This has to be the most random, fluffiest thing I've ever written—and I've written a lot of fluff.
"Mommy?"
I looked up at the sound of my youngest daughter's voice. She was sitting on the floor, struggling to stand up on her still wobbly toddler legs. Her eyebrows were furrowed slightly, as if she was debating something. Castle always said that she reminded him of me when she made that face. I had to admit, I thought so to.
"Yeah, Jamie, baby?" I asked, wanting to reach out to her but unable to.
On my lap, on my thigh, sat my three-week-old son, so small, so young, so tiny. And over the weeks I had discovered that, unlike his sisters had been, he was extremely difficult when it came to burping after he ate. So stubborn, too, just like the women in his family.
Montgomery Roger Castle, named after my late police captain who was also my friend as well as after his grandmother Martha, made his appearance into the world during the early hours of a Wednesday morning. That wasn't before putting me through a painstaking twenty-eight hours of labor. I remembered rolling my eyes, once the tears had stopped, and telling Castle that Monte was obviously his son.
I also remembered the way his sisters had practically jumped me when Alexis and Martha brought them in, ignoring their dad's attempts to get them to be careful. I hadn't cared. And when we showed them Monte, Hannah was quick to press a kiss to his head and ask his name. At four-years-old, she had understood a little better than Jamie had. Jamie, quite obviously confused, had watched with wide eyes and then kissed her little brother's head as well. My heart had swelled with so much love I thought it would burst.
Castle was the one to explain to Jamie that Monte was her little baby brother, and that he would come home with us the next day. Jamie had nodded as if she understood, but laid her head against my chest and cuddled into me in an almost possessive way. I couldn't help but be nervous for how she'd react to no longer being the baby of the family. Castle had been quick to remind me that Hannah had adjusted well, and told me that he had no doubt Jamie would do the same.
Our daughters had always been two peas in a pod, looking almost exactly alike, acting almost exactly alike, with very similar personality traits. The only real differences were that Jamie was shyer than Hannah, and her hair was a shade or two lighter.
Our son was like the complete opposite. He was calmer and more easy-going, I had already realized that, even in the few short weeks he had been with us. He slept more. He also seemed to need less, but when he wanted something, he got it when he wanted it. That was like the only thing he had in common with his sisters, his stubborness. If Monte didn't get what he wants, he's scream until he did. And when he cried for too long, Jamie started crying too. And then we had two crying kids to tend to, and an extremely chaotic household.
On top of his personality being different, Monte already looked different than his sisters. While Hannah and Jamie both looked like me, their hair the same general shade of mine, their noses and lips like carbon copies of mine. The only thing they got from Castle was his eyes, not that I was complaining. Monte was the opposite. He looked just like his dad, already, but he had my green eyes. Castle had practically jumped for joy when we first realized he had my eyes, saying that at least one of our kids needed to have the eyes he fell in love with. I had just smiled, not just because of his comment, but because I had two of our kids that had the eyes I fell in love with.
Monte's soft burp broke me from my thoughts. I smiled and shifted him in my arms, allowing him to rest his head against my shoulder instead of having his pudgy little chin pinched between my thumb and fingers. I would've burped him like that, positive it was more comfortable for him, if he didn't fail to burp every single time I tried.
Next to me, Jamie was pushing herself up onto the couch, struggling slightly. She was still so small. Monte was going to be our big boy. When he was born, he had weighed in at over one and a half times his older sister's birth weight. It was another explanation to why he had taken so much longer to make his appearance. She was short, too, which many people found strange considering both me, her mother, and her father were rather tall. With my newly free hand, I reached over and gently cupped her elbow, pulling her up onto the plush cushions.
"Mommy, can Monte play?" she asked, her words slightly mispronounced as they tumbled from her still rather inexperienced mouth. I smiled, letting my hand linger next to her and watched as she looked up at the still mostly bald head of her little brother. Even though she had expressed jealousy a few times since her brother had come into the world, Jamie loved her little brother. I shook my head slowly, a smile still gracing my lips.
"Not yet, sweetheart. Remember, Monte is still a little too young to play" I told her softly, watching as she pushed her lip out slightly in a pout. I reached over and let my hand gently caress the soft skin of her little hand. "How about this? I'll lay out his blanket and lay him down on it. He's gonna fall asleep soon, but you guys can watch him and tickle his tummy until he does, okay?"
"Yeah, mommy!" she said excitedly, her smile lighting up her face, reaching her beautiful blue eyes. I smiled and watched as she pushed herself off the couch, stumbling as her feet hit the ground. She was so cute. She would always be my little baby girl.
