Brennifer: My first true love❤️

Chapter sixty one: Back to work

January 2002

It's Sunday evening and it's the last day of Jen's maternity leave as she goes back to work tomorrow morning. The girls are almost 9 months old and they are becoming right little characters.

Ophelia-Rose is both a mommy's girl and a daddy's girl and she is becoming a cheeky monkey and whenever Jen or Brad call her for food, a diaper change or anything for that matter, she always crawls as fast as she can to get away from them and when she does this she is always giggling. Ophelia-Rose's favourite thing to do is to play with her building blocks and Pollyanna likes to knock her tower down which usually ends in tears.

Pollyanna-Grace on the other hand is very much a mommy's girl. She's attached to Jen's hip almost all the time and she still relies heavily on breastfeeding and they think it's because she gets to be close to Jen when she feeds. Pollyannas' favourite thing to do is to blow bubbles and to 'talk' all day, everyday

The girls have both mastered crawling and they are beginning to pull themselves up on the furniture around the house. They have an unbreakable bond and Jen and Brad often find themselves listening outside the nursery room door to the girls chatting away to each other in their own little language when they are meant to be sleeping.

(Jen's P.O.V)

"Come on baby, you are so stinky you need a bath" I picks up Ophelia... who, like always is crawling away from her

"I gotcha stinky bum" I snuggle her into me as I run up the stairs quickly so she can't escape from me

Brad has already given Pollyanna a bath and he's changing her into a clean diaper and her pyjamas. I go and tell him I'm just putting Ophelia in the bath and he's sitting on the rocking chair reading a story to Pollyanna who is looking like she's going to fall asleep any second.

I strip Ophelia down and place her in the tub of warm water with some of her favourite bath toys. The girls have just eaten a Bolognese that I made from scratch and they absolutely loved it... and as you can imagine they got it everywhere. Two 9 month old girls feeding themselves spaghetti isn't going to end well but they had so much fun eating it on their own.

Instead of spaghetti pasta, I used small, shape pasta as I was scared that if they swallowed wrong, the spaghetti would get stuck in their throats.

I rub shampoo thoroughly in her hair to try and get the dried tomato sauce from their meal out of it. I'm quite lucky in the fact that both of my girls really enjoy bath time so I don't have to put up with any screaming while I'm trying to clean them.

Once her hair is washed, I rinse it one last time and I wash her little body. As I'm doing this, I'm telling her how much I love her and that she's all nice and clean and she's no longer stinky.

I grab a towel off the heating rack and lift her out of the tub before wrapping her up nice and warm. I carry her into her bedroom where Pollyanna has now fallen asleep on Brad. I lay Ophelia down on the changing table, massage some lotion on her and diaper her up and clothe her. She's already falling asleep as I'm doing this so I give her a soft kiss and place her in her crib. Brad does the same with Pollyanna, we turn on their baby monitors and we quietly exit the room.

"It's so nice that Pollyanna will actually allow me to put her to bed now" Brad says as we grab a blanket and cuddle up on the couch

"Even though I love that she's such a mommy's girl, I want to get her out of that habit of needing me all the time and since I'm going back to work tomorrow, she'll have to get used to it" I say as I rest my head on his shoulder and he wraps his arms around me

"I think she'll be a mommy's girl no matter what we do. She's just so obsessed with you Jen but it's nice that she actually likes me now and she won't scream the house down when you're not here tomorrow"