I'm getting a little experimental with structure for today's installment. Props to ddp456 for helping me out with this one! - SGA


Wendy Pines was completely hunkered down on the sofa when her phone went off, with her favorite flannels sweats on, baby daughter playing next to her and an enormous bowl of cereal set before he on the coffee table. She took one look at who was calling and eagerly answered fast as she could.

"Hey doofus."

"Hey!" Dipper was brimming with so much excitement that Wendy could feel it through the phone. Thanks to a museum-funded excavation at an ancient burial site out in nowheresville, Nevada, it had been nearly two weeks since the couple had seen one another.

"So you about to hit the road yet?"

"Yeah, almost! We've just finished packing everything up. I should be home in a couple hours."

"Sweet, can't wait. It was getting waaaaay too relaxed around here."

"Yeah, I bet you can't wait to have someone to do the cooking again." He affectionately joked right back at her.

"You know I do." She put him on speaker, leaving her free to slurp down the rest of her cereal in one go.

"Hey, you want me to pick up Phoebe this afternoon? I should be getting back into town just in time." He thoughtfully suggested.

"Nah, she's not in daycare today. She's feeling a little 'sick,' so I'm taking the day off with her." Wendy said with a mischievous chuckle.

"What?!" He blurted out worriedly. "Wait, what kind of temperature is she running?"

"Whoa, relax! She's fine!" She assured him. "We're just playing hooky, that's all."

"Oh….okay…okay…." He forced out an embarrassed chuckle. "Probably should have caught that."

"Dork." She lovingly teased.

"Yeah, sorry. Uh, I'll see you soon, okay?"

"Okay. Love you."

She put her phone down and almost immediately noticed the way Phoebe's attention had locked right onto the little rectangle that she heard her father worriedly babbling out of only a minute ago. Wendy could swear that her daughter looked genuinely concerned.

"He's fine. You know that's just how he gets with you, right?" She rolled her eyes. "Still…. you seriously would have that your cousins would have helped him get at least some of the baby anxiety out of his system already. I mean, it's not like any of this is totally new to him. Seriously, after everything that he's put himself through with the twins already…."

Wendy lumped her daughter onto her hip. As she sauntered on over to the TV, she laughed as she recalled a particular little incident. "You know that we lived with your Aunt Mabel for a while, don't you? Right after Finn and Gladys were born? It was supposed to only be for the first week, just until she felt ready to handle things a little more on her own. But we ended up bunking at her place on and off for almost the whole first month, and Dipper…."


All was perfectly quiet in the little house.

Too quiet.

Dipper tried his best to quietly read in the den. The neurotic new uncle however kept glancing over to the nearby baby monitor.

"We haven't heard anything either of them for like, thirty minutes." He was getting worried.

The lanky woman lazing the other side of the sofa didn't even look up from her magazine. "They're just sleeping. They're totally fine."

"Think we should go check?" He asked. "You know, just in case."

"Nope."

"It would only take a couple seconds." Dipper persisted.

"You do that, they'll wake up, and then literally everyone's gonna be unhappy." Wendy retorted, recalling each and every time she got a new brother.

"But maybe-" He tried countering.

"Let them nap."

"I just-"

"Let them nap."

"But maybe we-"

"Dude…." She gave him a look. "C'mon. Just let them nap, okay?."

"Okay." Dipper softly conceded. He proceeded to "read" for a mere minute and a half before he got up. "I'm….gonna go to the bathroom."

Wendy nodded wordlessly. Less than half a minute later she heard one of the twins snuffle loudly over the monitor, followed by a grizzle. The new aunt picked it up and started listening in just as Finn broke out with a full-fledged cry, which immediately woke up his twin sister. The house filled with the wails of two very cranky newborns.

"Sorry! Sorry! I was just checking!" She heard Dipper frantically apologize over the monitor. "Shhh! Shhhh! It's okay guys! It's okay! Uhh...wellllll, who wants a lamby, lamby, lamby…."

The babies weren't the only ones whose naps were ruined. Half-awake and currently fueled by pure protective instinct, an exhausted Mabel tore from her bedroom and charged into the nursery at full tilt.

"MOMMY'S COMING!"

"Wait, wait, Mabel-"

"YOU LEAVE MY BABIES ALONE!" She shrieked.

"No, it's just me! It's-OW! Mabel, stop-OW! OW!It's just me-OW!"

With nothing left to lose, Wendy shot to her feet and rushed into the chaos with an annoyed cry. "SERIOUSLY?!"


"...We actually had a couple more episodes like that until he was cool with letting the kids sleep for longer than forty minutes without getting worked up about it. Of course, that's because he found plenty of new things to freak out about. Like, the first time they got sick….when they were learning to walk…..."

Wendy now sat cross-legged on the floor with a game controller in her hand and daughter in her lap. Phoebe looked up at the screen and squeaked at the alien soldier charging around a rocky outcrop.

"Buh!"

