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She didn't notice it at first. It was one of those things that slowly crept up on her. They'd been home from the hospital for about 30 minutes, and with Philip asleep in his bassinet, they sat down on the couch, Jim's arm around Pam and her head on his shoulder, to just stare at their new baby. 

"Why were we so frazzled when we brought Cece home from the hospital?" Jim asked, his gaze not moving from his new son. "Babies just lay there. It's the toddlers that are the hard work." 

"Well, we didn't really know what we were doing, and she took a while to latch," she sighed against Jim. "But, there's gonna be two of them now, it's gonna be way harder." 

"Nah, it'll be fine. This guy is just gonna chill, and it'll be like normal."

"Yeah, right," Pam laughed, turning to look up at Jim. "You can't be serious?"

"Babe, he's just laying there. He's not made a peep since we brought him home. So it's just gonna be like normal when Cece comes home. And when you feed him, I'll make her dinner. We got this. Team work," he said, holding his hand up for a high five.

"If you say so," she laughed, raising her hand up to pat Jim's. "When are your parents bringing Cees home?"

"Should be about now," he said, looking at his watch. "Want me to call my mom and see where they are?" Before Pam could even reply, they heard the front door open and the voices of Jim's parents trying to shush Cece from the hallway. "We're in the living room," Jim shouted out to them.

"Shhhh," Pam hissed, bending over the bassinet. "You'll wake him."

Jim just rolled his eyes at her as he pressed his hands to his thighs and pushed himself up from the couch. He returned several minutes later, holding Cece on his hip, while she clutched a very ratty looking stuffed rabbit. "Look Cees," he whispered, hovering her over the bassinet so she could see her sleeping brother.

"Baby," Cece said as she pointed to the crib and looked up at Jim.

"Yeah, he's your brother."

"Bruddah," she repeated. "Bruddah. Mama, bruddah."

"I know Cece," Pam said, holding out her arms for Jim to pass Cece to her. 

"You ok with them both if I go get some dinner for us?" Jim asked. He took in Pam's horrified expression as she stared up at him. "It'll be fine, I promise. Phil's asleep, and look, here," he said, grabbing a book for Cece, "why don't you read to her." Pam gingerly took the book, before Jim pressed kisses to both her and Cece's heads and then left the room. "You'll be fine," he called.

But she wasn't. And that's how it began.

Cece had started screaming that she didn't want to read the book, which had woken Philip up, who then started crying, which then caused Cece to cry. Pam tried to get Philip to latch, but Cece kept trying to climb onto Pam as well, almost squashing her brother in the process. Pam had called for Jim to come and take Cece from her, but he was in the middle of his own crisis, somehow burning spaghetti in a pot of boiling water. He eventually came in, pulling his grey t-shirt off that was now covered in splashes of tomato sauce.

"I thought you said this was gonna be easy," Pam said sarcastically.

Jim ignored her. "Come on Cees, let's go get daddy a new shirt huh?" he said, holding out his hand to Cece. When she shook her head and then tried to wiggle her way underneath Pam's back, Jim pulled her out and carried her upstairs with him, kicking and screaming the whole way up.

And that was just the start. By the end of the evening, Jim had changed his shirt four more times. Once with a poop explosion when he changed Philip. Another when he missed his mouth and spilt more tomato sauce down himself. The next was when Phil peed on him during another diaper change, so he thought he'd keep it on as it wasn't so bad, but then Cece drenched him at bath time, so that shirt had to go too. And finally when Jim and Pam were laying in bed and Pam passed Philip over to Jim for burping, and Philip sicked up all down his back.

"Yeah, I think I'm good like this," Jim laughed, as he threw his shirt onto the growing pile of dirty laundry in their room before laying back down topless next to Pam.

"If I hadn't just had your baby, and wasn't holding said baby, I would totally agree," she smirked. "Here, hold this," she said, passing Philip back to Jim so that she could button up her nursing bra. Jim sat up slightly, resting his bare back against the headboard so that he could hold the baby. "I really need to get some laundry done tomorrow," Pam sighed, looking around the room.

"Nope," Jim said, very matter of factly.

"Jim," she said, eyebrows knitted together. "I really need to wash our clothes, we're running out."

"Yeah, we really do need clean clothes, but you won't be doing any laundry, I will. As you said, you literally just had my baby, so I'm gonna do all the chores this week. And don't even think of arguing with me."

Pam smiled at him, before leaning over to press a kiss to his slightly stubbled cheek. "I love you," she said quietly.

The next day brought more chaos, with Philip vomiting over everything in sight, Cece clinging to whichever of her parents was holding her brother, and Pam getting the baby blues, causing her to weep at everything. Jim ran from one crisis to another, and as he tossed his third shirt of the day onto the ever growing pile of laundry that was now taking up most of their bedroom floor, he sighed and vowed to get the laundry done the next day.

Which he did. Just not for any of his clothes. He managed to get two loads done, one for each of the kids. He washed, dried, and folded although didn't quite put everything away, but he really tried. 

