*
*
You wake up because she stirs. You question why she is suddenly disentangling herself from you until the soft whimpers from the baby monitor registers in your sleep-deprived mind. You immediately prop yourself up, a bit unsettled, but she stops you with a gentle hand to your shoulder.
“I got it,” she whispers.
You squint at the clock on your nightstand and it’s barely a quarter past two. In this new stage of your life, a full night of sleep is like a unicorn—it’s rumored to exist, but there’s doubt you’ll see it.
“Babe, I’m up, I’m—”
“It’s okay,” she reassures you. “She’s probably hungry.”
She plants a soft kiss on your cheek and your head falls back on the pillow. Your heavy eyelids shut and you involuntarily slip back into slumber.
But not for long.
Twenty minutes have gone by and she’s not back. You stretch your limbs above your head, urging them to wake so that you will too. You swivel your feet off the bed and shuffle towards the dim light coming from the room down the hall. You carefully push the door open and find her asleep on the glider with your other, smaller her sleeping soundly in her arms.
The sight of them does you every time—both have their mouths slightly open and matching pillow creases on their cheeks. Your little girl still has her tiny fingers tangled in her momma’s hair. She does some sort of twiddling every time she’s nursing or being put to sleep. Of her little quirks, it’s your favorite. It adds to the reasons why you boycott the barber’s shop.
You wake your wife with a kiss on her forehead; she startles a bit and instinctively tightens her hold on the infant.
“Hey,” you whisper.
“Hey…” She says with a sleepy grin.
“Here, I got her.”
You lift your little girl to your arms and cradle her under your chin—a sweet, warm bundle of fluid and skin against your chest. She releases a sleepy yawn and milk bubbles emerge from her tiny lips. You wipe it clean with your shirt—not your brightest idea, but it gets the job done.
In her four month glory, your daughter is beautiful—and not to mention deliciously chubby. Her neck and wrists disappears in folds of baby fat and her cheeks are now round and ruddy. Her lashes are dark and long, curling slightly at the tips and her porcelain skin is pink. She’s just the right combination of you and her.
You gently ease her down in the crib and stroke the honey wisps of hair on her head. Your wife prays she inherited your hair, but it’s a lost cause and she knows it—the few strands atop her head already curl at the ends. You secretly love it.
You don’t realize this, but your whole life is placed inside the tiniest of beings. If you weren’t so sleep-deprived, this notion would have made you a bit frazzled.
You return to your wife, who has fallen back to sleep, and right now you think she looks more beautiful than the day you met her. The milk stain on her shirt and the burping cloth over her shoulder suits her—better, motherhood suits her. You brush a hand over her cheek and her eyes flutter open once again.
“I fell asleep,” she murmurs, rubbing her eyes.
“I know,” you reply with a smile in your voice.
“Is she down?” She asks around a yawn.
“For now,” you muse.
You grab her hands and pull her up to a standing position. The scent of baby wipes, talcum, and a hint of Johnson & Johnson’s diaper rash cream floods your nose. You kiss her hair and she yawns again. You notice that her curls are specially mussed tonight. You find it cute the way it’s all jumbled on one side of her face.
You turn the light off and shut the nursery door behind you and usher her back to the bedroom. She eases herself on the bed and you curl around her. It’s a quarter to three now. Sleep weighs your eyelids once again and you doze off, tasting a few more quiet hours of uninterrupted sleep.
When you wake again—the early morning light, dappled by the gaps on the blinds, is cool and blue. You release a lung full of air and gaze at your wife. She’s still asleep, sprawled snugly half on top of you. Her symmetry fits to your body perfectly—by design, really. You plant a kiss on her hair and linger, inhaling her scent until interrupted by a faint wail resonating from the baby monitor.
It’s then you realize that it was what woke you up in the first place.
You carefully extricate yourself from her, thankful when she doesn’t wake. You pad to the nursery and find your baby girl fussing in her crib. Her small arms flail about her pink round face and the soft indentation above her knees alters as she kicks the flannel blanket at her feet.
“G’morning pretty lady!”
