Abby
Gibbs raised his eyebrows and spoke patiently. "Tony, I know you want to play some more, but time is up now. Your sisters will be finished with class any minute. You had a nice hour outside playing football with the others, but now it is time to go."
"Call me when they get finished. There is no reason at all why I can't still be playing." Tony's plea managed to sound like more of an annoying whine.
Gibbs turned and started back inside, then announced ominously over his shoulder, "If you are not standing in front of me with a clean face and hands when classes end, you will not watch any television tonight."
Tony scowled at the announcement and kicked at a mound of dirt, but a minute after the older Gibbs went inside, he slipped through the door behind him.
Little Abby burst through the door of her classroom and skipped to her father, throwing her arms up for a hug and kiss. Gibbs laughed and swung her, then set her down with a flourish. She jumped up and down and swung from his arm as they watched the classroom doors and waited for Kate to finish.
"Hey, why don't you go on in the restroom by yourself and change out of your leotard?" he suggested. "You can go ahead and put on your own clothes without waiting for Kate."
Abby stopped bouncing and regarded him shrewdly, then grinned, showing the huge gap that used to house her two top teeth.
"Can you do it, Baby? Can you get dressed the whole way all by yourself?"
"Ok, where are my clothes?"
Gibbs hurried back to his seat and located her dance bag, then handed it over to her and pointed to the bathroom.
She slung it on her shoulder by the strap, then began hitting her palm against the plastic to make a noise.
He watched her bounce off and push open the restroom door, and then called out quickly, "Abby, go tee tee also."
She grinned in reply.
Tony came out of the other restroom, his shirt and pants splashed liberally with wet stains, wet but clean, and approached his father with a pout and scowl. "Ok, I'm clean now and we are not even ready to go. You could have let me play some more. This is not fair."
Gibbs pointed to where Tim sat scrunched over his book. "Go sit over there with Tim."
"Why have I got to sit with him?"
"I told you to do that, and that is why."
"I don't even want to go to Ducky's," Tony muttered under his breath, turning to regard Tim, and then reluctantly doing what his father said.
Gibbs watched him go and headed in the opposite direction to locate Kate. The class door stood wide open and the rest of the little girls had already departed.
He peeped inside and found his oldest daughter slipping off her ballet shoes. She smiled when she saw him and he grinned in return. "Hey, Daddy, I am almost ready."
"No problem," he acknowledged, thinking to himself that she had inborn poise and a natural grace.
Her teacher, a middle aged woman who had once danced for the Bolshoi Ballet, came to speak with him.
"Agent Gibbs, your daughter is a natural at ballet. She possesses such poise and grace for one so young, and more self discipline than I have seen in many years."
"Thank you, Madame Olga, I was just thinking those exact thoughts. She genuinely loves your class. I agree, though, that she is a natural."
Kate interrupted, smiling shyly at both for the compliments, and he kissed her cheek and motioned her towards the restroom.
She returned within a couple of minutes, having brushed her hair and changed into a green sundress and sandals. Her packed ballet bag was clutched in her arms.
Gibbs, who stood with Tim and a still pouting Tony by the door, asked hurriedly, "Where's your sister? She went in a good five minutes before you."
"Playing, Dad- I told her to come on but she started singing the eensy beensy spider song and put her hands over her ears."
"See," Tony muttered, "I could have been outside playing all this time."
"Go tell her I said to get dressed and get out here," Jethro ordered, pointing at the bathroom.
Kate did as he bid her, but came back frowning. "She said for me to leave her alone and quit bossing her."
Gibbs took a deep breath. "Who else is in the bathroom?"
"Nobody, Daddy."
"Are you positive? No other girls are in there?"
"Yes sir."
He turned to regard the three of them. "All of you sit down on that bench and don't move," he ordered.
Kate and Tim started for the seats. Tony rolled his eyes as he began to walk, and Gibbs called sharply for him to return. Leaning down he tapped under Tony's chin and promised, "If you keep acting the way you have been the past half hour, you will be over my lap for a spanking later."
He did not wait for an acknowledgement from his oldest, but moved to the restroom, where he knocked softly.
No one responded.
He opened the door slowly and caught his reflection in the mirror over the lavatory. Then he saw his baby.
Abby, in tights and shoes and nothing else, lay on her stomach across the sink counter, playing with a small puppy figurine and singing softly.
Jethro smiled in spite of himself.
She looked up when the door shut behind him and moved to sit crosslegged on the counter. "I want to stay here."
He shook his head. "No, remember that we are going to the Mallards, and you should have already gotten on your clothes."
Jethro located her stack of clothing in a heap beside her ballet bag. He quickly sorted and set everything on the other side of the counter.
"Stand up," he spoke softly, pausing a second to plant a quick kiss on her nose.
She did, and he managed to get her little dress over her as she danced on the counter, singing to the plastic dog she moved through the air. Her green dress had patterns of red apples across the hem, and Abby loved it, and made the dog light on one of the apples before flying again through the air.
She held onto her father's shoulders as he pulled off her shoes and tights, and he told her to sit on the counter while he rummaged impatiently through her belongings.
Finally he regarded her in confusion. "I can't find your panties, Honey."
Abby swung her legs but stopped singing to reassure him. "That's because I didn't wear them, Daddy."