Total pages in book: 22
Estimated words: 20775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 104(@200wpm)___ 83(@250wpm)___ 69(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 20775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 104(@200wpm)___ 83(@250wpm)___ 69(@300wpm)
Hours later, I was missing that twenty minutes I’d had to myself.
“Olive, if you scream one more time, you’re going to sit on your bed,” I yelled for the fourth time, fully aware of the irony. “Meg wants the little doll. Just give it to her. You have the big one already.”
“It’s mine,” Olive yelled back with a screech.
“Mine!” Meg howled.
“Still happy you had them so close together?” Lu asked from her perch on the counter. “They’re only a year apart, they’ll be best friends.”
“Eventually,” I conceded through my teeth. “Can you give me a sec?”
“No problem, beautiful,” Eli murmured, leaning back in the kitchen chair he was sitting in so I could cut his hair. “First time I’ve sat down all day.”
“Well, if you weren’t like a friggin’ squirrel,” Lu pointed out as I hurried toward the living room. “You’d be able to focus on one thing at a time.”
It took less than ten seconds to get to the living room, but by then, Meg had somehow snatched the smaller doll from her sister and climbed to the top of our bookshelves. Her little toes were flexed against the shelf below her as she held on with one hand and clutched the doll in the other. She was twisting to sneer at Olive when I reached up and dragged her off the shelf.
“She’s not supposed to be up there!” Olive reminded me shrilly.
“Thanks, I wasn’t aware,” I mumbled under my breath. I looked at my youngest daughter and had to hold back a sigh. While Olive had gotten my snark and my attitude, Meg had absorbed her father’s I-don’t-give-a-fuck approach on life. It was amazing, really, considering they’d never known him as anything except the daddy that had tried to convince me that they should wear bike helmets until they were five—and not only when they were riding bikes.
“You have to stop climbing on the shelf,” I told Meg, doing my best not to laugh at the look of satisfaction on her face.
“Mine dolly,” she said simply. “I climbin’ on the shelf.”
“Don’t climb on the shelf,” I repeated, slower.
“Mine dolly.” She smiled.
“She should be in trouble,” Olive griped, still glaring at her sister.
“Did you share when I told you to share?” I asked ominously.
Her mouth snapped shut.
“Why don’t you guys run into the kitchen and ask Auntie Lu for a cheese stick.” I set Meg on her feet and watched them closely once they were within wrestling distance, but neither one of them were feeling brave. Wrestling when mom wasn’t watching? Happened a hundred times a day. Wrestling when I could see who’d started it? Never.
“Where my girls at?” The girls spun toward the door and raced for my husband.
“Daddy!” Olive yelled.
“Best friend!”
“Uncle Ferest!” Meg squealed.
“What the hell?” Mark caught Olive in his arms and watched nonplussed as Meg raced past him and jumped at his best friend.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Forrest said, catching Meg beneath her armpits so he could swing her into the air. “You bein’ good for your mama today?”
“Uh huh.”
“No, she’s not,” Olive argued, her eyes wide. “She was climbin’ on the shelf again!”
Mark laughed. “I’m not even a foot inside the front door and you’re already throwin’ your sister under the bus.”
“She did,” Olive replied, gripping his cheeks between her hands. “And she took my doll.”
“Olive, I told you to share,” I reminded her as I walked toward them. “Good grief.”
“Hey, baby,” Mark murmured, pulling me in for a kiss. “How’d your day go?”
“Your daughters are feral,” I murmured against his mouth. “And your teammates are in my kitchen.”
“So, pretty standard, then?”
“Correct.”
“Nice.”
“I’m pretty sure you woke your son with that entrance,” I said, patting his chest as we both paused for a moment. When a small cry came through the baby monitor in the kitchen, I smiled smugly. “You woke him up, you can go get him.”
“No problem.” He looked at Olive. “You want to come with me?”
Olive kicked her legs in response, wiggling to get down.
“I’m going to go cut Eli’s hair,” I said, jumping away from him as he pinched my ass. “Make sure you change Forrest’s diaper before you bring him out.”
“Kind of you,” Mark’s best friend muttered as he wrangled both girls and closed the door behind him. “But my drawers are dry.”
“That joke isn’t as funny as you think it is.”
“I don’t know,” he argued as he carried the girls toward the kitchen. “Your husband laughed.”
“That was a cough,” Mark called after him. He met my eyes and grinned. “Not as bad as when Eli acts like he’s not sure which one of them you’re going to breastfeed.”
“We should’ve named our son anything else,” I grumbled, making him chuckle as I strode toward the kitchen. “Herbert has a nice ring to it. It’s not too late to change our minds.”
“He’s nine months old!” Mark yelled back as he strode in the opposite direction. “He knows his name by now!”