One Week Later
SG-1's week of leave was much appreciated by Shelby. They fell into a wonderful rhythm with child care. Shelby took care of the twins while Teal'c got the other children ready for the day and out the door. After he dropped the kids off, Shelby would have a chance to shower and have breakfast.
Then they would spend some time together, with the babies. In the afternoon Teal'c would take a few hours of kal-no-reem while Shelby took care of babies. They had arranged the babies' sleeping schedule so that they usually went down for a nap just about the time that the kids came home from school. This allowed Shelby time to work with Rya'c on whatever homework he had while Teal'c helped the girls. When the girls were done with their homework, Teal'c would take them into the living room for a romp. Usually by then, the babies would be up, and Shelby would go take care of them. The family would sit down to a dinner, not long after that, and they would pass the babies around so everyone had their hands free to eat, just not all at the same time.
After dinner, Shelby would look after the twins while Teal'c sparred with his son, and the girls got ready for bed. She would read her sisters a bedtime story, and then Teal'c would take over baby duty for the night. Shelby would spend another hour or so helping Rya'c understand the details of Ta'uri math, grammar, myths or magic, as he referred to the various subjects.
Rya'c had decided that he was going to graduate "on time" or when he was eighteen. A rather ambitious endeavor, Shelby had tried to explain to him. He was determined, though, and smart. He didn't want to be left behind by Amy, no doubt.
So he was dealing not only with all of his regular subjects, which only a few months ago had been completely overwhelming, but also a self-study English II class, and Latin. The Latin had been chosen because it was so similar to a particularly dusty form of Goa'uld that Rya'c happened to know.* This allowed him to breeze through the content and earn electives that he badly needed to graduate.
Whenever Shelby got tired, she would go to bed, and sleep the whole night through. The real benefit of marrying a Jaffa, she had discovered, was that he never slept. He could take care of all the middle of the night diapering and feeding that needed to be done. He could also check on, and keep his teenage son company all night long.
Then he went back to work. When he wasn't on a mission, it wasn't so bad. Shelby could manage the days alone with the babies, and when they napped, she'd catch a nap to make up for the few hours of sleep she lost when her husband was kel-no-reeming. The problem was really when he was on a mission. Sometimes, of course the missions lasted days or even weeks. Those missions were rare, though. SG-1 was a first contact team. Usually, they went in, poked around for a ten or twelve hours, and then left.
It wouldn't have been so bad if his schedule had been more concrete. Daylight just didn't come at the same time everywhere in the universe. So Teal'c is sometimes gone when she needs him most, and sometimes around in the middle of the afternoon. She can never predict it, never count on it.
She can't complain though. They are her sisters, and it was her idea to make them part of her family. It was her idea to have a baby, although she didn't exactly count on two. She'd practically forced him to have his son here.
It's her own dang fault.
She kept telling herself that as she desperately tried to get the little kids ready for school.
"Ry'ac, can you put your dish away?" she asks. For a second, she thinks the teenager is ignoring her, and her anger is just about to boil over, then she notices the ear buds in his ears. She sighs, and takes care of the dish for herself. It's often easier to do things yourself than try to get "help".
"Can I have a tart?" Becky asks as she comes into the kitchen at the time when the family should have been going out the door. Shelby thought she had already eaten. She doesn't know why she thought that. It can't possibly be that hard to count up to three. Land sakes, ducks do a better job of knowing where their children are.
"There called pop tarts, 'tard," Tamara says, thinking that she is being terribly clever with the word play.
"Don't you dare call your sister that, ever again, apologize," Shelby says, popping pop tarts into the microwave while giving herself an internal lecture about the nutritional needs of small children. She's a nurse, for goodness sake; you think she could manage to at least give them a balanced breakfast before they made their way out the door.
Lexie starts to cry, and Shelby scoops her up and rocks her in arms without even giving a glance to the kid. She catches herself doing it, and offers the kid a big fake smile, thinking of all the damage she's doing to her children's neuropathways by not looking them in the face. She really sucks at this whole motherhood thing.