Nearby, Hannah was playing with her doll. She had had that doll for over two years. We had gotten it for her about halfway through my pregnancy with Jamie in order to get her used to the idea of a baby, to help her understand. She had taken to the doll early on. Even when she was merely a toddler, she had carried the doll around with her. When we brought Jamie home, she would try to carry her baby the way I carried Jamie, my baby, as Hannah had called her. Eventually, Hannah ended up with two babies, both the doll, which she had simply called Baby, and Jamie. Seeing how well Hannah had reacted to the doll, they had gotten one for Jamie upon finding out about baby number three. Jamie loved her doll, too, but not quite as much as her sister had. That was why Baby 2.0 was laying on the floor, next to Hannah.
Jamie ran over to her sister, babbling about me putting Monte on the floor. I loved hearing the way she called Hannah 'Anna' and Monte 'Mah-tee'. It was cute. Hannah smiled at her and set her doll down, on the floor next to Jamie's. Hannah loved her brother, too, but she was a little less intrigued by him. She knew more about babies than Jamie, so she was more of a little helper to me than a little playmate for him. It was precious. I had already decided that Hannah would, one day, make a great mother. Jamie would, too.
I pushed myself to a standing position with my free hand, fighting the fatigue that came over me because of life with three kids under five. Jamie was practically bouncing on her toes, waiting for me to rest her baby on the ground nearby. Hannah had, at some point, taken hold of her sister's hand and was still kneeling on the ground nearby. With my free hand, I reached for the pale blue baby blanket that was sitting on the chair nearby, the one Monte had been wrapped in before his diaper change and feeding. I set it down on the ground, trying to spread it out as much as I could. Hannah helped, smoothing it down and then shifting to kneel on the corner. Jamie reached down and copied her sister's actions, moving o stand on the other corner.
"Okay, girls, you have to be careful with Monte, remember?" I asked, crouching down to set him on his blanket. He clenched his hands into fists and hit them against the ground, making Jamie giggled softly as she nodded in response to my question. I had no doubt they would be gentle. "I'll be right on the couch watching, okay?" I said, teasingly narrowing my eyes at them and motioning with my fingers that I would be watching them. They both laughed softly, used to teasing from me, and especially their father, and nodded to tell me they'd be good. Satisfied, I pushed myself up off the ground and went back over to the couch.
It was amazing, watching my children interact. It was always amazing. I remembered the first time that Hannah saw Jamie, sitting on my lap as Castle held the newborn little girl for the two of us to see. Her eyes had gone wide, amazed by her little sister, and without even being told she had leaned over to press a kiss to Jamie's head. From there on, the two were almost inseparable. Jamie looked up to Hannah like I had never seen a little sibling look up to an older one before. She did what her sister did, ate what her sister ate, laughed when her sister laughed, cried when her sister cried. Part of me hoped that, one day, Monte would look up to her that way.
Hannah had treated Jamie like she was the most precious thing on earth. She handled every situation with her sister—whether it was a fight or getting to hold her back when she was a baby—carefully, gently, passionately and lovingly. She went far beyond all the images I had created when I first found out I was pregnant for the second time. She was everything I could've dreamed of and so much more when it came to how incredible she was with her baby sister and now her new baby brother. Especially since she was older the second time, old enough to hold him in her arms, to talk to him, to understand that he needed mommy and daddy more than she did. Sometimes, when I laid him on the ground like he currently was, she'd lay on her tummy next to him and tell him stories, fiction as often as reality—every time, Castle would tell me she was going to be a storyteller, a writer just like he was, and I never protested.
If the trend continued, and Jamie continued to be her sister's double, we'd have two little storytellers on our hands, I had once realized. Maybe Monte would be my logical one.
Now, I watched as Jamie reached over and ran her hand over her brothers cheek. I had a feeling she had watched me do exactly that on multiple occasions. And then she leaned over and pressed a quick, soft kiss to his head, giggling against his soft skin as he wiggled beneath her. It was quiet and absolutely adorable, all around perfect. Her hand was still holding her sisters, small fingers clasped within Hannah's slightly larger ones as my eldest daughter watched with a smile and reached over to tickle Monte's sock clad foot. He kicked in response, bumping his fists against the ground again.
I smiled as I watched, the perfection that was my children completely mesmerizing me.