At the sound of your voice she quiets, her eyes glimmer from beneath her opening lids. You scoop her up with close pressure and earnest kisses—not so much to soothe her soft murmurs, but to assure yourself that she’s your flesh and blood, and not utterly delusive. Being this little girl’s dad is still totally surreal to you.
You set her down on the changing table and her eyes immediately dart to the colorful padding decorating the railing. It has her complete attention as you change her diaper. Not even your playful kisses and tickles can tear her eyes away.
“I see…no love for daddy today.”
You plant a loud kiss just above where her belly submerges into the diaper and her eyes widen. She gazes up at you, smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam. You begin to kiss a trail up from her bellybutton to the ticklish nook under her arm. She recognizes the game and turns into what you can only describe as a wiggle worm—squirming and squealing happily. You blow raspberries on her belly and kiss her everywhere, she gurgles, fluttering her limbs in the air.
“I knew you couldn’t ignore me for long.”
You scoop her up and she instinctively nuzzles her face on your shirt.
She’s a hungry babe.
“Sorry, not equipped for you there.”
Not wanting to wake your wife, you pad to the kitchen and take a pre-made bottle from the fridge and place it in the microwave. When it beeps, you take the bottle, shake it, test it, and settle yourself on the couch with her. You begin giving her the bottle—she takes it, but not as eager as you thought she would.
“Not hungry?” You ask as the white liquid oozes from the side of her mouth. It’s only when your wife comes down the stairs and into view that you immediately know what your little girl really wants.
“G’morning,” your wife says in a sing-song way, coming up behind you and pressing a minty-fresh kiss to your cheek.
“Good morning,” you say, turning to kiss her.
She then flings her arms over your shoulders and trails her fingers over the baby’s belly. “G’morning, baby girl!” As soon as the little girl’s eyes lock on her momma, she fusses, sticks her tongue out, and begins to whimper. “Why the fuss, uh?” she coos.
In response, your daughter flails her arms and pouts her small lips—voicing her frustration.
“Yucky bottle, uh?” You say.
“Is something wrong with the bottle?” Your wife questions.
“I don’t think that’s it,” you say, settling the bottle on the coffee table. “I also prefer the real thing Celia.” You wink at your wife and she playfully swats to your arm.
“Here, lemme have her,” she says.
You watch your wife lift your daughter from your arms and discreetly undo her nightgown to nurse her. This is still a very special moment for her. Your little girl snuggles to her momma and immediately latches her tiny mouth around her breast and begins to wind down. It’s beautiful, really. Their bond is beautiful. It’s motherhood at its most visible and tangible fashion.
“You good?” You ask.
“Yeah.”
And she is.
You shuffle to the Dwight-remodeled-kitchen (after the initial shock wore off, you’ve come to appreciate it. Saved you a ton of money, plus no more mold!), and you begin making breakfast. You opt for eggs, toast, and orange juice. It’s all that’s left. You need to go grocery shopping after work. This reminds you—work starts in an hour. So, you quicken your pace and the eggs come in a bit undercooked.
“Breakfast is ready,” you announce.
“She’s almost done,” your wife calls back.
You peer into the living room and you know she’s not almost done. One thing you’ve learned thus far is that your daughter takes her time nursing—since birth, really, and why wouldn’t she? She sucks for some time, stops for a breather, twirls her momma’s hair, and then sucks again... It’s like a dance.
So you place breakfast on a tray and carry it to the living room. You plop yourself next to her and together you eat the most important meal of the day as a family.
“This toast is really good,” she says with a mouth full.
“We were low on butter, so I mixed cream cheese with it,” you say, sipping your juice.
“I like it!”
In the mean time, your daughter finishes nursing and you offer to burp her while your wife finishes her breakfast. She releases a few good ones and you can’t help but chuckle to yourself.
“Better?” You squint at her playfully and her emerald green eyes brighten and her tiny hands wave anxiously in the air.
She’s ready to play.