She grabs the pop tart out of the microwave, and hands it to her sister while say, "Car, car, car!" and taping Rya'c on the shoulder and pointing so he can understand through the heavy metal music. She slings a diaper bag over her arm with her free hand, and scoops up Luke, who is asleep, with the other. Luke wakes up, and screams with furry.
They are almost out the door when Becky stops dead in her tracks, causing Shelby to run her over. "I forgot," she says.
"Forgot what?"
"The fort project. We're supposed to make a fort like people lived in when they first came to America. They made all the trees stick up around the outside like this," she says holding her fingers up in the air.
"When?" Shelby asks.
"Is today Friday?"
"No, Thursday."
"Good, then, it's not due until tomorrow," Becky breathes a sigh of relief. Shelby isn't quite so lucky. From her point of view, it would have been better to have already failed than to have another thing added on to her check list.
"Ok, I'll get you those little popsicle sticks without the popsicles today," Shelby says.
"And glue," Becky adds.
"I'll get everything you need," Shelby says out loud. She hopes she will be able to resist the temptation to finish the project while the girl is at school. The only real shot this has of getting done on time is being done while the babies are taking their afternoon nap, and no-one else is in the house.
-0-0-0-
Shelby is early for the appointment. By the time the kids were dropped off, and the art supplies were bought, and the explosive poop diaper incident was dealt with in a public bathroom, there is only half an hour left before the twins' well-child appointment. It didn't pay to go home.
Shelby gives her name to the receptionist, and sits down in a chair, contemplating whether or not she dares catch a little sleep before her appointment. Teal'c won't be home until tomorrow at noon, and she needs a real nap before then. She's running on fumes as it is.
"Oh my gosh, your kids are adorable," the women next to her says. A baby nearer to his first birthday than his birth hands her a toy, and she grins at him, and says "thank you" before handing it back. When he reaches to take it, she pulls it away causing him to laugh hysterically.
"Thank you," Shelby says, hoping the conversation will end with that. She honest doesn't want to spend any more time talking to people who are better mother than her than she really has to.
"They are twins, aren't they?" the woman asks again.
On some level, Shelby realizes it's a legitimate question. Lexie is fairly dark. She's a bit lighter than Teal'c, but certainly in the range that you would call African-American. Luke, however, had blond hair. His eyes are brown, and his skin has almost a Greek complexion to it, but anyone who looked at him apart from his parents and sister would assume that he was Caucasian. She understands the curiosity, and she even knows they aren't really being racist. But that doesn't stop her from wanting to punch them in the face sometimes.
"Yes, they're twins. Their father is black," she says. She has never brought herself to call Teal'c 'African-American', even though she knows that's how most people would describe him. He doesn't really meet either of those descriptions.
"I bet they keep you pretty busy. When I just had one tike that small, I was pretty sure I was going to go crazy," the woman replies.
"Indeed," Shelby borrows from her husband's language, knowing that less is often more in conversations like this.
"You should come to our playgroup," the woman says brightly.
"Playgroup? They haven't even mastered holding their own heads up. I don't think they're quite ready to be working on their social skills."
"The baby playgroup isn't really for the babies. It's for the moms. We get together, and talk about what it's like to be a parent."
"I'm a little too busy with the actual parenting of children to talk about it."
"Everyone there is busy. I mean, there is this one women there who has three kids. I don't know how she does it! I'll maybe have another, when this one is half-grown."
"I have five," Shelby says. It's not something she admits to strangers very often. Well, ever really. In fact, she's not sure she's ever said the words aloud. They weren't all her kids, not really, so sometimes it feels a little dishonest to claim them as her children even if she is the one that does the bulk of the work to raise them.
"Five?" the woman beside her asks in shock. She clearly is thinking that Shelby isn't old enough to have five children.
"Well, one is my step-son, and two are my sisters, and then I've got the twins here," she says, blowing her hair out of her eyes with her mouth. She has perfected a lot of hands free actions. She feels like she hasn't had a hand free since she gave birth.
The nurse calls the women beside her, and Shelby is immensely grateful. The sight of the nurse also makes her more than a little jealous. Officially, she's on maternity leave. Before the twins came along, she'd planned on going back to work as soon as they were old enough for day care.
