Years passed. Summer turned to winter four times in Odaiba, and change happened as it always does. Matt and Tai were approaching their thirtieth birthdays this year, but still looked almost as young as they did when they were teenagers. They still refused to cut their hair short, and since they were both lucky enough not to have office jobs, they didn't have to.

Right now, Matt was running his hands through Tai's fluffy hair in their bathtub. It was late at night, nearing midnight, but since the weekend began on the next day, they didn't feel the need to get to bed any time soon.

Tai poked Matt in the stomach and tickled him lightly. Matt stifled a giggle and pushed Tai away, grinning.

"Don't make me laugh, we have to be quiet!" he whispered.

"Whyyy," Tai whined, and sat in his blonde husband's lap. Tai's tongue worked its way along Matt's collar bone and up his neck.

"Nng... Tai...You're going to get me all worked up."

"So?"

Matt felt a nip at his ear.

"Agh!" He yelled, louder than he was planning to. Tai was giggling like an idiot and Matt pushed him off into the water.

"Get off, jerk," Matt said, grinning. Tai was still laughing and had his tongue sticking out at Matt.

"SSSSHHH!!!" Matt could barely stay quiet himself. Tai looked like such a beautiful doofus with his knees sticking up out of the water and that priceless grin plastered across his face.

"Don't you care that you're going to wake up our little sleeping-"

He was about to add 'angels' to the end of his sentence, but was interrupted by the sound of tiny feet shuffling into the bathroom.

"Daddy..." the little girl's sniffles could be heard from under her messy blond hair, which had fallen out of its pigtails and was hanging in her face.

"Aww...what's the matter, baby, did we wake you up?" He said, leaning over the edge of the tub. Tai sat up a bit and moved over beside him.

"I had a bad dream..." she sobbed, walking over to the side of the bathtub.

"Come here, sweety," Matt said. He reached over and hugged her. Tai patted her on the head and she moved over to hug him as well.

"Go on back to bed and we'll come tuck you in as soon as we get dried off," Tai told her.

She shook her head furiously, causing her hair to hit Tai in the face.

"I wanna stay with you..."

"You already took your bath tonight, sweety," Matt said to his daughter.

"Please? I wanna stay here..." She stuck her bottom lip out and blinked the last of her tears from her blue eyes.

"She can come in with us, right, Yami?" Tai said, cuddling her.

"Alright," Matt tapped her on the nose with the tip of his finger. "But no splashing or you have to eat Daddy Tai's cooking for a week."

"Yucky!!" she squealed.

"Hey, don't turn my own kid against me!" Tai giggled.

The little girl was Matt and Tai's first child, who they had named Toutoi, meaning precious, but nicknamed Tuesday, after the day of the week she was born on.

Their baby son, Shinji (from Shinjiteru, 'I believe') had just turned two years old, and was sleeping in his bedroom at the moment.

The little girl undressed and climbed in the tub with her fathers. In Japan it is common for young children to bathe with their parents, and the Ishida family always enjoyed the time spent together.

Matt took the ribbons out of Tuesday's hair and brushed it out for her, while she talked to Tai about the bad dream she just had.

"Are you all better now?" He asked her when she was finished.

"Yeah, I'm not scared anymore, Daddy Tai." She tried to turn around to see what Matt was doing to her hair, causing it to catch in the comb.

"Ouch!"

"Oops, sorry." Matt said, kissing her head lightly.

"Don't pull my hair, I'll pull your hair!" She said and tugged at Matt's golden hair.

"Ding ding." She pulled twice and sat back down.

"Come in," Matt said, poking her in the stomach. She smiled cheekily and blew a raspberry at him.

"Hey, that's not polite," Tai said. Playfully scolding his daughter. She responded by blowing one at him as well.

"Uh oh, Tai. It looks like we have a bad girl on our hands here," Matt said, grinning slyly. Tai caught on immediately, this was a game they had played so many times.

"Do you think she needs to be punished?"

"Definitely."

"Well, you asked for it," Tai said, cornering Tuesday against the edge of the tub.

"TICKLE BLASTER!" Tai shouted.

"Noooooo!!!!" she shrieked, as the onslaught of tickles came at her. She tried squirming away but Matt moved up behind her and help her arms. Tuesday laughed and suddenly screamed at the top of her lungs.

Matt and Tai grinned at each other over their daughter's head until they heard wailing coming from the other room.

