Ruined
By Halloween – approximately a month before the baby's due date – Molly and Arthur finally had the nursery finished. They'd managed to agree on the design pretty easily. Sage and butter yellow walls with a line of teddy bears that danced around the top of the walls. Most of the furniture were second-hand from their families. Only the crib was new – made by Arthur's father.
Halloween happened to by Molly's birthday. She'd turned down all offers of going out to dinner with her family in favor of sitting at home and knitting various sizes of baby sweaters.
"I don't think we're going to need all of these," Arthur told her when he came home to find her buried in a pile of yarn.
"You never know. It could be a long winter." She sighed, throwing down her needles. "Oh, who am I kidding? Mum's so much better at this."
"At what, darling?"
"Knitting!" She accepted a hand up from the couch and waddled over to one of the armchairs, on the back of which sat a neatly-folded white baby blanket. She snatched it and waved it at Arthur. "Mum brought this over this afternoon. She made it, Arthur! She's been doing this for ages. My cousins and the twins and I always had knitted sweaters and hats even clothes for my dolls when I was growing up. It was nice, having things Mum handmade for me."
Arthur smiled. "That sounds lovely."
"Yes, it does! And I want that for our baby, but I'm just … I'm horrible!" She threw the blanket to the ground.
"I'm sure you'll get better long before the baby's old enough to notice. And in the meantime, I have a little surprise to cheer you up."
Her eyes lit up. "Oh? What's that?"
Arthur chuckled. "You didn't really think I wouldn't get you anything on your birthday, did you? Stay here."
He jogged back to the front door and picked up a covered basket he'd left on the deck. He brought it back to the living room and placed it at Molly's feet, stepping back with a grin on his face.
Curious, she knelt down with more than a little difficulty and lifted the covering to reveal a tiny black kitten.
"Oh, Arthur, it's adorable!" she cooed, cradling the small fluffball in her arms.
"I remembered how much you loved had a cat growing up, and I thought you might want the baby to have the same thing. The lady at the Menagerie called him Cromwell, by the way."
"Oh, it's perfect, he's perfect. Thank you, Arthur!"
"Happy birthday, darling."
The couple spent the rest of the night spending time with their new addition, and making sure his bed and food were set up, and toys put out for him to play with when they went to bed.
The baby blanket was forgotten, lying behind the armchair, until the morning when they found white strings dragged throughout the downstairs.
"Oh, no, it's ruined!" Molly cried, finding a corner of the blanket that was relatively untouched.
"Excellent," Arthur comment.
"I'm sorry?"
"I want our baby's first blanket to be made by you, not your mother. Besides, I think blankets may be easier to start off with than sweaters."