The next morning, Jim stumbled out of bed after around five hours of broken sleep and made his way to the bathroom. He knew he wouldn't have enough time for a shower, so instead quickly splashed some water on his face, brushed his teeth and sprayed some deodorant on. He tiptoed back into the bedroom, careful not to wake his sleeping son, and made his way over to his closet. He pulled on his mostly clean jeans, found his very last clean white undershirt, and then went to look for a sweater or long sleeved tee, but found nothing. He rummaged through his work shirts, and eventually found an old black and white checkered flannel button down that he hadn't worn in years. When he went to do up the buttons, he realised why. Most of the buttons were missing, other than one at the very bottom. He tipped his head back and sighed quietly in annoyance so as not to wake the baby, and then went about his day with his shirt flapped open.

"Where's that come from?" Pam asked as he brought the cereal over to the breakfast table. "I thought you threw it out years ago?"

"Throw out the wild s-e-x shirt?" he said, covering Cece's ears as he spoke. "Are you crazy? This shirt is like a trophy for me from that night. And also, it's currently the only clean thing I own right now, so I'm trying to be very careful that I don't get milk, or vomit, or poop down it." Pam just laughed and shook her head, causing her to drop her spoonful of cereal on both herself and Philip who she was feeding. "I'm gonna need you to be a little more careful Mrs Halpert, you're running dangerously low on clothes too." He walked over to the counter to make Cece some toast, before going upstairs to grab a clean muslin for Philip, and then back upstairs to get a doll that Cece was crying about having lost. Finally, he sat down to eat some cereal, and realised the milk was all gone. "I'll just run out to the store," he sighed. He saw Pam's look of terror on her face at the prospect of being left with both kids. "And I'll take Cees with me, don't worry."

By the time Jim was actually able to sit down to eat the bowl of cereal, it was sometime in the afternoon. But at that point, there were no clean spoons in the house, and as he reached for the last bowl, he realised that it had some crusted-on oatmeal that the dishwasher clearly hadn't been able to shift. He was about to grab some bread to make a grilled cheese sandwich, but then heard Pam shouting for help and ran to see what was happening.

He mopped up yet another poop explosion and then went to bathe Cece who had been caught in the crossfire. Just as he brought the clean toddler back down to the living room, he heard a rumbling coming from his stomach, causing Pam to laugh.

"You ok there?" she giggled.

"I haven't had a chance to eat today, and I'm starving."

"You sit, let me make you something," Pam offered, carefully standing up so as to not wake Philip who was sleeping on her.

"Definitely not," he said, "you stay right there." He wandered into the kitchen and on autopilot set about gathering all the items for his grilled cheese sandwich. It was when he couldn't feel the cheese in its usual spot that he realised he'd eaten the last of it at lunch yesterday. "Gahhh," he shouted out, causing Pam to come running, with Cece following closely behind. 

"What happened? Are you ok?" she asked, her voice full of concern.

"Yeah, just we're out of cheese, and I was gonna make a sandwich."

"I think we've got some mac and cheese in the cupboard?" Pam suggested.

"Nah, I'll just make some scrambled eggs," he sighed. "Want some?"

Pam brightly smiled. "You know how much I love your eggs. They're so good."

"I take it that's a yes then," he laughed.

"Yes please." She went to the refrigerator to get the milk and eggs, but as she put her hand on the handle, Jim stopped her.

"Go sit back down," he said nodding towards the living room, "I'll bring it in when it's ready." Pam smiled at him gratefully and headed out of the door, whilst Cece stayed behind in the kitchen to ‘help'. 

After about 20 minutes, far longer than it should have taken for scrambled eggs to be made, Pam ventured back to the kitchen to find out what was taking so long. Just as she rounded the corner of the doorframe, she spotted Jim and Cece dancing together to some nursery rhyme that Jim had put on the CD player. Pam leaned against the wall cradling Philip and watched them dance obliviously in their own happy little world. She gazed at the way the shirt flapped around Jim's torso as he moved, before he wrapped it around Cece when he picked her up. As he was holding their daughter, Jim noticed Pam staring at them and smiled, inviting her to join their dancing. The four of them jumped and boogied around their messy kitchen, blissfully happy without a care in the world. 

Later that evening, long after the scrambled eggs had been eaten, Cece had been put to bed and Philip was dozing in his bassinet, Jim finally plopped himself down on the couch. He wiped his hands that were still wet with dishwater on his jeans and pulled a doll out from underneath him before he was finally comfortable. "Hey," he smiled up at Pam before he felt his eyes grow heavy. 

"Hey," she grinned back as she watched him fall asleep. As his eyes fluttered shut, Pam took in his boyish face, that had somehow grown older over the last few days. His unwashed hair was sticking up in all directions, there were various stains down his white t-shirt and he was missing a sock. But Pam had never been more in love with him. As she looked at the checkered shirt clinging to his tired body, she knew that the crazy sex memories she once associated with it had now been replaced with those of a loving father, caring husband and the most supportive best friend she could have ever asked for.

Chapter End Notes:


MrsKHalpert is the author of 37 other stories.
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