You Know Me Through The Years

Mara

Dante had not prepared himself for this. 

"Don't you smile at me, young lady." The six month old smiled widely as he scowled at the mess she had made in her diaper. "You're mom goes off on an errand to get away from us for a while and this is what you do?" The red haired infant only smiled wider at the funny look Dante was giving her as he attempted to change her diaper. By now he was a pro at it, but in the beginning he didn't know one end from the other. "You should be ashamed." 

Dante quickly got his little Princess tidied up and comfortable with a clean diaper before snapping her little onesie in place. He had to hand it to himself for doing a great job with caring for an infant by himself. It had taken Roe a few weeks to warm up to the idea of actually leaving her daughter with him and Cade. At the moment he was pretty content with it while Mara was trying to grab her feet. At this point in time, she was teething, but other than that she was a pretty happy baby. 

"Dad! I'm going to Nate's!" He heard his son's voice as the kid ran down the hall and down the stairs. 

"Okay sure, bye!" The father said as the front door slammed downstairs. "Looks like it's just you and me Princess." He grabbed his daughter's feet and leaned down to blow raspberries on them only to get a good giggle out of the little girl. 

If truth could be told Dante, was pretty happy with his life at the moment. He was still going out on jobs, but it was maybe once a week and when he got back from those jobs, he was home. He had officially moved in with Roe and Cade a week before Mara had been born, and good thing he did because once she was in labor, the baby wasn't slowing down for anyone. She had almost been born in a car. 

Things had certainly changed. Especially for Dante, who had been so introverted until he was handed his daughter for the first time. After that, he just let himself go. He was actually happy for once in his life and even Roe commented on that several times. 

"Let's go see what Mom left us for lunch." He picked up his little girl and held her against his shoulder as she chewed on her hands. Mara was getting pretty good at grabbing for things and she had already mastered the art of rolling over to the point where she was rolling all over the place. She had almost rolled off the changing table more than a dozen times already and luckily Dante was fast enough to catch her. 

He didn't think she would get seriously hurt if she fell, but he didn't want to find out either, so he just caught her. Usually he would catch her by the ankle or the back of her little shirt, but sometimes he'd catch her right as she rolled. The first time she had rolled off, he was looking for a fresh diaper and she just flipped over and started to fall. He didn't think he could move any faster, actually he was pretty sure he teleport that time and pretty sure he had a heart attack too. By now, he was used to it. 

The funny thing was, that she never did it for Roe. Actually, now that Dante thought about it, Mara would do everything around him. The first time she smiled, she did it for him. The first time she laughed, it was also when Roe was not around. The same thing when she learned to roll and now she was starting to sit up more, she never did it with Roe around. He felt bad for Roe because she would miss everything. 

As Dante made his way into the kitchen he quickly went over to the refrigerator and opened it up only to find nothing in there but bottles full of her breast milk and a few cans of grape soda. Obviously, Roe had cleaned it out before leaving. This also meant she was getting groceries and this also meant she was probably going to bring home some pizza. He did manage to find one of Mara's teething rings in there so he pulled it out and handed it to her. 

"Looks like I am going to starve." He smiled as his daughter went to town on the cold gel filled ring. It wouldn't be long before she would start to get fussy for a bottle so he pulled one out of the refrigerator and set it on the counter for later. "Lets go watch TV." 

Dante brought Mara into the living room and set her down on the rug where her blanket was already laid out from that morning. Cade had put pillows all around to keep her from rolling away when he watched her earlier so this made Dante's job easier. Instead of laying on the couch, he laid there on the floor next to where Mara was on her back playing with her little teething ring and gurgling. 

Before he knew it, she would be crawling all over the place and getting into everything she could find. He knew she was going to be trouble when she got to the so called 'terrible twos' and if he were to be honest, he was already dreading her teenage years. Luckily he had a while to go for that. Right now he was gearing up for Cade's teenage years, but he didn't think his son could be any worse than he was as a teen. Of course when Dante was a teen, he was running around as Tony Redgrave and dropped out of high school to be a mercenary. Hopefully, that was not in the cards for his son. 

"What are you doing?" He looked over to where Mara had rolled to and saw that she was trying to scoot along on her belly. She was kicking her little legs out and trying to figure out how to move herself along the floor, but she was getting frustrated. He really thought she was belly flopping her way to the edge of her little pillow fort, and that is what it looked like, but she was getting nowhere fast. "Here we go." He knew that face she was making. She was starting to get mad because she wasn't getting anywhere and she cried when she got mad. 

Mara still had her teething ring in her little fist as she flopped with her legs kicking out like a little frog. Dante couldn't help but chuckle at the sight, knowing that she was about to start crying. She was even making those little grunting sounds when she rolled too. After a moment of trying but not succeeding she started to whimper and that is when Dante decided to pick her up and put her in front of him on her back. He couldn't stand to see her cry, it was worse than when Roe cried, but it really hurt his heart. The hunter rolled on his stomach and began to blow raspberries into her little belly, which immediately made her giggle in that baby way. When Dante went to lift his head up he realized that she had grabbed some of his hair and was still giggling a good bit about it. 

"Ouch!" He said and she couldn't hold back her laughter as he pretended to be in pain. "Okay, let go of Daddy's hair." Dante grabbed her little fists and opened them to get his silver locks from her little hands. As soon as he could get his hair free, she grabbed on to more and instead of keeping his head down he pulled her up to a sitting position and did the same thing. "Princess, you are making this really difficult." 

She started to babble as he made her let go of his hair again and finally got his head out of range. Dante was actually glad she was babbling and giggling instead of crying at this point because sooner or later she was going to get fussy and want to eat. 

"I'm back!" Dante heard Roe's voice coming from the kitchen as she came in through the garage door. "Dante?" She called out to him. 

"In here!" He called out to her while he was making faces at his daughter. He was pretty sure Roe could hear her giggling from where she was. 

"What is your Daddy doing?" He didn't move as Roe went to sit down behind her daughter. "Is he making funny faces at you again?" He watched as the love of his life picked up their daughter and put her in her lap. 

"Anything to keep her from getting fussy." He winked at her as he sat up. 

"I thought so."