You lay her vertically on your lap and she scrunches her little nose like a bunny. You take her pudgy feet in your hands and she’s already beaming—knowing what’s coming. You kiss and tickle them and she gurgles and squirms. It’s her favorite thing. She gets so wound-up that her cheeks flush rosy-pink. You think she looks like her momma, albeit smaller, when she’s smiling as wide as she’s now.
In the back of your mind, you know you probably shouldn’t rough house just after she nurses. It’s what accounts for the stains on your shirts, pants, sweaters…But it’s impossible to resist that dimply gummy smile.
Your wife also joins the game and leans over and kisses her full belly. “You like a ruckus, don’t you, silly babe?”
Your little girl’s unintelligible response is full of merriment and music. She adores her momma as much as you do.
“Okay, now,” you say propping her up. She hardens her small features in a stern, almost comical, unsympathizing look of discontent. “Daddy’s gotta get ready for work,” you explain.
Your justification falls flat as she flails her arms in objection, mumbling away an incoherent protest again and again like a broken record.
“I know, sweetie. I don’t like work either.”
You nuzzle into her neck, causing her to shriek with all kinds of joyful sounds again, resulting on a nice, warm coat of drool plastering over your jaw.
“Thanks for the slobber, punk’n!” You kiss her chubby cheeks once more.
You hand her over to your wife and you miss her already. You march to your bedroom and proceed to shower and dress. By the time you’re back, you are dangerously close to being late. You kiss your goodbyes and a new layer of drool coats your clean-shaven cheek. It’s inevitable.
“Say ‘bye-bye daddy,’” you wife says, waving her little hand in the air. She bounces blissfully in her mother’s arms.
You wave back. “Call me as soon as you leave the doctor’s.”
“I will,” she replies, bringing your daughter’s tiny hand over her mouth, blowing kiss to you. “We love you.”
You catch it midair and place it in your pocket. “Love you too”
You drive to work, but your mind is elsewhere—even the smallest of distance between you and them has that effect on you. When you’re finally sitting behind your desk, you gaze at the thirteen messages on your phone and you know it’s going to be a long day. This notion hits you harder since your wife has the day off.
When five o’clock rolls around, you’re exhausted—the day’s toll getting the best of you, though the picture messages helped a little. You make a quick stop by the supermarket and soon you’re stumbling through your front door with more groceries bags than you can carry. But when you inhale that homey smell…
You’re invigorated.
“Pam?”
“Kitchen.”
You discard of the grocery bags, belongings, and your fatigue in the hallway and follow the scent of baby powder and cheesy potatoes—a strange mix, you know—to the kitchen. You around the corner and see her standing by the sink, hoisting your daughter on her hip while tossing together a salad. She’s humming a familiar tune and you can’t help singing the words to the melody.
“You make me smile like the sun. Fall out of bed, sing like bird. Dizzy in my head…”
You’re not in tune and you know your wife is smiling, though she has her back to you.
“…You make me dance like a fool. Forget how to breathe. Shine like gold, buzzzz like a bee…” You exaggerate your ‘buzzing’ sound and you daughter stretches her head, seeking for you.
You embrace them from behind and plant a loud kiss on your wife’s cheek. You lift your little girl from her arms and kiss her rosy cheeks too. She gurgles and reaches for your nose.
You notice the colorful band-aids on her right leg. “Oh sweetie.” You find another on her left. “How many shots did you get?”
“Three.” Your wife says.
“I bet it hurt, uh?” You pull her closer to your chest. This pains you a bit.
“Yeah.” Your wife says with an aching sigh, turning to kiss her. “She’s just sore now.”
“How did you make through it?”
She looks at you and shrugs. “I didn’t.”
You can't help but smile. She's such a good mom.
Your little girl releases a content sigh and nestle her head on your shoulder. You snatch your wife with your free hand and pull her close and you end “... Just the thought of you can drive me wild. Ohhhh, you make me smile.”
Story Notes:
Jim, Pam, and a little girl called Cecelia.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Jim and Pam and Cecelia Halpert
The title--Uncle Kracker
EmilyHalpert is the best!
I own nada.
Chapter End Notes:
Great episode, uh? Thanks for reading!
Dedeen is the author of 20 other stories.
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