slide | seaycee (sean and kaycee)

nine

Things started to get easier with being a mom when Jia was around three months old, that's when the little girl started to get the hang of the routine Kaycee had created for the both of them — and that was also when things started to go down the hills with Gabe. 

At first, it was very small things that she didn't even pay attention to like, for example, him not coming home for dinner or staying more days traveling than it was expected, but then every time he was home he would barely talk with her or even interact with Jia, always saying that he was too tired and needed to rest — he was working quite a lot so she tried to be understandable, even if it was starting to get pretty lonely for her.

Then he started to take last-minute trips around the world to teach, never picking up his phone or answering the text messages, and when he answered, it was always short and he never seemed interested in knowing what was going on with her or Jia.

He missed all of Jia's big moments like her first time eating baby food, the first time she turned on her own, the time she almost crawled, the time she understood the concept of shaking her head to say 'no' and when she almost said mama — he was never there and even though it was amazing to see her baby girl growing, it was sad not having someone on the daily basis to share those moments with.

[two months before the epilogue]

She woke up that morning feeling more than amazing after a long and uninterrupted night of sleep — it was the third week in a row that Jia hadn't woken up, not even once, during the night so Kaycee was feeling like the best mother ever.

She brushed her teeth and washed her face before heading downstairs to heat her daughter's bottle — through the baby's monitor she watched Jia moving from one side to the other in her crib and it was really something amazing to see the little girl awake and entertaining herself, she was a very smart girl for a six-month-old.

With a bottle, her phone, and the monitor she went back upstairs, walking straight to her daughter's room.

"Hi, little one, good morning." She said as she sat everything she had in her hands close to the armchair, before getting the baby. "How are you doing? Did you had a nice night of sleep?"

The baby giggled and smiled just by the sound of her voice. "I'm gonna take that as a yes... let's check your diaper so you can have your breakfast."

She changed Jia's diaper and then sat on the armchair as she fed the little girl her bottle, she also went on her phone that was going crazy ever since midnight — it was Kaycee's twenty-fourth anniversary.

Normally she would be excited about her birthday, it was always a big thing for her ever since she was a kid.

However, it was mostly amazing because she had him around. Sean would always go out of his way to give her the best and most special day ever — but this year he wasn't around and she wasn't even sure if he would congratulate her or something.

She didn't have plans for her birthday, it was a Monday so all of her friends were working — that's why she agreed for them all to go to her house the next Sunday to celebrate — and Gabe was going to be back only by the end of the day so it was pretty much just Jia and her for the day. As always.

They've spent the day just playing in the baby's playmat as Kaycee kept trying to encourage Jia to crawl, they baked a cake so they could sing 'happy birthday to Kaycee' once Gabe was home and they watched a bunch of friends just so Kaycee wouldn't miss that tradition — even without Sean being there, it was still a tradition.

Around four pm she put Jia down for a nap and then she heard the doorbell ringing — when she opened it she found a man holding a giant bouquet for her.