Author's Notes: I tried something a little different for this chapter. Hope you enjoy! Thanks for all the kind feedback; I'm not sure how far I'll take this series. As far as it wants to go is the best estimate I can give you.
Moments
by Kristen Elizabeth
The fuss all started during dinner.
It was spaghetti night, Rosalind's favorite. Daddy put two meatballs on her plate and cut them up into big pieces. Because she was a big girl now. But even big girls didn't get to put a whole bunch of cheese on their spaghetti; Daddy put the fun shaker thing on the other side of the table.
Mommy wasn't eating her dinner. She wouldn't get dessert later. Rosalind chomped on her meatball with her mouth open. Daddy would see her eating. And then she'd definitely get pudding.
The table shook and milk sloshed out of Rosalind's Dora the Explorer cup. She wasn't sorry because she didn't like milk, but she also didn't want Mommy and Daddy to think she'd spilled like a baby. She looked at Mommy. Mommy was holding onto the table. Her face was all screwed up like she'd banged her elbow or scraped her knee.
"Gil…" That was her Daddy. "Gil," she heard Mommy say again. "I don't think this is a false alarm."
A false alarm must be something awful, because Daddy got up so fast that he moved the table some more. This time her cup fell all the way and milk went all over her spaghetti. Rosalind didn't want to cry, but her dinner was all gross and her Mommy looked sick and her Daddy was yelling something about water being broken.
They didn't notice her crying right away, and that made her cry even more. When Daddy did notice, he picked her up out of her special pink seat and gave her a hug and a kiss.
Daddy's hugs were almost as good as Mommy's. Mommy didn't have hair on her face that tickled. She felt a little bit better, but Mommy's face was still all bunched up. And she kept holding her big tummy. "Mommy's sick," she sniffed.
"No, princess," Daddy said. "But we need to take her to the doctor so he can help her have the baby. Don't be scared. Mommy's going to be just fine."
Daddy set her down and told her to go find her shoes. Rosalind stomped to her play area, where she'd kicked off her Strawberry Shortcake shoes when she got home from school. She picked up one, then threw it as far across the room as she could.
The stupid baby had ruined spaghetti night. Maybe she might have liked it before, but now she never would.
Maybe she didn't get to eat all her dinner, but Daddy must have forgotten about that because he let her have pudding at the big place he called a hospital. She ate all of it and didn't spill anything. She tried telling Daddy this so he would know what a big girl she was, but he was too busy with Mommy.
Mommy was in a funny bed. It had sides like the bed she'd slept in when she was a baby. Were they afraid Mommy would fall out? Maybe she would. She still looked sick. Her face was all wet, like it looked when she used to push her in her stroller really fast around the park.
"Mommy," she said. She must have been too loud because Daddy told her to use her inside voice. "Mommy," she whispered. "I ate all my pudding."
Daddy picked her up just then and carried her over to Mommy's bed. Mommy held out her arms. She wanted a hug. Probably because she knew what a big girl she'd been.
Mommy smelled pretty. She let Mommy hug her for a long time and tried not to wiggle. But even though she didn't, Mommy let go of her. Her face got all red and she said a dirty word.
Daddy picked her up again and told her to go color until Miss Catherine got there.
She colored all of the ponies in her book black. Stupid baby. Mommy couldn't even hug her right because of it.
At Miss Catherine's house, she got to sleep in a really big bed in a room with a TV. She even got to watch a show before bed. But she kind of missed Daddy reading a story to her.
She woke up because she needed to go potty. Miss Catherine had left the door open so she could get out, but the hallway was dark and she didn't remember which room was the potty.
Rubbing her eyes, she tried to remember, but it wasn't her house. Everything was different.
"Rosalind?" Something really big was coming to her in the dark. She wanted to be a big girl and not be scared, but the big thing's voice was really deep. And it knew her name.
The big thing turned a light on and it was Mr. Rick. Mommy and Daddy worked with him, so it was okay.
"What are you doing, sweet pea?" he asked her, kneeling down. He didn't have a shirt on. His skin looked like cocoa without marshmallows.
"I have to go potty."
Mr. Rick smiled and took her hand. He led her to the right door and patted her head lightly. "Should I get Catherine? Do you need any help?"
Grown-ups were so dumb sometimes. "No," she told him. "I'm a big girl."
Why did that always make grown-ups laugh?
When she got back…without any help…she climbed up into the big bed, hugged her knees and stuck out her lower lip. If it wasn't for the stupid baby, she'd be in her own bed.
Daddy came to Miss Catherine's at lunch time. Mr. Rick wasn't there; he must have missed his own bed, too, because he left before she woke up. It was just Miss Catherine and Lindsey and her having cheese sandwiches. And Lindsey was talking on the telly phone. That's all she ever did.
She heard him before she saw him. But as soon as she was sure it was Daddy, she scrambled down from her chair and ran to find him.
"Daddy!" He didn't scold her about her inside voice; he just picked her up. He was smiling a lot.
"How's Sara?" Miss Catherine asked. That was her Mommy.
"Great," Daddy said. "They're both perfect."
She put her head on Daddy's shoulder. "Mommy's not sick no more?"
"Any more," he said. "And no, princess. She had the baby!" Daddy put her down and looked at her like he did when he had to tell her something really important. "You have a little brother, Rosalind!"
A boy baby. Why was daddy so happy about that? Boy babies were even stupider than girl babies. At school, boys ate crayons and kicked each other and never listened to the teacher. She had enough of them there. She didn't need one at home.
But nobody asked her what she thought. And that made her hate the baby even more.
Mommy didn't look sick like she did before and her tummy was mostly gone. The stupid baby had been in there and now he wasn't. But how had he come out? She would ask Daddy later.
"Rosalind, come here," Mommy said when she and Daddy came in. Mommy was holding a rolled-up blue blanket and smiling down at it. She climbed up the side of the bed. There was something in the blue blanket. It looked like it had a regular nose, so it probably wasn't an alien.
"I want you to meet your little brother, Samuel," Mommy said. Her voice was all wavy like she was going to cry.
Oh. It was the stupid baby that Mommy was holding. She tried to get a better look. It did have a nose, and a mouth and two eyes. It looked almost normal. But that didn't mean she had to like it.
Daddy was on the other side of the bed. "What do you think, princess?"
She was going to tell Daddy just how stupid the baby was. How he had ruined spaghetti night and kept Mommy from hugging her just right and made her go to Miss Catherine's where she couldn't find the potty when she needed it.
But then he said, "You're a big sister now, Rosalind. Mommy and I need to make sure you know something. The baby's going to take up a lot of our time, but you're our big girl and that's never going to change. Okay?"
Big sister. That sounded pretty good. Because if she was the big sister, the stupid baby would be the little brother. And bigger people always told little people what to do. When he was big enough to play with, Samuel would have to do what she told him to do. And if he didn't, she could send him to the time-out chair or keep his dessert and eat it herself. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad having him around.
She smiled at Daddy with her best pretty picture smile.
To Be Continued