"Uh oh, we woke the baby..." Tai said.

"Again," Matt added. They picked Tuesday up out of the bathtub and put her pink Tokomon print bathrobe on her. They wrapped towels around themselves and ran to the other room to tend to their crying son, Tuesday scampering after them.

On Sunday morning, Tai sat at the breakfast table across from Tuesday and Shinji was wriggling in his high chair, trying to get free.

"Nnnngg!!" He whined loudly, pushing on the tray in front of him, attempting to knock it off.

"Shinji, stop," Matt said, placing the breakfast plates on the table and walking back into the kitchen to get his coffee and Tai's tea.

"I wan get down!" he screamed. Apparently Shinji had decided this morning that he was too big for a high chair.

"We'd let you sit in a big people's chair if you would eat your breakfast like a good boy," Tai responded. He cut his son's pancakes for him and held a piece up on the end of the fork to get him started, but he turned his head away.

"Eat, it's yummy!" Tai urged.

He shook his head, causing his oversized goggles to slip down his forehead into his face. Since Davis still had Tai's original goggles, they had gotten Shinji a pair that was very similar.

"Ugh..." Tai fixed Shinji's goggles and started eating his own breakfast.

"Daddy!" Shinji yelled, reaching for Matt, who had just come back into the room.

"Daddy, ca'my have some juice?"

"What do you say?" Matt asked, setting down the two mugs on the table.

"Peas?" Shinji hadn't yet mastered the use of the letter L.

Matt walked back into the kitchen and poured a glass of juice for each child and headed back into the dining room.

"Were you bouncing on the bed again last night?" Tuesday said suddenly, who had ben quietly eating her breakfast. Matt paused in mid step and raised his eyebrows, and Tai almost choked on his pancakes.

"Er... what do you mean?" Matt asked.

"Your bed was banging against the wall last night. I told Shinji you were bouncing on the bed." She took a sip of the juice Matt had set down for her. "That's bad, you're not supposed to jump on your bed."

Tai's huge chocolate colored eyes were opened a bit wider than usual.

"Um..." he leaned over and whispered to Matt. "What are we supposed to say?"

"I don't want to lie to her..." Matt said, "but..."

He turned to his daughter and smiled nervously, "It must have been your imagination!"

Tai slapped Matt on the side of the head and glared at him.

"I thought you said you didn't want to lie!"

Tuesday looked back and forth between her two fathers, confused, while Shinji dropped his pieces of pancake on the floor and watched the cats eat them.

"Mmph, the 'Where do babies come from' talk isn't going to work here..." Matt said, glancing at Tuesday. She still appeared to be waiting for an answer.

"No, you think!?" Tai said.

"Tuesday, um..." Matt stopped and thought for a second. "When two people, well, when two grown up people care for each other very much, they like to express their love for one another."

"How?" She asked.

"Tai, a little help here?" He turned and scowled at his husband, who had been watching with his chin resting on his fist and his elbow on the table.

"Er," Tai sat up straight. "We'll tell you all about that when you're older!" he said, a sweatdrop forming on the side of his head.

"Much older," Matt added.

Tuesday opened her mouth to say something, but was cut short by a squeal of delight coming from the high chair.

Matt and Tai looked over to see that Shimofuri and Kikoueti had jumped up onto the high chair tray and were gobbling up Shinji's breakfast. He laughed and pulled Kikoutei's tail, but she was too busy eating a piece of bacon to do anything about it.

"BAD KITTIES!" Tai yelled, and shooed them away.

"YOU DAMN CATS!" Matt yelled after them.

"Yami, don't swear in front of the kids,"

"Sorry."

Tai looked down at his son's half eaten breakfast, none of which had been eaten by him.

"I guess it's cereal for you this morning," he sighed. Matt cleared off the cat contaminated breakfast plate and came back with a bowl of cereal.

"Now eat your Cheerios or I'll feed you to a bear."

"Matt!"

Shinji did finally eat his breakfast...one Cheerio at a time...





"Daddy Tai!!" Tuesday cried, pulling on the bottom of Tai's shorts. "Tell Daddy Matt to hurry up!"

"He has to pay the lady in the booth or we can't go inside, sweety," Tai said, looking down at her. He was holding Shinji while Matt stood near them and payed the admission fee to get into the wildlife park.

"Tuesday, don't whine," Matt scolded, taking their tickets from the woman he had paid.

