Full Summary: Set in modern times, Karura divorced the Fourth Kazekage a year ago for being a bad husband and father. However, taking care of Gaara (2), Kankuro (4), and Temari (6) is no easy task, so she decides to take a break in Hawaii, leaving her ex in charge of their precious little ones for two weeks. This is the story of how the kazekage is forced to act like a father should, and how through spending that time with his children he matures, realizes his past mistakes, and attempts to get his act together for a better future.

My Kids and I

Chapter One

Note: This is obviously alternate universe with no ninjas. The story is a slice of life about family. There will be some romance and attempted humor/cuteness. It's lighthearted, and by the way I officially named the Fourth Kazekage Hiro of the Wind/Kaze no Hiro. Thanks for reading!

Warning: A bad word here and there, very mild sexuality here and there (Kazekage shenanigans with women).

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto and characters.

My bitch of an ex-wife let our three kids outside my door this Saturday summer morning with a note that says: Gone to Hawaii for two weeks. Watch the kids. I'll call you when I get there. Love, Karura. I ran outside the apartment complex in hopes of catching her, but it was too late. All I could see was her car as it turned around the corner.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love my kids, but they are all still very little and tend to be annoying. My daughter Temari is the oldest one, being only six years old. Right at her heels is my son Kankuro, who is four, and the littlest one is Gaara, my two year old baby boy. They are generally good kids, but like every child they cause a mess everywhere they go. That is my biggest problem with them.

When I was still with their mother, I used to be at work all the time while she took care of them (she then said that I neglected her as a reason to ask for the divorce and keep half my money, my house, and over half of my salary in child support, but that's another story that happened a year ago). As a result of my absence from home, I never really got the hang of being a true father to my three children. I never fed them, cleaned after them, bathed them, changed them, put them to bed, and I didn't even play with them.

And now Karura dumped them in my house for two weeks with no regard of my work schedule and without prior notice. The kids are happy to see me, and I am happy to see them, too, but I won't lie: the moment I read the note their mother left I died a little on the inside, and I keep perishing with every passing second.

As of now they are sitting on the couch like angels. Kankuro has the TV remote and is channel surfing, Gaara is pointing at things and asking what color they are, and Temari is answering his questions, although she's quickly growing frustrated as she has already told him the curtains are blue four times.

"Hey, kiddos, did your mom give you breakfast before dropping you off?" I ask them. I for one had just woken up and was starving.

"She gave me and Kankuro cereal," Temari answers, "But Gaara was still sleeping so she just packed him some oatmeal and apple slices. They are in one of the bags."

"I'm hungry!" Gaara exclaims happily.

"And I'm hungry, too!" Kankuro adds at the last moment.

"You ate already," I tell him, looking through the two big bags that Karura had dropped off along with the kids. Clothes, coloring books, toys, diapers, shoes.

"So? I'm hungry again!"

Sippy cups, blankets, hairbrush, toothbrushes, lotion. "If you eat a lot you'll get sick."

"No I won't! I always eat a lot!"

"He does!" Temari agrees.

"Then you'll get fat if you keep eating a lot," I say. Crayons, a camera, a night light, kids' medicine, little kid toothpaste, Band-Aids, movies, towels. Dear God, how long were they staying again?

"But I'm hungry!" Kankuro whines.

"I want chocolate milk!" Temari yells.

"I'm hungry!" Gaara shrieks.

"I know, I know," I tell them all. "Temari, where's his food?"

She sighs in exasperation, reaches into the blue bag, and pulls out Gaara's meal just like that. She looks at me and rolls her eyes.

"Thanks," I ruffle her hair and put Gaara's food on the table. Women…. "Here, Gaara. Breakfast is served."

"No, dad! You have to microwave the oatmeal first!" Temari and Kankuro shout at me.

Gaara sits on the edge of the chair and starts eagerly on the apples. Like his siblings ordered, I go to microwave his oatmeal.

"Daddy, I want chocolate milk," Temari says.

"I don't have chocolate milk," I tell her. "Do you want coffee instead?"

"Mom says we can't drink coffee because that's for grown-ups. I want chocolate milk."

"But mom isn't here," I remind her. "I can give you coffee if you want to."

"Chocolate. Milk." She says with a tone of finality.

I sigh profoundly. "Okay, but you have to wait. We have to go to the store for it."

