom who had taken McKenna.
"I don't get it," Max says on a laugh.
"It's Stitch. Kenna was born at 6:26; Stitch was Experiment 626," Alexis tries to explain.
"I thought it was funny!" Kate laughs.
"It is!" Alexis smiles. "She'll love it. Thank you."
The quints each get their turn holding baby McKenna, and more pictures are snapped.
But not long after, both the new born and her kindergarten aunts and uncles start to get restless and so the families exchange good-byes before parting ways into the dark December evening.
"I like baby McKenna; she's cute." Finn announces on the drive home.
"Yeah, she is," Rick tells her from his spot in the drivers' seat.
"She cries a lot!" Liam interjects.
"Hey! You cried a lot when you were a baby too," Kate shoots back at her son.
"I did!?"
"Yup; you cried at everything," Kate laughs, exaggerating the memory to tease Liam.
"How come?"
"Because you were a baby; you couldn't talk yet and tell people what you wanted," Rick says, turning right onto another road.
"But now I can!" Liam cheers.
"Yes, you can," Castle smiles. "But you wanna know something?"
"What?"
"You cried so much because you hated the world as a baby. Hated everything. Nothing could make you happy. Except Alexis."
"Alexis?"
"Yeah. We didn't know what it was, but something she did make you stop crying and not mad at the world anymore. She had a magic touch."
"Do I have the magic touch?" Liam asks, holding up his hands.
Rick and Kate lock eyes under the street lamps, sharing a smile.
"I think you do, buddy," is the answer he gets.
"Cool," comes his sighed reply before the car goes silent; the only noise is the radio playing Christmas music.
"I have the magic touch too!" Danielle announces a few minutes later.
"No you don't! It's only my thing 'cause Alexis had her magic on me," Liam rebuts, turning to his sister next to him.
"Not uh!"
Yeah huh!"
And the fight continues all the way home.