Passion's Instinct

Thirty Five

1 Year Later

Pic in Media ~ Temple Morgan Christensen

Natalie

Hayden and I took the kids to a family photoshoot one morning for People magazine.

As we waited for the photographer to come back with props, Sawyer bothered his younger sister, what he did best, pulling at her dark curls.

She whined, reaching back behind her and attempting to bat his hand away. When he wouldn't let go, she started to cry.

"Sawyer!" I exclaimed. "Let go of your sister's hair. Haven't we spoken to you about this before?" He rolled his eyes and dropped his hand, letting go of a dark ringlet of hair from his sister's head.

"Don't roll your eyes at me, Saywer. That's very disrespectful. What do you say?" I said gently, trying not to be too harsh.

"Sorry, Temple," he told his sister, her eyes filled to the brink with tears.

"Are you okay, Temple?" I asked her, meeting eyes with her.

She nodded her head, her bottom lip sticking out pathetically. She was so cute.

Hayden pulled Sawyer over to him and distracted him by making a funny face, which made him laugh. I smiled too, relieved that we could get them both happy again. If I could hold out a couple more years, I was definitely going to wait that long to have another baby. Hayden and I absolutely adored our children, but they were a handful, for sure. Especially when they were together, which was most often.

I was a little concerned about the interview that took place after the photoshoot later because it was going to be lengthy, and I knew the kids would get squirmy. But I promised myself everything would be alright.

**********************************

That evening, as I was making dinner, Hayden packed stuff up for Vancouver. We had put an offer in for one house a few weeks ago, and we had gotten the house of our dreams. It was waiting empty for us, all the way in Canada. By the time we were done packing, we would send everything two days ahead of our flight there.

I knew that preparing to move with an all-over-the-place husband, a crazy, energetic four-year-old, a growing and learning 11-month-old and an old husky that acted like she was still a puppy would be hard, but not nearly this hard.

"Mommy!" Sawyer screamed from the other room. "Temple's pulling my hair!" I heard him grunt, a hard smack against flesh and more screaming, this time from the baby's mouth.

I set down the knife on the cutting board and ran into the living room, where Sawyer had scissors in his hand and... wait. Scissors?

"Sawyer, honey, where did you get those scissors?" I took them out of his hands. I put those on the counter!

I turned to Temple and lifted her, setting her on my hip and meeting eyes with her. "Did you pull Sawyer's hair?"

She nodded, her thumb in her mouth and her eyes teary.

"That wasn't nice, was it?"

She shook her head, looking up at me.

"Now, apologize to Sawyer," I said, pushing back the hair on her forehead and pointing to Sawyer.

Temple looked at him, then at me and said, straight out, "No."

"That's not nice either. Why don't you want to apologize?"

"Hair. Hair," she repeated a few times over. She touched the back of her head and turned it so I could see. There was a big chunk of hair cut out of the back, obviously done by her brother.

"Sawyer!" I scolded. "Both of you, apologize or you're going to go in your rooms. I'm not dealing with this bad behavior."

Sawyer and Temple looked at each other. "Sorry," they said in unison.

"Thank you," I said, setting Temple down. As bad as it seemed, I decided to deal with the hair thing later.

I walked back to the kitchen, sliding the scissors into the drawer under the counter and continuing to work on dinner. As soon as I picked up the knife again, Hayden yelled my name from the front hallway.

"Yeah?" I called back, cutting the rest of the one red pepper.

"The dog got into the trash again upstairs!" He paused, then made a sick sound. "Oh... oh, yeah. You might want to come pick this up before anything else gets to it." He made another grossed-out vomit-sound, so I walked into the hallway where he was. He pointed to the stairs and left me to pick up a used pad that the dog had pulled out of the trash.

Let's not go into any more detail.

Once I had that cleaned up, I sighed and washed my hands, thinking of how much I had to do. I had been so overwhelmed lately. I was surprised that I hadn't fell and collapsed on the floor yet from exhaustion.

Of course, before I could back to dinner, there was another problem.

"Natalie!" Hayden yelled again, this time more urgent.

"Yes?" I called back, blowing a stray hair out of my face and running to where he was.

Right on the porch outside, Hayden lay on the ground, the box of books that he was carrying brandished aside.

I knelt down beside him and touched his bottom lip lightly. "What happened?" I asked, suddenly panicked. His lip was split and bleeding.

"I hit my face on the sharp edge of the porch." He explained, rubbing the back of his neck. He licked his lip and his face turned bitter.

"Here," I said, taking his hand and helping him up. I led him into the kitchen and got him some paper towels and ice. "Hold this on your lip and go sit on the couch. I'll take care of the rest of the boxes that you were carrying out. You've done enough --"

I paused and looked behind me to where I noticed Hayden's eyes were trained so specifically and saw Kota eating the rest of the stir fry ingredients out of the bowl.

I let out a cry of frustration and threw all of the dirty dishes in the sink, putting all of the clean ones back. "Okay. I am so done," I said aloud, and the kids, the dog and my husband all looked at me. "Hayden. Please just call the pizza place to order out."