December 15th, 2016
Once I cleaned up the kitchen after dinner and took a quick shower, I walked into our bedroom to find Ivy sound asleep, the script she’d planned on reading through sitting in her lap.
Her back still rested against the headboard, but her eyes were closed, and her head was just kind of leaned forward.
It’d been two weeks since we’d come home from the hospital, and I knew between recovering from surgery and breastfeeding and mothering two newborns, Ivy was exhausted.
After we’d had dinner, she’d insisted on getting a little work done, and even had high hopes of taking a shower herself. But obviously, sleep had sounded the most irresistible call of all.
I slid the script off of her lap, careful to keep it opened up to the last page she’d been on, and placed it on the nightstand. Gently, I eased her down onto the bed and pulled the blankets over her body.
She didn’t even startle. Her body lax and her breaths soft and deep.
Work could wait.
A shower could wait.
Sleep was a must.
Once I ensured she was all settled, I turned off the lights, grabbed the baby monitor, and walked back downstairs.
But I only made it halfway down the steps before Camilla’s soft cries started to reverberate through the speaker.
The thought of it made me smile. The fact that I already knew my daughters so well, I could distinguish their cries from one another.
But newborn babies cried a lot.
Pretty much every two to four hours for the first few weeks or so.
Sometimes, if we were lucky, they’d go five hours, but those amazing moments were few and far between right now.
I turned on my heels and moved back up the stairs and into the girls’ nursery.
Camilla’s little legs and arms were tensed with irritation, and her cries were starting to grow louder by the second. She was pissed. About what, I wasn’t sure. But the girl had a track record of having quite the little temper.
Grace, on the other hand, was more laid-back. She didn’t demand as much attention and tended to have a little more patience when she needed to be changed or fed.
But little Cami… Yeah, not so much.
Besides her mother, she was the cutest little diva I’d ever met.
I lifted a now screaming Cami out of her crib and into my arms, swaying her back and forth gently. “What’s going on, little lady?”
She responded with a shriek, but eventually, her cries softened, and only her bottom lip quivered to show her frustration.
Ivy had fed both girls before she’d laid them down, so I had a feeling it was more a diaper situation than anything else.
“Let’s get your diaper changed and see if that turns this feisty mood around,” I whispered to her and moved her to the changing table.
Once I laid her on her back, I set to work on changing her diaper.
I’d learned pretty quick that twins required fast hands.
You couldn’t do anything slow, and you generally always had to do everything twice.
No doubt, once I managed to get Cami settled, Grace would wake up with her own demands.
And it didn’t take long for my prediction to come true.
Cami’s fresh diaper had been fastened no more than ten seconds before Grace decided to let me know she was also pissed.
Although, her fury wasn’t quite as sassy.
I placed Camilla back in her crib and got to work on appeasing little Grace.
Once both girls were calm and quiet, I arranged both of them in my arms and sat down in the cushioned rocking chair Ivy loved so much.
It was her favorite chair.
Apparently, it was a dream for breastfeeding.
Her words, not mine. Obviously, since I was lacking the equipment to have any expertise.
“Everyone happy now?” I asked and looked down at both of them.
Cami wiggled her little body, kicking out her legs a few times, and Grace stared up at me with big, wide eyes.
“I’ll be honest, you little ladies can really give a man a run for his money,” I whispered. “It’s a full-time job keeping you both happy, probably even harder than being a cop and catching criminals. But you know what? It’s the best damn job I’ve ever had.”
Sleepless nights.
Crying babies.
Constant, organized chaos.
I was the luckiest man on the planet.
“God, you girls look so much like your momma, it’s crazy,” I said, staring down at them in awe. “Thank God for that, huh?”
Camilla blew a few spit bubbles, and Grace’s little pink lips crested wide into a yawn.
“One day, I hope you’ll be a little more interested in the things I have to say, but I have a feeling when you’re teenagers, you’ll be too busy driving me nuts.”
For the longest moment, I just took them in.
These two little people that had my heart in their tiny hands.
They’d only been on this earth for mere weeks, and still, I was certain they had me wrapped around their fingers.
Hell, they had the whole world wrapped around their fingers.
“Did you know there’s a whole bunch of people that want to get pictures of you and put them in magazines?” I asked, and both girls just stared up at me. “One magazine offered us one million dollars just to get a picture of you? How crazy is that?”
Both girls stared up at me, eyes wide. They obviously thought it was as batshit crazy as I did.
“Goddamn vultures,” I muttered. “Like your momma or I would ever use our beautiful daughters for money. Hell, like we even give a shit about money. And,” I added, “how about we keep the whole curse-word thing between us? Your mom is already on my ass about it.”
Once news had broken that Ivy had gone to the hospital, and an unknown source inside the hospital had revealed our daughters had been born, it had been nothing less than constant requests for interviews and pictures and everything in between.
Magazines wanted the first official photo of the twins.
Gossip sites had published what felt like hundreds of posts about what were mostly incorrect facts about Ivy’s birth and the girls’ names.
Hell, Ivy had shown me one website that had posted fake nursery pictures, acting like they had gotten an exclusive on how the twins’ room had been decorated.
It was fucking insanity.
And I was thankful we’d found our little slice of serene and very private heaven in Oregon.
If we’d been in LA, or hell, even Cold, it would have been intolerable.
It also helped that I was a bit paranoid about Ivy and the girls’ safety, so I had increased security since we’d arrived home from the hospital.
We’d had enough bad shit happen to us in the past that I refused to leave anything to chance.
I’d rather be overprotective than stupid.
And when it came to the three most important people in my life, I’d stop at nothing to ensure their safety.
A little squeal of a cry left Cami’s lips, and I glanced down at her to find she was doing her normal, restless, “I’m tired, but I don’t know what to do” thing.
All of that sass and sometimes, she just exhausted herself to the point of full-on irritation. It reminded me a lot of Ivy, and I smiled at the thought.
“I have so many things to tell you girls. I can’t wait to tell you about Grace and about your aunt Camilla. I just…I can’t wait to put the whole world at your little feet.”
Grace’s eyes fluttered closed, but Camilla stayed wide-eyed and a little bit cranky. I rocked back and forth in the chair, and that seemed to appease her enough to soften her small whines until they slowly disappeared into silence.
Her eyes weren’t closed, but she was at least calm.
And Grace, well, she was already sleeping.
Laid-back and feisty.
Sassy and relaxed.
Our girls may have been identical twins, but they were their very own little people.
And, God, I loved them like I had never loved anything before.