HI! I'm sorry, sorry, sorry it took me so long to update! This whole thing of writing without a beta wasn't working for me. Sofi, I'm glad you're back and thanks for helping me!

I've also been going crazy trying to understand if I made a mess or not with the age in which Phoebe should begin elementary school. Good news, I didn't. Some nice person from a facebook group had to give me a hand... So Fifi will turn 17 y/o days before beginning senior year. I just don't understand why Bella turns 18 in New Moon a couple of weeks after beginning her senior year... but whatever.

I'm back and I'm sorry and I hope you enjoy this new chapter. Thanks for reading!

Chapter 13: 'Firsts' aren't always good

August 20, 2018 (Monday)

APOV

Both Fifi and Teddy need to be in class at 8:00 a.m. today. The problem is Fifi needs to be at pre-school and Teddy needs to be at elementary school. Thanks God both their pre-school and elementary school are owned by the same business association: Northwest Seattle Private School. This group also owns a middle school and a high school, all placed in one single ridiculously huge campus. We plan to take our kids to these very same middle and high schools.

We will leave Fifi, who has just turned four, at pre-school at about 7:50 a.m. Then, we will arrive with Teddy at his new classroom just before 8:00. He turned six last May and is about to begin elementary school. My baby boy is so big already!

Thanks God his best friends Joanne, Luna, Rick and Matt will be in the same class as him. Those five have grown inseparable in the last four years. I fear the time when they all will become shy and boys and girls won't want to be friends. They look so happy together! I hope they keep being as close as they are now during the next many years of school.

I sit in the couch and hold our six months old daughter while our four years old daughter plays with her. This is how it feels like to be on cloud nine. Suddenly, Golden comes running downstairs with Teddy and Christian following him. Mi little man! He looks so handsome with his new uniform! Pre-school kids use a red and black sports uniform, which is more comfortable, but the elementary school's uniform is more... elegant. It consists of black dress pants and a white shirt with the School´s emblem embroidered where the heart is. It also has a red sweater and/or blazer for cold days –with the emblem on it, of course. If wanted, the children can use a red tartan tie, but it's not compulsory. The design of the tie is the same as the one of the girl's skirts.

After we take pictures of Teddy, we head to the limo and leave. We drop Fifi without any inconvenience and in no time we are in front of Northwest Seattle Private Elementary School, more commonly known as NW Elementary School.

We walk into the building. Christian is carrying Candy in his arms and I am holding Teddy's hand. Once we are inside the school, Teddy asks me to let go of his hand because he is "a big kid now" and he "hasn't been a baby for many, many years." I pout and Christian makes fun of me. Then he points out how Teddy will probably be taller than me by the time he is twelve, which, sadly, is probably true.

Mrs. Andrews, who asks us to call her Clarisse, welcomes Ted kindly. He greets her, as politely as ever, kisses us goodbye, reminds Candy he will be back before she has time to miss him and walks in the classroom. Joanne and Luna are already here, but with their backs to the door, so they don't see Teddy coming. He knows it, so he hugs their shoulders screaming "Boo!" and scaring the shit out of them, making him and those who are close to them laugh. The girls stick out their tongues but then they greet each other properly.

Our job is done. After we talk a little with Teddy's new teacher, we head out.

"Oh my! We have a child in elementary school. That's a first..."

"It is, Mrs. Grey. It is."

September 2, 2018 (Saturday)

Teddy has been in elementary school for two weeks now, and he is having the time of his life. Every now and then, he is given homework, but it's always easy, so he doesn't mind. His classmates stay to have lunch at campus, so he stays with them. Now that he has to be at school until 3:00 p.m., we moved his piano lessons to Thursdays at 4:00 p.m. Fifi wants to play the piano too, so she's taking classes on Tuesdays at 2:00 p.m.

All in all, piano is not enough for these children. They wanted to do something else, and Grace recommended us swimming classes. It's not only a great sport; it also expands the lungs, gets the spine on its right position, helps people to relax, etc. By the way, it's always safe for the kids to know how to swim. We have a pool back home, after all.

So now Christian and I are sitting behind a glass watching our children in their first swimming class. Candy is next to me in her stroller.

Blue Ridge Club is not a ridiculously fancy, expensive club. After more than one hundred years after its foundation, it has become the best club of the area. This means that, of course, Teddy and Fifi take swimming classes here. The swimming pool building is huge. It has an enormous pool, female and male changing rooms with bathrooms and showers and, most importantly, a bar. The bar is placed next to the shallow end of the pool, where the youngest children are. From here, we can see our kids, but the glass is tinted on the other side, so they cannot see us. You can see they are having fun and making new friends.

I like it here. Like I said, it's not too fancy. This is the kind of club I would go to even if I was not married to a billionaire. This place is very close to our home, which means it's close to NW Private School. But it's also near to Ballard Private School, St. Thomas Public School, St. Joachim and St. Anne Public School and Greenwood Public School. About 99% of the children that come to this club go to one of these schools. This means about the 60% of kids here go to a Public School. This is the perfect situation for Fifi and Teddy to understand that they are privileged children; that the world out there is nothing like their lives back home. I want them to be in contact with 'normal kids' and I honestly don't give a fuck about what Christian thinks about this. I told him having our children in a bubble is a hard limit for me.

Like Fifi still has two years to go until Elementary School and Teddy is already in first grade, they are in two different classes, but, luckily, both of them are given at the same time by two different teachers.

