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I don't own Bones.

Oooooooooooooooooooo

The house was quiet, maybe a bit too quiet. Booth decided that two kids and a quiet house meant something was probably wrong although he prayed that he was just over reacting. Leaving the kitchen where he had been preparing lunch for his youngsters, he walked down the hallway and entered Christine's bedroom. Finding it unoccupied he left the room and walked down to Hank's room. The door being closed to that room instantly raised the hackles on his neck. Quickly opening the door, he found his daughter standing over his son holding a stapler.

"The force isn't with you this time, Darth." Christine pointed the stapler at Hank and made electrical sounds of some kind.

"What are you doing?" Booth noticed the bowl his daughter had on her head and a towel pinned around her neck, using it as a cape over her clothes. Hank was wearing a Darth Vader mask, well he was mostly holding it over his hand and laughing.

Christine pointed at her little brother. "He's Darth Vader and I'm General Leia and even though he's my father, he's evil and I'm going to save the galaxy." She had made her costume by herself and Hank had wanted to play with her, so she didn't see why her father was upset. "Hank said he'd play with me."

"That's fine Honey, although you have to remember Hank is just one and he might have other ideas about what playing is." Carefully, he lifted the bowl from the top of his daughter's head and inspected it to make sure it wasn't damaged. "Christine, you've been told not to play with Mommy's old stuff. This bowl is Olmec or Toltec or something like that and I know for a fact it's over a thousand years old and maybe older, I don't know . . . If Mommy saw you playing with this she'd have a cow."

Giggling, Christine covered her mouth. "Daddy, Mommy can't have a cow. She can only have human babies."

"Smart ass." He muttered the words under his breath so his precocious child couldn't hear him. "Right . . . Why are you messing around with Mommy's stuff?" He held the bowl against his chest and looked inside. Much to his annoyance, he saw a crack inside and he knew he was going to be blamed for this disaster. "Well?"

Suddenly, it seemed to Christine that her choice for a helmet when she had made her costume might have been a bad one. "It looks like alien stuff and I was real careful not to break it. I was just using it as a helmet and I gave Hank the mask because it's just plastic and he can't hurt it." They both looked at the toddler and witnessed him gnawing on the edge of the mask.

After he carefully placed the bowl down on the bed, Booth leaned over, picked up his son and took the mask from the boy's hand. "Hey Tiger. You don't want to eat this nasty old mask. Daddy is making lunch. Why don't we all go into the kitchen and eat?" Booth pointed at the bowl. "Christine bring the bowl with you. Be careful and don't drop it. We're going have a very long talk about boundaries and property rights and not pissing off Mommy."

Christine picked up the bowl and noticed the crack inside. "Oh no! Mom is going to be so mad when she sees this crack . . . Maybe you broke it when you took it off of my head." At least she hoped that's what happened.

"Really?" Booth shook his head. "Nice try, but no. You're not going to pin the blame on me for that. You played with the bowl and now it's cracked. You get to take the responsibility for that."

Exhaling deeply, Christine stared woefully at her father. "Mommy shouldn't let little kids play with her stuff."

Snorting, Booth turned and walked to the doorway. "Good luck with that one." Amused, he walked down the hallway. "Hank, when Mommy comes home we're all going to wish we had Jedi powers. Believe me."

Oooooooooooooooooooooo

Hank and Christine were in bed. Unsurprisingly, Christine had not complained about going to bed like she normally did. The minute Booth had mentioned what time it was, Christine had closed her coloring book, placed the crayons in a box and had raced out of the room.

"Don't forget to brush your teeth." Booth stood up and scooped up a sleeping Hank into his arms. "I guess you guys can skip a bath tonight." After he entered Hank's bedroom, he removed his son's pants and shoes, checked to make sure he was dry and laid the sleeping child on his bed. Staring at his son, he smiled. "You're lucky. Mommy won't be mad at you, so you sleep tight little man." Brushing a finger against his son's cheek, Booth shook his head. "I wish I could sleep like you do."

Once he was outside Christine's bedroom, he knocked on the doorframe. "You ready for bed?"

