The beginning of everything else

Flash Forward - That Sinking Feeling

AN - Hey, so it has been a while. Work is crazy at the moment and year-end deadlines are looming, but I've managed to work on this one over a few days here and there, so hope you enjoy.

"Daddy said some naughty things" had been the first words out of Elijah's mouth as I put him into the backseat of my car between his sisters, who were giggling about their father's uncharacteristic outburst. I wanted to laugh too,   mainly due to how mild the "naughty things" were given the circumstances, but instead I settled for "what a scamp" as I buckled him in.

Over the years we had tried to keep that kind of language to an absolute minimum when we were around them, but occasionally something slipped out - usually from me. Of course, those were the words that they picked up and remembered in a split second, and it wasn't until the most mortifying conversation with their daycare teacher that I had realized just how much they had already heard. It had been my day to pick the girls up, and Emma had asked me if I could stay for a quick chat in her office - much to my horror, and Noah's amusement when I recounted the story - Sadie had gotten out of the red and yellow Little Tikes car that she had been playing with earlier that day, slammed the door, kicked one of the wheels, and shouted "fucking thing's broken" before storming off to find another toy. 

Noah still likes to remind me that it wasn't him that she was copying that day, and so this new little anecdote will be an excellent rebuttal when it comes to teasing each other about our occasional slips from model parent to mere humans - or at least it will in a few days, when this evening stops being stressful and starts to be a funny memory.

The girls are happily reading and so I pass Elijah my phone so that he can play Angry Birds whilst I make sure that my husband is OK. Leaving the heater on, and the doors locked, I walk the 50 feet to where Noah is standing, cell phone to his ear, calling his insurance or the tow company so that we can wrap this evening up and get home to our warm, dry cottage and put the kids to bed. 

We had moved to England about 6 months ago so that I could work on a year-long project in London. Noah had been thinking of moving to a new firm anyway, and so when I had been offered this opportunity he had floated the idea of taking a year out to be a stay-at-home-dad. We're lucky, money isn't an issue, and so every evening I get home to our little cottage in a village just outside of London to find my very handsome husband has usually cooked dinner and gotten the kids bathed and ready for bed.

This week however had been absolutely stressfully insane, with lots of deadlines to meet, and so Noah - saint that he is - took the kids out for a couple of hours so that I could have a long bubble-bath, without little people trying to infiltrate the bathroom or race the dogs up and down the corridor just outside of the door. When I got his phone call, I had thanked my lucky stars that I hadn't opened a bottle of wine like he had suggested, meaning I was sober and able to throw some yoga pants and one of his hoodies on and get straight into the car.

"Hey you", I smile at him as he hangs up the phone and runs his hands through his soaking wet hair. He is saturated from head to toe, and it isn't getting any better as the rain keeps falling, driven almost horizontally by the wind that is now battering the country from the latest storm coming in from the Atlantic ocean. Early November in the UK is very wet and very windy, or it is at least this year.

He returns the smile before holding his jacket open in an attempt to shelter me a little from the rain, and I tuck myself under his arm, wrapping myself around his waist and giving him a squeeze. 

"They've said that I'm way down the list. They're getting a lot of calls like this, and I'm not vulnerable, which is fair, but you might as well get the kids home and dry, it's probably going to be well past midnight before they get here" He suggests, in a voice that tells me he is resigned to having a terrible evening, "I'm already soaked, but you guys can stay warm"