Kimberly and Leila live a normal life - until Kimberly meets a girl trespassing on the playground of the elementary school she is employed at. Kimberly knows Nova is too old to be a student at the school. She figures her to be a preteen or in her ve...
Leila and Kimberly could barely sleep the night before Christmas. Looking forward to giving Nova her first Christmas made them more excited than they'd ever been about the holiday. Their excitement made it hard to stay asleep. When they woke up again at six thirty Christmas morning, they decided to give up on sleep and stay awake. They eagerly awaited Nova waking up.
"I'm so happy," Kimberly said to Leila as they both sat up in bed, propped up on pillows. "I don't think I've ever been this excited on Christmas morning."
"I know I haven't," Leila replied.
"I hope she likes everything."
"She will."
They had had to limit what they got Nova for Christmas because they'd been buying things for her since her October arrival and had already spent so much on clothes and storybooks and stuffed animals and educational materials and much more. It was only thanks to wise saving that they'd had enough to buy all that. So they couldn't afford to buy Nova everything they wanted to get her, but they did pretty well anyway. Leila's gifts were fun. Kimberly's were fun and practical.
In addition to formal studies, Kimberly believed that Nova needed to play to learn. Learning comes in many forms, and play is one of them. Coming from the harsh and brutal world that Nova had escaped, she had not had much of a chance to reap the benefits of learning though play.
It was one of the reasons she lacked problem-solving skills, among other things. Kimberly aimed to remedy that by purchasing toys that would give little Nova's brain the stimulus it lacked. She hoped that since Nova was capable of regressing to the state of mind of a young child, maybe that meant she was also capable of learning through play like one.
"We've got like three more hours until the time she usually wakes up," Leila said, looking at the time. "Maybe we can get away with waking her up a little earlier. What do you think?"
Kimberly laughed. "I think we're like two little children wanting to get our parents up so we can open our gifts!"
"Only instead of opening our gifts, we want someone to get up to open hers."
"I think we can get her up a little earlier, but not much. In the meantime, we can exchange our presents to each other." Kimberly hopped out of bed and retrieved a plastic shopping bag from her side of the closet. The gift inside the bag was unwrapped and not under the tree because she'd only bought it last night.
Kimberly and Leila had put so much time and thought into finding good gifts for Nova that they hadn't had much time to think of what they'd be giving each other this year. Last night, with Nova at home in Leila's care, Kimberly had finally had a chance to make a last-minute dash out to buy a gift for Leila. Leila had made her last-minute dash two days ago.
The gift Kimberly bought Leila was a lantern. Leila loved gardening. In the back right of their backyard was a small garden surrounded by a tiny ten-inch tall white picket fence. This was Leila's happy place. But since Nova came along, she hadn't had as much time for it as usual.
Sometimes, Leila would go out there after dinner, but she always had to come in when it got dark because she couldn't see well. She'd used a flashlight a couple of times, but it was a pain. So Kimberly had bought her something that she could hang in the center of her garden.
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