"Shino."

I wasn't ready to wake up.

"Shino, wake up."

I felt someone shaking me. I rolled over and looked at Tsuma who was standing over me.

"What?" I said.

"Moujo is crying." She said, crawling under the covers.

Sure enough, my daughter who was NOT a son was crying.

I sat up. "Tsuma, you were already up." I said, staring at her but she was avoiding eye contact by turning over and facing the wall. "Why didn't you tend to her?"

"Because I hate her." Tsuma said, pulling the covers over her head.

Tsuma said that she had a doctor's appointment on that day so I didn't expect her back for a little while. So, of course, I was surprised to see her sitting at the kitchen table when I returned home from a meeting with the Hokage.

"Tsuma, what about your doctor's appointment?" I asked her.

"I went to it." she said, looking up.

"Oh." I said.

She waited.

"Aren't you going to ask what it was about?" she led me.

"What was it about?" I asked even though I didn't really care all that much. I figured it was just a routine check-up.

"Well, you know how I've been sick a lot lately?" I nodded to acknowledge the fact that I knew she had been sick a lot lately. "I went to the doctor to find out why."

"That makes sense."

"So I went in and the doctor did only one test and he found out what was wrong with me." Tsuma continued.

I nodded for her not to stop.

She stood up and slammed her hands down on the table. "I hate you Shino!" she yelled. "I hate you more than anyone else in the entire world! I hate you more than anyone in the entire world PUT TOGETHER!"

"Did you get a virus from me?" I asked even though I couldn't recall being sick recently.

"No!" she said. "Worse! I'm PREGNANT!"

I don't quite remember what happened after that.

I guess that was it.

I got out of bed and slowly made my way to the baby room that was, unfortunately, painted pink. Not blue. We had originally painted it blue only to be unpleasantly surprised to have our son to come out lacking certain masculine aspects to him. In fact, he had come out a SHE and Tsuma's mother had insisted on coming in and painting the room pink.

No matter what name I suggested, Tsuma claimed she hated all of them. So I named her Moujo. I didn't think there was any name that could fit her better.

I looked down in the crib at the crying baby. She must have been two… or three… or four… or five… months old… maybe six…

I leaned over and poked her.

"Go back to sleep." I said.

Surprisingly, my command had no effect on her.

So I tapped her on the forehead. "Stop crying." I insisted.

But she still did not react in the way I wanted her to. In fact, I think she only cried harder and started to flail her arms and legs around.

I sighed. What was I supposed to do to make her stop crying if she wasn't going to respond to my requests?

So I went back into the other room where Tsuma had a pillow over her head.

"Tsuma, Moujo won't stop crying." I said.

"Did you try rocking her?" Tsuma asked, sounding annoyed.

No, I hadn't tried that. I went back into the pink room and looked down at Moujo, still crying.

I pushed her to the side slightly and then pushed her the other way. But she continued to cry, even though I continued to 'rock' her. This wasn't going work.

I went back to Tsuma. "It didn't work." I said.

"Did you pat her on the back?" Tsuma groaned.

No.

I went back into the baby room. I rolled Moujo onto her stomach and pat her on the back.

Like the rest of my attempts, this didn't prove anything.

So I went back to Tsuma. "Nothing is working." I reported.

Tsuma let out an exasperated sigh and got out of bed. She stormed past me and into the baby room.

"She's not supposed to be on her stomach!" said Tsuma, picking her up out of the crib. "Was she on her stomach when you got in here?"

"No." I said. I didn't know babies weren't supposed to be on their stomach.

"So you tried rocking her like this but she still didn't stop?" Tsuma said as she put the baby's head on her shoulder and began swaying back and forth. Moujo's wails slowly quieted.

Well… I hadn't exactly done THAT.

"Did you?" Tsuma said, sounding cross.

"Not… EXACTLY that." I said.

"I TOLD you to rock her." Tsuma glared at me.

"I didn't know that meant I had to pick her up." I replied.

"What are you talking about!" Tsuma demanded. "You didn't even pick her up!"

I dropped the new bag of clothes that Tsuma had made me carry in from our trip to the baby store. She walked by with the sleeping baby and put her in the crib. I tried to keep myself from frowning.