She nods in agreement and goes back to sitting on the couch. Now Kankuro is the one looking at me.

"I'm hungry," he says flatly.

"Do you like eggs?" I ask. It hasn't even been thirty minutes since they arrived but I can already tell arguing with them is useless.

"Yes."

"Okay. I'll make some for the both of us."

Like his sister before, he nods and goes back to the couch.

I pull out the eggs from the fridge to get started on my breakfast, get the oatmeal out of the microwave when the minute is up and give it to the little redhead, and everything is going great. For a moment, I convince myself that I can do this. Then, as if to prove me wrong, everything goes wrong.

Gaara starts crying because the oatmeal got too hot and burned him and Kankuro and Temari start fighting over the control remote. Since he's the youngest, I decide to tend to Gaara first. I get a glass of cold water and give it to him. He immediately starts drinking but half the liquid starts running down his neck and soaking his shirt. I consider taking the water away from him and taking his shirt off, but just then Kankuro lets go of the remote, making Temari fall off the couch, so she starts crying a little. I am on my way to check on her but she raises the remote and throws it straight into Kakuro's face. She smirks and he starts crying loudly. I hurry towards Kankuro and glare at my daughter, who stands awkwardly for a while before starting to cry loudly herself. Behind me Gaara threw the rest of the water on himself and put the glass cup down on the edge of the table, only to knock it down to the floor when he whirled around to see what all the fuss was about. Kankuro is fine, apart from a red mark on his forehead, so I go back to Gaara and order him to stay on the chair while I clean up the broken glass. I don't want him to cut himself and I am very nervous by this point so I probably sounded aggressive when I told him to stay on the chair, because for no reason Gaara starts crying along with his siblings!

I'm in the middle of one big cry fest, and I feel like crying a little myself. Karura, my bitch of an ex-wife, man, she keeps screwing me over even now! And I never thought I'd say this again after the divorce, but I can't wait to see her again. I want the kids out of my apartment now.

I let them cry while I sweep up what used to be a perfectly good cup. When I'm done, I tell Gaara gently that it's safe to get down from the chair already, and the boy stops crying altogether. He just hops off and goes to the freaking suitcases his mom brought. I don't know whether it bothered me or amused me, but he gave one band-aid to Kankuro and Kankuro stopped crying. Then he picked up the remote and handed it to Temari; she stopped crying as well. They are all happy now, as if their earlier crying had been pretend.

They had to be siblings, and overall they are good kids. After the chaos and changing Gaara's shirt, the trio managed to behave well enough long enough for me to make breakfast. Kankuro and I ate our food, I washed the plates and silverware, and now I'm sitting on the couch with the kids watching cartoons. I'm hoping the rest of the day goes by smoothly, but of course that's wishful thinking. Gaara ate, Kankuro ate, but Temari never got her chocolate milk.

"Daddy, when are we going to the store?" she asks in a whiny voice.

If she's anything like her mother, I know her question translates to something along the lines of: take me to the store now. I consider taking a shower first, but one look at them makes me realize that I can't leave them alone for ten minutes. "Good luck trying to take a dump with us around, let alone a shower," I can almost hear Gaara say.

So in less than five minutes I change into a pair of jeans and a casual T-shirt and have the trio strapped in the backseats of my car. Karura, so thoughtful, thorough, and lovely, had brought a kid seat for Gaara and all. We are all on our way to the supermarket, together, something that I haven't done in a long, long time, and although I try to remain calm, I'm dreading the experience.

I used to do the grocery shopping with Karura when we had no kids; it was a thrill. We'd have fun arguing over what things to get and what not, and when we got home we would make love as if we were sex-starved. Oh, that simple task really had a charm to it. But then we had Temari, and despite grocery shopping being a little harder to do, with half of Karura's attention focused on our first baby, the task was still enjoyable. There was no more after sex, but I couldn't complain. Then our little blonde girl was only two when we had Kankuro. Buying food became a merely bearable task then. Usually one of the kids would be crying, but at least while Karura watched Kankuro I watched Temari. It was manageable, until we had Gaara. Going shopping with a newborn, a two year old, and a four year old was a burden. The oldest one wanted everything it laid eyes on, the toddler cried and spent most of the time trying to get out of the shopping cart, and Karura was too busy trying to take care of our premature Gaara to pay any attention to me struggling with the older two. And the random sex just because it felt amazing was officially gone. The enjoyment of grocery shopping disappeared. I started doing it alone.