"Thanks, I see him." Wendy took aim, and the enemy combatant exploded in a burst of computer-animated gore. "Boosh! Wasted!"

She paused to give her daughter a proud pat on the head. As she returned to her mission, the lanky mother chattered on. Gentle laughter shook her lanky body. "And to think, when you first popped into the picture I seriously thought Dipper was going to be okay. I was like, okay of course my guy's gonna get anxious. But we've basically helped raise our two kids already, so how wound up can he possibly get over our own kid? Well turns out, the answer was 'totally wound up.' Like, this one time….."


"...Helloooooooo, sweetie!" The moment her brother and sister-in-law entered her home, Mabel rushed over, gently grabbed Wendy's budding bump and greeted it first. "And how are you doing? You beautiful, gorgeous little-"

The overexcited brunette stopped herself. Of course, she'd long since gotten the news over the phone, but she now wanted to hear it straight from the mouths of the new parents themselves. Mabel bounced from foot to foot as she asked,"It's definitely a girl, right? Like, totally official? At least ninety-five percent sure?"

Wendy was still wearing the same enormous smile she'd be sporting since her most recent sonogram two days earlier. "Oh yeah. It's official. Totally got a little lady on the way."

"YES!" The aunt-to-be squeezed the two of them in a crushing hug. "Oooohh, congratulations a billion times over! A little girl! A little itty bitty pretty little girl!"

"Girl! Girl! Girl!" Her own two tots bounced around cheering excitedly until their aunt knelt down low enough for them to hug their upcoming cousin. Mabel signaled to her children, and the giggling three-year-olds shot off into the kitchen.

"Where are they going?" Dipper asked.

"To go get your treat! Well, one of your treats." As she spoke, she eagerly passed two new hand-knitted pink onesies to Wendy.

"Aw, Mabes…." Wendy's smile grew.

"That's just the first of many. Oooohhh, SO many!" The arts and crafts master clasped her hands and squealed at the thought of all the adorable outfits to come. "And to really help us celebrate the big news, we decided to go big with something special for Family Movie Night tonight. Presenting to you all, the snack of snacks! The master munchie for the marvelous mother eating for two! A creative culinary experience courtesy of yours truly, I give you the Ultimate Na-"

Dipper almost spooked everyone out of their skins with an animalistic howl of terror. He protectively reached for his daughter, who was still inside his wife. Before Wendy knew what was happening, her scrawny husband had managed to lift her up into a fireman's carry.

"Hey! HEY!" She thrashed in protest. His attempted retreat to safety ended when her knee accidentally slammed his gut, sending him right down to the floor in a heap. The badly-startled Mabel meanwhile helped her sister-in-law land safely, albeit a little ungracefully on her feet.

"Whoa! What gives, bro-bro?" She demanded. It took a few seconds until her brother could actually speak.

"Sorry." Dipper wheezed and pointed to the large tray that his niece and nephew bore between them. "That…"

"Huh? Unca Dippeh, it's justa nacho!" Gladys squeaked bemusedly.

"Yeah!" Mabel chimed in. "The Ultimate Nacho! Didn't you hear my just now?"

"Yeah dude, it's just…." Wendy finally figured it out. "Uh oh….Mabes?"

"What?" The brunette got another look at her culinary creation. An entire bag's worth of tortilla chips had been painstakingly glued together with cheese to make one massive cheese-covered chip.

Or, to describe it another way, one large yellow triangle.

"What? It's just….." Mabel grimaced as she finally caught the unsettling resemblance. "Oooohhhhhhh…..yeah, sorry. I can see how that would be a little alarming….."


"...Okay, what do you think?" Wendy's space marine now faced down a mechanical seven-story crab-like abomination. "Grenade launcher or laser rifle?"

"Gah?" Phoebe gurgled.

"Grenade launcher it is." While she armed herself, she continued meandering down memory lane. "Anyways…..so yeah, his anxiety pretty much just kicked back up into total overdrive. And even though his heart was totally in the right place, he…..okay, like so this other time, he actually…."


"...Twelve …...thirteen….fourteen….fifteen….sixteen….seventeen…..." Wendy continued to stack the penny tower high on her bulging stomach, carefully counting with every new addition. A small kick from beneath suddenly sent it toppling over, and she burst out laughing "Oh, c'mon!"

"Looks like she wins another round." Dipper chuckled as he gathered up the coins from where they tumbled off all around the sofa.

"We were just three away from the record. Again." Wendy pat her growing bump, and felt the baby kick again. Their little one was being particular active that evening, and the bored parents were taking full creative advantage of it. "It's like she knows."

As Dipper began making a new tower on top of his wife's stomach, he wondered out loud, "Is it weird we've been doing this for almost twenty minutes?"

"Probably." She grinned at their unborn opponent. "At least she's livening up the night a little."

The silly game was abruptly interrupted when an alarm on Dipper's phone went off. In a flash the up man was up and moving like a machine. Wendy yelped as he speedily herded her up onto her feet.