A hand on my shoulder broke me out of it, pulling me from the happy bubble, only to make it bigger. I recognized the touch immediately, the way it spread across my shoulder familiar from so many years together. One year of dating, a year-long engagement, a year of marriage before Hannah was born, screaming at the top of her lungs, and then Jamie and Monte, five years into our marriage. A smile spread across my face as it once again dawned upon me how far we'd come since that day we met nine years before. The smile still spread across my face, I looked up to see his eyes on the sight that had just captured me, a smile gracing his lips as well.
"Aren't they perfect?" I asked, the words escaping my mouth on their own free will, not that I would ever think otherwise. He looked down at me with a wide smile, eyes shining with a joy like I'd never seen before, with a joy I knew was reserved only for these seemingly perfect moments. He nodded slowly, agreeingly, and leaned down to press a soft kiss to my mouth. Our smiles molded to each other in a gentle and familiar dance, a few gentle kisses exchanged before we pulled away.
"That's all because of you" he whispered to me. I rolled my eyes playfully, because that was always his sappy response, so different from the one I would've expected years ago, to cocky and teasing one telling me they got that from him. I liked to think they did get it from him, though, at least some parts of their undeniable perfection. Including the part of them that was currently telling little Monte that mommy was a superhero who saved New York—or New Yuck, as Jamie pronounced it—but who was taking a break for a little while to take care of him. That part was definitely from Castle, I thought as another smile crept up on my lips. Castle leaned down to kiss me again, before Jamie interrupted.
"Mommy?" she asked, voice loud and excited as she pushed herself up to her feet. The way she did it with her hand still in Hannah's reminded me of that one time Castle and I were taken hostage and handcuffed together. Hannah didn't bother to pull her hand away until Jamie was too far to hold on any longer, and then she let it fall to her side very ungracefully. I held back a laugh at the sight, even though my heart swelled as I realized how completely engrossed in her little brother my Hannah really was. Jamie ran over to us, stumbling as she did so. She giggled when Rick pressed a kiss to her head, right between her two little pigtails. "Hi, daddy" she said happily.
"What's up, Jamie, baby?" he asked her softly, a hint of playfulness chiming in the sing-song voice he only used with the kids, or when he was teasing me. Her eyebrows furrowed ever so slightly, as if she had forgotten and was trying to remember, before her whole face lit up in recognition. Her blue eyes shone with joy, her small teeth pearly white as they appeared between her perfect pink lips. I smiled simply at the sight.
"I have another baby brother?" she asked, smiling wide and happy. I almost laughed out loud at even the idea of having another baby now, considering Monte was still so young. Besides, three kids was plenty, in my opinion, more than plenty, really. She batted her little eyelashes up at her father, giving him her look, so different from mine, that could get him to give her anything she wanted and she knew it. Sadly, her mother didn't succomb to her look the way her father did, and since I would be the one carrying said other baby brother, she would need my consent more than her father's.
"Jamie, isn't one baby brother enough for now?" I asked, making Castle tear his gaze off the baby blues that matched his like a mirror. I was pretty sure he was still amazed that they had such perfect replicas of his eyes. Jamie looked over at me, too, pushing her lower lip out in a pout that she knew usually won me over. I fought the urge to roll my eyes. "Monte's still too little to be a big brother, okay, Jamie, baby?" I asked her. "You only got to be a big sister because you were big enough, right? But Monte's not big enough, yet" I told her. She nodded slowly but almost surely. I saw Castle raise his eyebrows at the 'yet' I had added at the end of my sentence. I shook my head at him, not believing that he was already thinking of having a fourth child together, fifth for him.
"Otay, mommy" said Jamie, smiling happily and pushing herself off the couch. I watched as she ran back over to her siblings, pigtails bouncing atop her head until she dropped to her knees next to Hannah, next to Monte. She leaned over to Hannah. "Mommy said we get another baby brother when Monte big enough" she told her happily. Hannah never replied, continuing her story about me stopping some bad guy. She had so many stories, it was hard to keep track.
Eventually, Jamie calmed down and sat next to her sister as she got lost in the story as well, Hannah's words lulling her to sleep the same way they often did for Monte. A few minutes later, Hannah was smiling as she looked up at her father and I, satisfied with her work. On the ground lay a sleeping Monte, hands laying limp at his sides, and a just as asleep Jamie, hand once again holding her sister's, the other resting on her baby brother's belly. She kissed both her siblings on the head before releasing Jamie's hand and turning back to her doll.
I couldn't help the kiss to her head and the 'I love you' I whispered to her when I went to pick Monte up off the floor. Castle told her the same when he went to pick up Jamie and carry her to her own bed.