"Why are you so upset?" Tsuma said without even having to look at me.

"It's not a son." I replied.

"She's also not an 'it'." Tsuma pointed out. "I don't like this any more than you do, but she's our daughter so our lives now officially revolve around her."

"Our daughter." I repeated. Not our son.

Why was this a surprise? I had never picked up Moujo before.

"Is that…bad?" I asked.

"Yes!" said Tsuma. "You know, Shino, you're going to have to hold her eventually! You can't always just make ME do all the work!"

"She likes you more." I said but I had really just pulled that statement out of nowhere.

"If you held her more often then she would like you too." Said Tsuma as she continued to rock Moujo.

I paused for a few minutes and only watched the two of them.

"So…I'm going back to bed." I said.

"No you're not!" said Tsuma.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because." Tsuma replied. "You have to stay here until she goes to sleep."

"She'll go to sleep soon." I said.

"Then you'll go to bed soon." She said.

Tsuma was so unreasonable sometimes.

"Fine." I said. If she needed to prove a point to me by not letting me go to bed before her then whatever. I wasn't going to let it bother me. Too much.

"Shino, YOU should put her to bed." Said Tsuma as she pulled Moujo away from herself and held her out to me.

Immediately Moujo started up her crying again.

"She's crying now that you're not rocking her." I pointed out.

"So YOU rock her." Said Tsuma as if it was obvious, which it definitely wasn't.

"You do it better." I said.

"How do you know I do it better?" Tsuma said as if she were angry. But she had no reason to. "You've never done it before!"

"Which means you're probably better since you have experience." I said.

"Just take her!" Tsuma raised her voice over Moujo's crying. "She's your daughter too, you know!"

I knew that. I was aware that she was my daughter.

"Well fine then." Said Tsuma. "If you're not going to take her then I'll just drop her."

I had a feeling she was bluffing, but as I watched her slowly loosen her grip on the baby, I quickly came to the realization that she was completely serious. I reached out my hands just in time to catch her before hitting the ground.

"Tsuma, you could have killed her." I told her, not moving form my position.

"I don't care." Said Tsuma. "I hate her."

She waited, and so did I.

"Well, don't just stand there like an idiot with your hands out!" said Tsuma. "Rock her or something!"

I put my two hands under her arms. Then I rocked her back and forth a bit, but she just continued to cry.

"Not like that!" said Tsuma as she put her hand on the baby's back and pushed her forward into my body. "There. It's not THAT painful is it?"

"You'd be surprised." I said.

"I'm going back to bed." She said, pushing by me and leaving the room.

I was going to remind her that she should follow her own rules, but I realized it probably wasn't worth the trouble.

I wondered…if Tsuma hated Moujo so much, why was she so opposed to doing the one thing that would make Moujo a TRUE Aburame… allowing the bugs to occupy her body? No matter how many times I brought it up or tried to rephrase it, Tsuma always adamantly disagreed.

"It's an Aburame tradition." I said.

"I don't care." Tsuma said, crossing her arms.

"It'll be weird if my daughter isn't like the rest of the clan." I said. "I'm the head of the clan. If I don't do it to my daughter then other people might not do it."

"Your stupid family isn't that stupid." Tsuma said. "They won't stop their stupid tradition just because you stopped."

"Stop calling my family stupid."

"Then stop saying stupid things and I won't have to."

She said that out of all the things she hated about me, the whole bug thing was the biggest one.

It was then that I suddenly noticed Moujo had softened her crying.

This was the first time I had done this… gotten her to stop crying.

But now I was stuck. How was I supposed to put her back into the crib without her starting to cry again? I guess I had to wait until she went to sleep first.

So I paced the room for a little while, waiting for her to go to sleep. When I figured she was out, I leaned over the crib so far that I was practically inside of it, only having to let go of her.

With my daughter down and asleep, I backed away from the crib quietly and slowly and went into the other room where Tsuma was already lying down.

I climbed in the bed as well. "Is she asleep?" Tsuma whispered.

"Yes." I replied.

"There." She said. "That wasn't so hard."

"Speak for yourself." I said.