Raising Boys
A/N: I really enjoy writing younger Hamada brothers, so I figured I'd try to put all the pieces in one place. Each "chapter" can really be a stand alone. No idea when/if there will be more.
Piece 1: You Dot My Pots
Summary - Cass survives the horror of rashy kids.
Takes place shortly after the deaths of Hiro & Tadashi's parents. Hiro is three and Tadashi is about ten.
"I own-ee yike dummy bears!" Hiro screeches, breaking down in tears. Cass stares down at him. He looks pathetic, a little red-faced three year old mess crying in the middle of the kitchen floor. What's she supposed to do? Let him scream? Pick him up? Give him the stupid candy?
She's pretty sure she's not supposed to give in...
Hiro slams his hands against the tiles and lets out a fresh wail. There's snot running down his nose. Can people hear him? Oh man, if they can they're going to think she's doing something to the kid. But kids cry, right?
What would her sister do?
"Let's have oranges," Cass suggests, crouching down with Hiro's lunch.. "Look. It looks so yum..."
"Noooo!" Hiro howls. He swats the plate away and mandarin oranges and macaroni splatter the floor.
"Hiro! You're driving me crazy!" Cass exclaims before she can help herself. Great, she's lost it in front of him. Did her sister ever lose it? Was Hiro this horrible for her too? She dumps the plate in the sink, not even bothering to try to save the rest of the food. She wants to yell and scream too, but instead she just sits on the floor, her back resting against a cupboard. I'm not Mom, she can't help thinking. I don't want to be Mom.
Eventually Hiro quits screaming. She cracks open an eye and sees him standing up, taking a look around the kitchen. His gaze falls on her and he walks over, looking at her critically. "I want dummy bears," he informs her.
"No," Cass answers, even though a big chunk of her wants to just rip open a package.
He drops back to the floor.
"Come on, Hiro," Cass sighs, not sure if she can endure this today.
He doesn't care if she can endure it or not. Instead he screws up his eyes and spews out, "I don't yike you!"
She feels guilty and pathetic, but she's kind of relieved to drop him off at preschool in the morning. Hiro is whiny and clingy when she tries to hand him off to the teacher's assistant, but she just really, really needs a break.
"I don't yike dis school!" he whines, hopping and grabbing at her leg.
"You love this school," Cass reminds him, trying to detach him. She looks apologetically at the assistant. "I'm really sorry." But not sorry enough.
She feels exhausted by the time she gets to the car. Cheerios litter the backseat and a sippy cup rolls on the floor. How did her sister do this? She was a stay-at-home mom, Cass reminds herself. Plus, she had Dad of the Year to help her out. Her kids weren't grieving. She wasn't grieving.
And she had built-in babysitter, Auntie Cass.
Who is now full-time guardian/parent/whatever-the-heck-this-is Auntie Cass.
Who is still figuring this out.
"You need to come and pick Hiro up."
Seriously? Cass stands in the cafe kitchen, not three hours after dropping her nephew off.
"He has a fever."
Oh crap. She's horrible. She can't even tell when Hiro's sick. Maybe that was why he was extra cranky this morning. Didn't her sister say that about kids once? That they get weird when they're sick?
He's miserable when she gets back to the preschool, sweaty and rolling around on his naptime mat with his raggy baby blanket. "My rinosaur," he sniffs weakly when she hauls him up and she feels like the Worst. Auntie. Ever. The teacher hands him the red plastic T-rex that he's been carrying around the last couple weeks and Hiro grabs it, dropping heavily against Cass's shoulder.
"He probably needs some Tylenol," the teacher suggests. "The baby kind. Do you have some at home?"
"Yeah," Cass nods, but she's already thinking that she has no idea whether she actually does or not. If so, it's probably still packed in some random box from the other house. She bounces Hiro a little - he's dead-weight today, and she can feel drool or snot or something on her neck. She wants to ask the teacher a million questions: how much Tylenol is she supposed to give him? When's she supposed to take him to the doctor? Does she know who Hiro's doctor is? When's he going to get better?