Today, it's just me and those kids that had ruined the fun to begin with. At least, I console myself, there isn't a tiny baby this time. But I'm still nervous. What if they decide to run around and one of them gets lost? Last time I was with any of my family at the supermarket was when Gaara was three months old. I'm not up for this.

But there's no turning back. As soon as we arrive to the store I put Gaara and Kankuro on a shopping cart, the little one on the seat of course. "Temari," I tell my daughter in my most serious voice. "Do not. Do not. Do not. Do not run around. Got it?"

She gives me a cold look and huffs an insulted "yes, I got it".

"Good. So we're just buying chocolate milk, right?" It should be plenty easy.

Haha, as if…. Kankuro climbs out the cart when I'm not looking and I can't convince him to get back on it. Temari (she had to be a girl) starts throwing in everything from cookies to scented candles into the cart every time my attention is somewhere else. And Kankuro insists he wants to push the cart, while at the same time keeps ordering Temari to get things he wants, and conveniently enough for him she actually listens. And I don't know how Gaara got his hands on a bag of Cheetos but he's eating them already.

"Kill me," I tell the cashier as she scans all the items, including the now empty bag of chips. She giggles and gives me the total: $147.31. One hundred and forty seven dollars with thirty one cents. It's my own damn fault for not making the kids put everything back, so I just sigh and swipe my credit card. "Do you want to keep them?" I ask the girl, motioning to the Mayhem Trio. She laughs and shakes her head no.

I've spent one hundred and forty seven dollars with thirty one cents on things that quite frankly we don't need in just our first few hours together. It's mostly junk food, with some good but unnecessary snacks here and there. But still! If Karura knew the junk her precious babies were going to eat—wait, is this the reason the government forces me to give her seventy percent of my salary?

We arrive home after a painful hour plus. Now, we have around twenty shopping bags full of food, an apartment on the third floor, and only one adult to carry the things up there. So I do what any smart parent would do. I load each child with as many light bags as their little hands can carry and take care of the rest myself. They complain but, hey, I spent one hundred and forty seven dollars with thirty one cents because of them so I couldn't care less. The little ingrates should be carrying all the bags on their own. We go up the elevator, and at last I put the bags I was carrying down to unlock my apartment door.

A high-pitch, scratchy greeting close behind me makes me blanch in terror.

"Good afternoon, Hiro!"

It's Ms. Mimi, and she's my wonderful neighbor. She's a woman in her early forties, a woman who had been really pleasant to me a year ago when I first got the apartment. I remember she had baked me a cheesecake as a welcome home gift, and together we had eaten most of it while I told her, and actually cried like a baby, about my nightmarish divorce. She was sweet, really empathized with me, and best of all she agreed that Karura turned out to be a total bitch. I liked Ms. Mimi a lot because of that. We talked a little about her own life too— three years ago her ex-husband had left her for a younger, prettier woman, she admitted, and to make her feel better I called her ex an idiot— and we talked about our jobs and interests— I said I was a paralegal who enjoyed listening to music, playing video games, who had enjoyed going to the park or cooking with my wife, on my free time, and she said she owned a clothing store that she ran from afar, and she loved cooking and having fun on her free time, which was all the time. If I ever needed anything, anything at all, I should go to her, she had said eagerly, and I did make sure to visit her at least for five minutes once a week for the first few months, since she looked like a really lonely woman and I enjoyed her friendship.

But then— and this happened just five months ago— she discovered I started having sex with one of the secretaries at the law firm I worked in— probably saw the girl (my worst mistake ever by the way) leave my apartment one morning— and she got furious. She cut our beautiful friendship and turned into an old, insufferable hag.

Nowadays I realize that maybe Mimi was interested in having a relationship with me…. It certainly could have worked out, technically speaking. We used to get along well, she doesn't have children and although I do they live with their mom, we both make good money, back in the days I wanted someone sweet to fill the void Karura had left, and she probably desperately wanted, and still wants, a young buck to satisfy her womanly needs, and I was sex-starved too I must admit, thus my fling with my coworker.