"What are you-"

"Go, go, go!" He worked with amazing speed and efficiency. The next few moments became an utter blur for Wendy as he cleared the two of them out. In no time they were out of the apartment, in the parking lot and sitting in Dipper's little sedan. The young man checked the time and celebrated with a mighty whoop.

"Yes! Minute and a half!" The hyper-prepared father-to-be took out a checklist. "Okay, let's see….out in under two minutes, check….remembered to lock up behind us, check…..hospital bag, check…..yeah, looks like we're good! At least, I think. Can you think of anything we might have missed?"

That answer became obvious when he looked to his spouse. Wendy dazedly gazed back. "Uh…..so was this supposed to be like, a drill, or something?"

Dipper's face fell. After the world's most awkward twenty-second silence he meekly asked, "Wait….wait...I-I didn't go over this with you?"

She wordlessly shook her head.

"I thought this morning I said we were-"

"No...not at all."

There was a gentle thud as Dipper hit his forehead on the steering wheel. As he filled the car with an embarrassed groan, Wendy reached over to gingerly pat his shoulder.

"Hey…" She tried boosting his spirits. "At least we know when the time comes, we'll-"

"Thanks," Sighed the red-faced young man, "But I'm pretty sure my dignity's gone for good tonight…."


"...….Hey, what do you think you're doing? Trying to move back into your old pad?" Wendy joked.

After meeting her end in the claws of the alien mecha-crab five times in a row, she and baby had retired to the couch for some play-and-cuddle-time. The lanky mother chuckled as Phoebe curiously crawled halfway under her shirt.

"C'mere, cutie." Wendy picked her up, and Phoebe squeaked with laughter as she blew a wet raspberry on her cheek. The older redhead then set her crimson-haired baby onto her lap. "Okay, where were we...oh yeah. So, think that was over the top? You should have seen him near the end…the things he did to make sure you were okay were just….."


"No."

"Wendy-"

"No."

"I just-"

"No."

"But we baby-proofed the entire apartment. How is this that much different from-"

"Are you serious?" The redheaded mother-to-be shot him an incredulous look. For her, this was overkill in the most irritating way imaginable. Dipper however wasn't ready to back down until he explained his whole plan.

"Look, Ford took this from his personal stash and overnighted it through the mail just for us." He held up the small package of unicorn hair. "You know how hard it is to get this. Can't we at least try to-"

"Dude, no." Wendy crossed her arms and glowered. "Why do we need to get this stuff involved anyway?"

"Why else? Because this has protective powers. We both know it does. We've seen it in action. It's fact. So why not give it a try for Phoebe? I mean, it can't hurt, right?" He asked with a hopeful smile. His reasoning failed to sway her.

"So what am I supposed to do? Superglue it right onto her?" She rolled up her shirt and pointed to her eight-and-half-month old swollen stomach. The lanky redhead looked fit to pop.

"No, no!" He shook his head. "There's a couple different ways we could go about it."

"What?"

Dipper took out one of his notebooks. "Okay, let's see….ah, here we go. So, we want to go with a real low-effort option, we could tape a few strands to the inside a couple of your shirts. Or, if we want to get them in a little more securely, I'm sure Mabel would be fine if we asked her to sew a few of them in. We could also try a belt that you can wear around….."

He earnestly went on and on like this. The visibly annoyed Wendy wasn't having any of this. Without a word she grabbed the little bag off the coffee table and waddled off down the hallway. Dipper's nose was still buried in his various plans.

"...Now if you want, we can try a locket with a really long chain. You know, so it reaches down all the way to the baby-"

"Dipper?" She called him.

"Yeah?" As he heard the toilet flush, he quickly got the message. "Um, okay…..no it is, then….."


"...Oh my God, he was so serious about it, I don't even….." Wendy shook her head and chuckled. At this point she noticed that Phoebe's eyes had settled shut. The baby now lay limply on her chest like a small sack of flour. Her mother guessed she had been meandering on a lot longer than she thought.

"Soooo, in case Mama hasn't made things totally clear yet," She quickly wrapped things up. "Don't worry too much when he does his whole freak-out thing. That's just how he is. Dipper always has been, and always will be one the most hyper-protective, over-anxious, stubborn people out there. And that somehow goes double when it comes to anyone small, cute and related to him. Got that?"

Phoebe kept on sleeping. Wendy reached for the phone and checked the time. It looked like it was still going to be a couple hours until she could expect Dipper back home. A couple hours until he'd open that door, stumble over his own bags as he dropped them, proceed to almost trip over himself again in his rush, and finally wrap his wife and daughter up in a tight hug. In short, her dork was going to frantically act like he hadn't seen the two of them in years.

The thought of his inevitable spectacle brought a fat smile to her face. She could hardly wait.

"And you know what else, cutie?" The redhead gleefully confessed to her slumbering daughter. "You lucked out so hard to have him as your dad, you have no idea…."