Synced

Consistency

Nicole

"Ba ba?" Taejin touched my stomach as I sat at my desk, replying to messages customers had sent.

I smiled "Yeah, baby. Say baby" I coached him.

"Ba ba!" He yelled "Ba ba!"

"Baby"

"Ba ba!" He yelled again.

I picked him up, sitting him in my lap. "We'll keep working on it, I love you." I kissed his temple. He laid his head on my chest as he messed with the strap of my tank top.

"Da Da" He sat up after a while, looking me in my face.

"Tae!"

I heard the tv cut off as he came out of my room. We definitely weren't back living under the same roof, but he'd spend the days with his son and I when he could. As far as I knew, he had stopped engaging in most illegal activities, he was trying to find new business ventures, and he had cut back on weed. He hadn't stopped everything completely, but I was giving him a little wiggle room; baby steps.

"Yeah?" He came into the living room with no shirt on and some pajamas.

"Your son wants you." I said without looking up from my computer.

He kneeled down to him "What's up man? What you need?"

"Cuppy" He said lowly referring to his sippy cup. Tae and I laughed, he was so cute. We had been working on words, letters, and numbers. He was a quick learner just like his mama so he had a lot of things down pack already.

He watched Tae intently as he washed out one of his sippy cups and filled it with milk. "Here" He held it out to him.

"Ju?" He furrowed his brows, realizing Tae hadn't given him juice. He was only one but was smart as hell. He shocked me by the things he often said and did. I tried to hold in my laugh as best I could as he mugged Tae. "Ju?" He asked again.

"No Ju, milk." He continued to hold it out. "Take it"

Taejin took it and threw it at him. "Lil nigga make me whoop yo ass, don't throw shit at me!" Tae scowled him making him immediately start crying.

I felt so bad "Tae don't yell at him like that!" I whined. "He's just a baby."

"He ain't no baby, that's a grown ass man. Throwing shit at me like he crazy, now you not getting nothing. Be thirsty lil nigga." He sat him sippy cup on the island causing Taejin to throw a fit, squirming down to the ground.

I looked at Tae with a sad facial expression. "What you gone throw a fit too?" He asked, sitting on the couch.

I flipped him off, going back to what I was doing as Taejin kept whining and kicking his legs.

We tried to stick by what one another said when it came to him. We'd both hate for him to grow up and feel like if one of us said no then he could just ask the other parent. If one said no then it was a no from the both of us.

After about forty-five minutes of him being extra, he finally calmed down and was just sitting on the floor repeating the word cuppy over and over again.

Tae got up, grabbed his cup of milk, and squatted down to him. "Either you gone drink what I give your or you gone be thirsty. You don't throw things at me, understand?"

Taejin nodded like he really knew what he was talking about. "You already had two cups of ju for the day so it's either milk or nothing." He held it out again and this time Taejin took it and turned it up.

He held his arms out for Tae to pick him up. "Nah man you can walk." He waited for him to stand up before allowing him to follow him to the couch.

After I finished what I was doing, I went and laid down for a little bit. My back was killing me. I surfed through Netflix looking for something to watch. "I hate these low budget ass movies." I smacked my lips. All those low budget, bad acting black movies were trash. I had already watched the ones that I could tolerate; the rest were a definite no.