But I'm not noble (I mean, I can't stand quality time with my kids; what does that say about me?).

I had met Karura when I was twenty, in my sophomore year of college. She was eighteen and a half, the cute register girl at the café I frequented, and by the end of that school year I somehow got her to be my girlfriend. Although we had dated other people before, we were both virgins, with me being quite shy and she saving herself for a decent man. She considered me that 'decent man' and within a few months we had taken each other's v-cards. And it was amazing. She was the girl of my dreams. Although she was only a cashier and didn't have any plans for the future, she was absolutely gorgeous, had a great personality, and I was sure once I was done with college and had a job I would be able to support her. And did I mention how absolutely hot she was and how ridiculously awesome sex is? Even after three kids Karura retains her hourglass shape, big breasts, round butt, any men's fantasy really! Silky golden hair, soft, velvet skin, cute smile…. She's such a bitch, she really is, but she is a beauty, and like the stupid, selfish man I am I could never go from fucking my ten of an ex-wife to a middle-aged, slightly worn-out, too skinny woman. I'm sorry but I just can't. I'm a horrible person.

If I was going to get a second lover, I wanted her to be at least half as pretty as my ex, and that I did. Freaky Rika from the law firm. I guess Mimi realized I never considered her for at least a one-night stand— I was obviously wanting sex, but instead of going to her who was so blatantly accessible I went for a troublesome cute young thing— and that pissed her off. Ever since, she's been bitter.

"Are those three yours?" she asks me in her usual fake sweet voice, looking at my little army with disdain.

"Yes, they are my children," I reply simply, unlock the door as quickly as I possibly can.

I want her to go away, but she keeps talking. "They are adorable, you know? But the complex doesn't allow kids or pets so watch it." Her tone has gone from sickly friendly to hostile and threatening in less than a second and I know I'm in trouble.

I turn to face her with the most relaxed expression I can manage and tell her, "They are just staying for a few days. Their mother had an emergency, you know?"

"No, I don't know," she almost snarls. "I'm just advising you to watch out." She raises her chin as dignified as she can and finally goes inside her apartment, proud to have had the last word and, I imagine, plotting some type of revenge.

Women. Will my Temari turn out to be a bitch like her mother or angry like this hag? Or even worse, a total creep like Rika? Because Rika is a crazy, obsessive, kinky whore and a stalker and if I suffer a mysterious death I'm blaming it on her!

But my Temari looks so cute with her cheeks all flushed from carrying so many bags. I can't imagine my little princess being anything other than a nun.

I open the door and we carry all our groceries inside. I'm tired, but I put everything up in the cabinets and make four cups of cold chocolate milk. For the next two hours we watch a movie, then for two more hours I show them the glorious world of video games. I prepare lunch around three, simple ham sandwiches and some hibiscus water. I have the sense to give Gaara his drink on one of the sippy cups this time. They run around playing for the rest of the afternoon, nothing too reckless thankfully. I keep hearing Mimi's voice telling me to watch it because the complex doesn't like children. I keep expecting for one of the managers to show up, give me a fine, and tell me to get the kids out or I'll be ousted. Why would Karura do this to me? She's… such a bitch!

The day drags, and eventually baby Gaara is the first one to get sleepy at nine at night; he curls on the couch, and within minutes his breathing settles into a peaceful rhythm. Thirty minutes later Temari starts yawning and goes to brush her teeth, comes to give me a goodnight kiss, and falls asleep in the guestroom bed. Thirty minutes later Kankuro decides he's tired as well and follows his sister's steps. I carry the little one and place him in between his siblings on the bed, and finally I get to take my much deserved shower.

By the time I get to my bed I can't help but wonder how the hell I'll survive the next thirteen days. Today felt like it would never end, and tomorrow….

I must have fallen asleep because I don't open my eyes until sunshine is gleaming behind my still heavy eyelids.

Important: I have three chapters completed on this, and if no one seems to like it (for example, I get no reviews and no messages) I will assume this has no readers and drop it, or I'll just rush it for the sake of finishing. Although I love the concept and the characters, I have more "important" and "serious" projects that I rather invest time on, especially if this has no readers. Just a couple of people telling me that they want to see more can make the difference, so if you like make sure to let me know. You took the time to read. Why not take a second to comment? The more love is shown, the more motivation. Anyways, thanks for reading :)