One year later…
“Amalie leave the dog alone.” This kid doesn’t listen for shit. She gave me one of her mother’s sneaky looks and came and plopped down on my lap. She batted her lashes at me before trying to stick her toes in her mouth. One year old and already she’s a con. I smelt her hair taking in that baby scent that clung to her, and my heart did what it always did when I held one of my children. Squeezing her little body close I smiled in fond memory of the past year.
After we’d brought them home Skye and I were like two kids playing house, neither of us were prepared for all that it entailed, not with twins anyway. We’d been semi prepared for one but two somehow seemed insurmountable. We were overrun with family from day one though, which was a big help. But when they had to get back to their own lives and it was just us alone with two babies and a dog that was almost as big as my wife but still acted like a kid himself I thought I would lose my shit.
We’d sat down together and made a list, I thought it was for shit but Skye swore if we did it this way at least we’d have some sort of direction and she’d been right. In the end we decided to hire someone to come in three days a week to help take care of the house. There was talk of a nanny but I decided that since I’d be graduating soon instead of working from home I’d be the resident nanny. No one thought it could be done but I was determined that I was going to be the one to watch over my kids. Well, me, and Sasha, the damn dog thinks my kids belong to him or some shit.
After Skye went back to classes when the children were a few months old it was just the four if us. At first I was afraid that he might hurt them but nothing could be farther from the truth. It seemed that all the love and devotion he’d held for the mother was now shared with the kids, especially Amalie. I think somehow he knew she’d been sick because from the minute we brought her home he’d clung to her.
Now she rules him like she does everything else. She’s all her mother, in actions anyway. Both children have my coloring, my hair and my face but they were blessed with their mother’s amazing eyes, a man couldn’t ask for anything more than that. Junior is a daddy’s boy he takes after me in temperament, though according to nonna he has more manners. Amalie, shit, the girl is her mother and nonna go figure.
She does everything she sees her mother do, which is funny as hell. Especially after I endure one of Skye’s lectures and walk into a room and see my little one year old angel doing the same to the poor mutt. Finger wagging and hand on hip she babbles away at him in her own special language. I never know what the mutt did to incur her wrath but he always whines and hangs his head in shame.
Serves his ass right though because he helps them hide up their shit. My kids can destroy a room in ten minutes flat and look innocent when caught. I don’t yell but I do find myself lecturing them on occasion. Somehow the dog seems to have caught on and decided it was his job to protect them. One day I caught him in the act and if I hadn’t seen him with my own two eyes I would never have believed it. Junior had decided to get one of his wet diapers from the trash and dismantle it for some fucked up reason. I saw him doing it when I was coming towards the room so I know it was him. Sasha saw me coming and took the diaper and started pawing it as if he was the one doing it. From then I knew I was going to have trouble.
He’s about the ugliest damn thing on four legs but fuck if he isn’t worth every penny of that one mil. When it’s naptime I like to lay the kids on the floor on their blankets; don’t ask me why but I think they’re safer there where I can see them instead of up in their cribs. If the doorbell rings while they’re asleep there on the floor Sasha stands over both of them at the ready to protect them from any danger. That’s a good fucking dog, now all I have to do is teach this one that he’s not a toy.