Instead she packs him into the car seat. He falls asleep during the drive and she's wracked with questions again: does she take him home? Stop at the store and take him out of the car seat long enough to buy baby Tylenol? Is it okay to leave him in the car seat for the two minutes she needs to run into the drugstore? Never leave a kid alone in the car! say the people on TV. But what about when the kid is sick and you have nobody else to help you?!
She pulls up to the the window at the pharmacy drive-through. "Can I buy Tylenol? The baby kind?"
The girl at the window glances at her messy car and at Hiro sleeping in the back. "This window is only for prescriptions."
Prescription my ass! Cass thinks. She almost bangs her head on the steering wheel, because she's so tired and she doesn't know what to do with a sick kid and it's been three months - three months - since she's only been responsible for herself. She tries to give the clerk her best pathetic look. "Please? I think he's contagious…"
"I don't yike medicine," Hiro whines, but he's sleepy.
"You have to take the medicine or you won't feel better," Cass tries, crouching and holding the syringe of Tylenol tentatively. She should just squirt it into his mouth, right? Is that how you do it?
Hiro looks at her with big, glassy eyes. He's just grouchy now, not angry. He grabs her shirt and throws his head back. "I don't yike it, Annie Cass."
Cass frowns and considers the syringe of medicine. Can she handle a tantrum right now? Can Hiro handle a tantrum? Won't that make him sicker or something?
Compromise.
"I'll give you candy."
"Yook," Hiro orders Tadashi when his older brother gets home from school. He's feeling better now that he has drugs in him. He holds up his sucker happily. "I dot dis because I took medicine!"
Tadashi turns his attention to Cass and she's pretty sure nobody is going to judge her parenting techniques quite as strictly as that fifth grader. "You gave Hiro candy to take medicine?" he asks.
"Yes," Cass answers. There is probably not going to be any excuse good enough for him."Yes, I did."
Tadashi frowns for a long moment, slowly pulling off his backpack and joining Hiro on the couch. He looks at Cass steadily, apparently considering something. "Do I get candy if I take medicine?" he slowly asks, making sure to maintain eye contact.
"Sure," Cass responds, watching him carefully for some kind of disappointed response. It's not unusual for him to get upset about how she parents Hiro, but also about the way she parents him. He's already made sure to mention that she shouldn't make his bed, that's his job, and she needs to check his reading log and she should probably ask him whether he's read the books that are on the reading log before she signs it and…
Trust Tadashi not to appreciate lax parenting.
He doesn't seem to have a problem with free candy though.
Per Tadashi's expert opinion, Cass rocks Hiro to sleep and tucks him into bed. "Wash your hands or you'll get sick too," he whispers, right before it occurs to him to do the same thing.
"I don't yike dese bankets," Hiro mutters sleepily, kicking the blankets off as soon as Cass lays him down. She tries to tug one over him, then strokes his head until he quiets down, his thumb working it's way into his mouth. She doesn't have the heart to yank it back out, not when he's sick. Not when he looks all comfy and snuggled up in his toddler bed with that dumb plastic dinosaur next to him.
The second night, Cass thinks maybe she's halfway decent at this. Maybe she can handle this whole sick kid thing.
But then Hiro wakes up the next morning with spots.
"It's hand-foot-and-mouth disease," the pediatrician announces, like this is no big deal. "Lots of little kids get it; it's probably going around at daycare. He should be okay in a week."
So Cass packs whiny, crabby Hiro back into his car seat and drives home with instructions to cut his fingernails and make sure he drinks lots of fluids.
"I don't yike dese pots!" Hiro moans when Cass sticks him in the bathtub the next day. He's got spots in his mouth and on both little hands and crawling up his legs and on his tush. Full blown HFMD.
"You know what?" Cass asks, throwing a couple bath toys into the water. "I don't like these pots either." She pokes at one on his cheek, and then one on his foot. "I don't like this one, or this one…"
Hiro lets out a giggle, the first one Cass has heard in a long time, and she's pretty sure it's the happiest sound on Planet Earth.