In our way back home, they tell us everything about their classes and new friends. Teddy's partners are either in 1st or 2nd grade and Fifi's classmates are her age, one year younger or one year older. She says her best friend here is a boy one year older than her, Mike. He has a three years old brother named Bob. He goes to NW, too. This doesn't seem to make Christian very happy and I have to hold back my laugher.

Going to a club is a first for the kids, and I think they liked it.

October 5, 2018 (Friday)

This must has been one of the longest days in history. It began just like any other 'first Friday of the month'. After we arrived home, Taylor went to look for Sophie. Teddy, Fifi and Candy adore her. I cannot believe she is fourteen years old already.

Anyway, Sophie has been practising artistic gymnastic ever since she is about eight. She can do cartwheels, stand in her hands and lots of other things even my inner goddess cannot make in her wildest dreams...

"Hi, Ana" she hugs me and I kiss her forehead. I'm almost a head taller than her. "HI, guys!" Teddy and Fifi throw themselves at her and they abduct her to the backyard. It's an unusually warm day for October, so I'm glad they are using their time to enjoy the sun.

Fifi loves to see Sophie do gymnastic. My poor baby girl has, just like Teddy, her Daddy's love for sports; but she also has my clumsiness, so there's not a chance on earth she can do what Taylor's daughter can. I think swimming is the only safe sport for her. Anyway, as she loves artistic gymnastic, she usually asks Sophie to do lots of cool stuff.

There's one more thing Fifi inherited not only from me, but from Christian too. Teddy received those genes, too. Or maybe it isn't nature but nurture and Candy will be just like the rest of us. Teddy calls this thing –or defect -we all have the 'three Ps'. The 'P' stands for personalities, and they are: stubborn, frustrating and impossible.

So Fifi, being a sports' fan, clumsy and stubborn, decides to try to sand in her hands. Sophie tries to talk her out of it, but Fifi doesn't listen and she attempts the acrobatics all in all. Christian and I are looking at them, sitting on the stone terrace that is right next to the living room. We think Fifi won't be able to detach her feet from the floor so we don't interfere. But we are surprised with what we see: Phoebe is actually going farther than what we thought.

Suddenly, she falls and screams and begins to cry like crazy. Christian and I run to where she is, descending the three steps that lead to the lawn and hurrying through the grass. We can see her holding her little right arm as though her life depended on it. We crouch next to her and Christian tells her to try to move her right arm, but she tells him she can't and that it hurts too much. Christian and I look at each other in worry. I know that we are thinking the same thing: This looks way too much like a fracture.

We try to calm her down and when her desperate sobs turn into a silent sea of tears, Christian picks her up. I tell Luke and Ryan to get ready to leave in any minute and let Taylor know what happened. He and Gail will look after Teddy and Candy while we take Fifi to the hospital.

Christian wants to take her to his mother, but I remind him she will need to be x-rayed so we need to go to the hospital anyway. Grace retired when Phoebe was one year old, but she's always more than ager to give her opinion and the paediatricians from the hospital already know her so they don't mind it when she interferes. In fact, they prefer it that way, as Christian is absolutely obsessive when it comes to our children's health and he annoys the hell out of the doctors, so Grace keeps him at bay.

We climb in the back of one of the cars and Christian hands me Fifi so he can call his mother. I caress her hair and back to comfort her. Grace tells my husband she will be in the hospital in ten minutes and he relaxes a little bit. When he hangs up, he helps me to distract Phoebe from the pain.

When we arrive to the entrance of the emergency section of the hospital, I give Fifi back to Christian so he can carry her inside and Ryan opens his door to let him out while Luke opens mine.

As Fifi seems to have a broken bone they attend her right away. As we expected, she needs to be x-rayed. At least, they give her painkillers, so she begins to feel better. While we are waiting for the radiography, Grace and Carrick arrive. Once we are given the results, Dr. Barletta lets her see the x-ray film and they both agree there's a little fracture in her bone.

They put a plaster on my poor baby girl and they proscribe her some painkillers. She is sad, in need of being pampered and doesn't want her grandparents –who are the best spoilers ever, by the way –to leave her yet. So we ask them to come home and have dinner with us.

The five of us drive back home in our two cars and when we arrive we find our eight-months-old baby desperate to be with her mother –oh oh, I think we're about to begin that phase in which the baby doesn't want to be out of her mom's arms – and our son anxious to know how Fifi is. When he sees her eyes puffy from crying and the plaster in her right arm, he tries to cheer her up by saying everybody will want to sign her cast. He insists he wants to have the honour to be the first one to draw something on it and he brings some felt pens after making sure he can use them outside the game room this one time. We wouldn't approve it if it weren't for the fact that we don't want to have Fifi out of our sight for today, at least.

A broken bone. That's a first. Firsts aren't always good, I guess.

And if she's four and she already got a bone broken, I don't want to know what the future holds for us.

Hi! I love you all and I appreciate how lots of you answer my questions. So here I go again... Don't panic, I won't need this info for a long time but I'd like to know how long these collage careers last:

Medicine (Paediatrician)

Business

Neuroscience

Environmental Engineering

Architecture

Theatre Management & Producing

Directing

Pharmacology

English Language & Literature

International Relations

Please pm or review me, even if you only know how long one or two of these take.

Thanks for reading, reviewing, sending me pm, following and favouriting.

Vale.