Christine finished pulling her PJ top over her head and climbed into bed. "I sure am." The child pulled her blanket up to her chin and frowned. "Is Mommy going to talk to me tomorrow?"

"Count on it." Booth sat on the edge of her bed. "Don't worry too much about the crack in the pot, okay?" He didn't want his child to be afraid of him or her mother. "You shouldn't have played with it and Mommy will probably make you memorize some words in the dictionary, but she won't be mad at you. You know she loves you and so do I. You just need to be more careful around your mother's old stuff. You're old enough to know better. The next time ask me to help you with your costume and I'll find you something cooler to use as a helmet, okay?"

"Okay." Christine was feeling a little less anxious about the situation. "I didn't mean to break it."

Booth leaned over and kissed her forehead. "I know you didn't Monkey. Now go to sleep." He stood up, walked over to the door, paused and stared at his little girl. He really enjoyed having kids in his life. They could put him through the wringer sometimes, but it was worth it to him. It would always be worth it.

Oooooooooooooooooooooo

Brennan entered the house, closed and locked the door and placed her purse and jacket on the kitchen island. Curious, she moved over to where her Olmec bowl was sitting. Picking it up, she inspected it and placed it back on the counter.

"Christine was playing Star Wars with it. She used it as a helmet." Booth decided to get the problem out in the open and get their conversation over. "As soon as I knew what she was doing I took it from her, but it has a crack in it."

Moving into the kitchen, she removed a bottle of beer from the refrigerator, opened it and drank some of the cool liquid. "She has been told not to play with the antiquities."

"Yep, but kids sometimes don't understand the rules we make up, so they ignore them." Booth was surprised that Brennan wasn't more upset. "She didn't mean to break it and she is sorry."

"You were supposed to be watching Christine and Hank." Brennan was annoyed that her child had ignored the rule about the antiquities in the house. "I've told her many times that they're old and some of them are fragile."

Booth shrugged his shoulders. "I was making lunch and she was playing with Hank in his bedroom. I try to keep track of them, but I can't make them lunch and watch them at the same time. I have to trust them sometimes. You know they don't really do stuff like this too often. Christine wanted to play Star Wars and I guess she didn't want to ask me to help her with her costume since I was cooking."

"Yes, I have had Christine do something while I was watching her that turned out to be a bad choice on her part . . . I am upset that she played with the bowl, but she didn't break it. It was cracked when I brought it home. It was one of the reasons why it was given to me."

Relieved, Booth sat down. "Whew, that's a relief . . . She thinks she broke it."

Staring at the bowl for a few seconds, Brennan nodded her head. "Perhaps the next time she will think carefully before touching any of the antiquities in this house." She wanted to be a good mother, but her child needed to be responsible for her actions. On the other hand, she knew that some of the pottery she owned could be tempting for a child. "If you could build a shelf in the living room that is high enough for our children not to be able to reach, I will place the more valuable pieces on the shelf. I want to expose them to other cultures, but they may be too young to understand that the pieces of pottery are not toys."

"You got it." Booth didn't mind building the shelf, but from experience, he knew that the shelf would be out of reach only until one of the kids figured out that moving a chair under the shelf would solve that problem. "So how did work go?" Booth picked up the Olmec bowl and placed it on top of the refrigerator. "How's that new intern of yours working out?"

"Ms. Walker has a lot to learn, but she is intelligent enough to know that." Brennan sat down at the island. "On the other hand, we did have an incident at the Lab today. One of Hodgins's snakes escaped from the Ookie room and Cam left the Lab for the day. We found it in her office, so I'd say it was a good thing she wasn't there this afternoon."

Booth laughed. "No shit . . . I have some baked eggplant in the oven . . . hungry?"

"I am, thank you." Brennan enjoyed working at the Lab, but she loved coming home too. There was rarely a dull moment in their house and she wouldn't trade her life for her old one. "I think I'll just have Christine read one of my books on the Olmec civilization and write a book report. She won't understand everything she reads, but she will understand enough."

That sounded fair to Booth. "Sounds good. You know we're pretty good parents."

"I think so too." Brennan had always worried that her parenting skills would be lacking, but as her children grew, they were happy and healthy and that was what mattered to her.

Oooooooooooooooooooooo

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