The Shadow's Fox

Chapter 7

Hey guys. Here's another chapter for you all. This one is on the shorter side too, but this one was just too cute to pair with any other event. Hope you still enjoy it even though it is on the shorter side.

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Four months had passed, and Shikadai was now 7 months old. He was sitting up on his own, and was starting to eat baby food now, and he was crawling all over the place. He was ecstatic when the boy first called him "Mama" and it seemed to be his new favorite word. He didn't really say anything else, even though Shikamaru had been trying to get him to say "Dada" for a while now. Naruto could tell that Shikamaru was a bit upset that he wasn't saying it, so Naruto had decided to try and coax the boy to say it.

"Ok, Shikadai. Say dada. Da da," Naruto said as he stressed the syllables.

"Mama!" Shikadai cried out, then stuck the block he was playing with in his mouth.

Naruto sighed as Yoshino walked in the room. They were visiting Yoshino while Shikamaru was on a mission. "Still can't get him to say it?" she asked as she handed Naruto a cup of tea, then sat down on the couch.

Shikadai saw this and immediately crawled over to try and grab it, but Naruto just held it out of the boy's reach. "No. Why won't he say it?"

"Children are funny things. They do what they want, and don't like listening to their parents."

"Was Shikamaru ever like that?"

"Oh yeah," Yoshino said. "That boy absolutely refused to crawl. No matter how much Shikaku or I tried to coax him into it, that boy just wouldn't have it."

"What happened?" Naruto asked as Shikadai flung his block around. It escaped from the boy's grip and it flew at Naruto's head, but his shinobi reflexes let him catch it before it hit him, and he handed it back.

"One day, he just got up and started crawling, as if he had been doing it for years."

"Really?"

"Yep," she replied as Shikadai decided to crawl onto her lap. She picked the boy up and kissed his cheek before sitting him on her knee. "Shikadai will say it when he's ready. I'm sure he'll do just like his father, and say it out of nowhere."

"I just feel bad. Shika acts like it's fine, but I can tell he's upset that Shikadai hasn't said it yet."

Shikadai squealed and threw his block at Naruto. "Mama!"

Naruto caught the block easily, but decided a wooden block wasn't the best thing for the boy to be throwing, so he grabbed a small rubber ball instead and handed it to the boy.

Shikadai frowned at the ball, pushed it away, and reached out for his block.

"Shikadai, the block's to hard for you to throw around. If you want to throw something, throw this," Naruto said as he held the ball up to the boy again.

The boy glared at the ball. "No!" he cried out and pushed the ball away again.

Naruto sat there shocked, and Yoshino just laughed. "I told you. He's like his father. He's probably going to be saying a few more words before he even turns one."

Shikadai squirmed to get out of his grandmother's grip, and the woman complied and sat the boy on the ground. He then crawled over to his block and proceeded to put it in his mouth.

"So he now knows how to say no, but still refuses to say dada," Naruto summed up then sighed.

"Careful, his next word may be troublesome," Yoshino warned. "That son of mine loves to say that word, just like his father."