"Did you get a map?" Tai asked when Matt stepped back over to him.

"Yeah," he knelt down in front of his daughter and showed her the map of the park. "What animal do you want to see first?"

"Can we see the wolfies, please?" She asked, pointing when she saw the picture of the wolves on the map.

"That's my girl," Matt said, grinning.

Shinji looked around at all the animal pens around him and sucked his thumb as they walked to the wolf dens. Tuesday had a hold on Matt's hand and was dragging in back and forth across the walkway whenever she saw something that interested her.

"Look!" She pulled him over to the tiger pens and Tai followed and stood behind them. "There's big kitties sleeping over there."

"Those are tigers," Matt said. One of the tigers opened it mouth in a huge yawn, revealing the rows of huge white teeth inside. When Tuesday got a glimpse of the giant front fangs, 20 times bigger than the ones their cats at home had, she shrieked and hid behind Tai.

"Hey, it's ok, he's just yawning," Tai said, looking behind him.

"Kitty!" Shinji yelled, reaching towards the edge of the tiger cage. He had apparently just noticed the group of tigers sleeping on the sunny rock on the other side.

"Heh, yes, it's a kitty," Matt said, ruffling his son's hair. "A very BIG kitty."

Tai smiled and glanced behind him again.

"Hey, where did Tuesday go?"

Matt looked all around, started to panic for a moment, until he saw Tuesday pressed up against the fence of the petting zoo, her little hands hooked on the chain link fence.

"I think somebody wants to go feed some baby animals."

Tai and Matt started over towards the petting zoo.

"Are you sure she'll be alright? What if a goat bites her or something?" Tai said as Matt opened the door in the fence.

"Oh, she'll be ok. They wouldn't let kids pet the animals if they were going to bite them."

Matt took Shinji for a while and sat down on a bench while Tai bought Tuesday some food to feed to the animals. While Tai was gathering up the animal food and Tuesday was hopping up and down next to him, a little goat climbed up on the bench and Shinji started petting its head.

"Are you going to pet the goat too, Matt?" Tai giggled as he walked over and sat down.

"Er...no, I don't really like livestock," he answered, eyeing the goat which was now eating a cracker from Tuesday's hand.

"Aww, but it's so cute."

"I don't like animals that much, Tai."

"Not even me?" Tai grinned and leaned his head closer to Matt, kissing his cheek.

"You're only an animal in bed..."

"You bet." Matt wrapped his arms around the little brunette and kissed his lips softly.

Matt broke the kiss when he felt a tug on his pant leg. He and Tai glanced down.

"I wanna go see the bunnies, please?" Tuesday said, sticking out her bottom lip.

"Ok, come on Shinji," Matt said. He picked up his baby son who was having his face licked by the goat and Tai held Tuesday's hand.

After the petting zoo, they went to see the wolves, and then the elephants. They had to calm Tuesday down from crying and buy her an ice cream cone after they saw the alligators, (It was Tai's idea) because she had begun crying hysterically.

When they had seen almost every animal in the park and eaten lunch, they came to the boat ride that circled the central animal habitat. They climbed into the little boat and Shinji peeked over the side into the water.

"Daddy dere's a birdy," he pulled Tai's shirt pointed to a little duck swimming around in the water.

"It's a duck, Shinji, do you want to feed it?" he asked. Shinji nodded and Tai gave him a cracker, which the duck accepted and ate.

As the boat floated down the small, man-made river, Matt and Tai realized their children had both fallen fast asleep, with Tuesday leaning on Matt and Shinji leaning on Tai.

"I guess they're all worn out," Tai commented, yawning.

"You seem a little worn out yourself," Matt said, pulling his husband closer to him.

"I little bit. I mean, I run 2 miles at every soccer practice, and it's still hard keeping up with these two."

Matt ran his fingers through Tai's soft hair and felt him start to fall over against his shoulder.

" I know what you mean, but I love taking care of them. I'd be lost without my children, I love them so much. What I ever did to deserve such a perfect family, I'll never know. A gorgeous husband to come home to every day and two beautiful children...could life possibly get any better?"

Matt waited a moment for Tai to give a response, but his only answer was a gentle snoring. He wrapped his arms around his sleeping family and held them close to him. The boat floated around the bend and drifted into the shade. Matt closed his eyes, sighed contentedly, and dozed off.