"Don't tickle me, Annie Cass!" he screeches, jerking his foot away and splashing. Maybe he's covered in a rash, but at least he doesn't have a fever anymore. Maybe this isn't so bad. Maybe having kids twenty-four/seven isn't so bad...
"Count my pots," Hiro orders later, shoving his diseased foot onto her lap when he's fluffy and dry and slathered in calamine lotion.
"You count them," Cass orders back, giving his foot a little shake. He actually does it, examining one foot and then the other, and she wonders if it's normal for three year-olds to be able to count to over a hundred…
"...one hunnud firdy-fee, one hunned firdy-four…"
The phone rings and Cass tears herself away from watching Hiro examining his hands to pick it up.
"This is the nurse from Tadashi's school. You need to come and pick him up…"
If Hiro gets sleepy and extra cranky when he's sick, Tadashi gets cuddly. Sure, he'll initiate a little hug once in awhile and let her put her hand on his shoulder, but Tadashi is definitely not a snuggle-bug, at least not with her.
Except now, when he's feverish and sleepy and covered in spots. "I'm sorry you feel so yucky," Cass tells him, brushing back sweaty hair from his forehead while he slumps next to her on the couch. "Too bad you caught this from Hiro."
Hiro hears his name and pops up from the floor where he's assembling a...something...out of Legos. Cass thinks absently that the box says Hiro is too little to play with them, but if it keeps him occupied and away from electrical outlets and screw drivers, then she's going to let him play with stuff that has small parts. "You dot my pots," he tells Tadashi, almost as though he's disappointed in his older brother's inability to avoid communicable disease.
"Yup, he dot your pots," Cass repeats, slowly patting Tadashi's arm. Hiro is still vaguely spotty, but his fever is gone and with it any chances at extra naps. He narrows Cass with a disapproving look. "I don't yike Dashi to be sick."
Like it's her fault that Tadashi caught this weirdo kid disease from him!
"Aunt Cass?" Tadashi croaks though his mouthful of ulcers.
Cass pauses in her patting. He's been avoiding talking, so it must be important. "Hmm?"
"Do I still get candy for taking the medicine?"
Cass rocks back and forth, toes to heels, heels to toes. For the first night in a while, Hiro isn't a warm little sweat-ball. Instead he's his usual restless, wriggling self, changing position twenty different times and sliding off her lap to get a book, a mechanical pencil, and eventually Rinosaur. The toy pokes into her knee and side and face as Hiro hauls himself back onto her lap.
"Okay, let's rock," Cass says, seat-belting him against herself with her arms. Hiro arches his back and rolls and the dinosaur attacks her armpit. She tries to sing a lullaby, but she doesn't really remember the words, so she just sings, "go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep little baby..." over and over again.
"I'm not a baby," Hiro reprimands her. "I'm a kid."
So she sings "go to sleep little kid" instead.
Eventually Hiro quits squirming and he flops across her lap, eyelids starting to droop. Rinosaur gets dropped on the floor and she hauls him up, somehow crouches to pick up the toy, and carefully carries him to the bedroom and gets ready to ease him into bed. Jeez, she should be getting muscles from lifting this kid.
His head is just barely touching the pillow when he stretches, almost whacking her cheek with one peeling little fist before grabbing her around the neck for a hug. His voice is sleepy, mumbling as he stretches like a starfish across the sheets, "I yike you, Annie Cass."
Even if he doesn't "yike" much else.
Omake
"I just need some Tylenol," Cass tells Tadashi, trying to ignore the sores in her mouth. She feels like crap.
This business is supposed to be for little kids. Stupid doctor. At least he was right about Hiro being well enough to go back to school in a week. Tadashi should be good to go as soon as he's a little less spotty.
"I'm sorry you caught this from us," her older nephew says, patting her on the arm. He's back to distancing himself from her, and she almost misses the feverish snuggles from a couple days ago. Almost, but not quite. That's probably how she caught these stupid germs...
Tadashi watches her shake out a couple pills, silently getting her a glass of water from the tap. He watches her down them, then pulls something out of his sweatshirt pocket. "Good job, Aunt Cass."
Have a lollipop.