Now, she doesn't think that's really an option. If she can't do a good job of parenting when that's all she does, than how will she do it when she's got that plus a job on her plate?
Luke starts to fuss, and she picks up a twin in both of her arms. Raising five children isn't hard when you've got two parents, one of whom never sleeps. When you've only got one parent, though, it's a pretty tall order.
One Week Later
Janet and Daniel share a glass of orange juice, and debate the merits of an article on chemistry they'd read in a magazine. Neither of them were experts in the field, and this made it more fun to debate than something they would be on unequal footing about.
When they go to bed at 9:30 (Janet had been feeling tired lately) Dominic and Cassie are still sitting on the living room couch giggling at each other, and whispering sweet nothings.
Daniel wanted to kick Dominic out of his house, but he knew that his relationship with both Cassie and Janet would suffer if he did.
So he just followed his wife upstairs so he could give her a back massage before she fell asleep.
An hour later he wakes up to his wife shaking him, "Daniel!"
"Baby incoming?" he asks.
"I'm going to take a shower really fast. Can you tell Cassie that we are leaving, and ask her to take care of her siblings?"
They had decided months ago that if the new baby came in the middle of the night, Cassie would watch her siblings for that day. Daniel thought she was too young for the job, but Janet and Cassie had both insisted that she was old enough. It seemed so close to the old argument, that Daniel decided not to fight it off.
When he goes to wake up his daughter he finds Dominic in bed next to her.
"Are you kidding me?" he practically shouts.
The boy jumps up, and starts pulling clothes on.
"It's after midnight, Cass," Daniel says trying to keep the judgment out of his voice, and utterly failing.
"Sorry, sir, I need to get home," Dominic says pushing past.
"Sir, I catch you in bed with my daughter and you call me sir," Daniel mutters as the kid runs down the hallway.
"Any particular reason you're in my room in the middle of the night?" Cassie asks.
"Yes, your mom is about to bring new life into the world," he says.
"Mom's having the baby?" Cassie says, sitting up.
"I was waking you up to ask you to take care of the kids for the night, but that seems like a pretty adult thing to ask after finding a boy in your bed."
"You're saying having a boy in my bed isn't adult?" Cassie asks.
"Just watch the kids, OK?" he asks desperately trying to keep the furry out of his voice. Things have been good lately in the family – great, even. He's more than a little afraid that it could all unravel if he opens any of the old wounds.
He is so not OK with finding a boy in his daughter's room in the middle of the night. But he has to pretend that he is.
-0-0-0-
Daniel wants to ask his wife how she's feeling. The last time she had a baby, she sobbed alone in the hospital room and didn't tell him. He's stopped by the fact that it seems really insensitive to ask someone who just pushed a human out of a very small opening how they are doing.
She smiles down at her son, Andrew.
But she did that with Will as well.
Janet looks up, and sees her husband looking at her with concern.
"I'm fine," she tells him.
He raises one eyebrow in a gesture of doubt.
"I really am. I know that the post-partum depression is usually worse on the second kid. Who knows what my hormones might do to me in the next couple of days, or months. But right now I am just happy. Our family feels complete."
Daniel makes a face that looks like he's questioning the last statement.
"Oh, trust me mister, we're done having kids."
"I wasn't thinking about having more kids. I was just thinking about how there could easily be more people added on to our family before too long."
"How?" she asks.
"Well considering the fact that Dominic apparently sleeps at our house, we might end up with an unwanted son-in-law or grandchild before too long."
"She's seventeen, she's not getting married or pregnant," Janet says.
"She could, Janet. If she's having sex she could be pregnant. As a doctor, you should know that."
"I do, but Daniel she's doing everything she can to prevent it," Janet says.
"This is not a discussion to be having when our new baby has just entered the world. We should just be happy," Daniel says, leaning forward to get a closer glimpse at his son.
Janet hands the baby over, knowing that she's been hogging him. "I don't think our family is going to be growing any time soon, but you're right, it's not complete. Nothing so dynamic as a family is ever finished. This guy here is going to grow-up and be one his own someday too."
"But not for a long, long time, little one," Daniel says grinning at his son, "Before that, there are going to be plenty of faery stories, and baseball games, and games of Legos."
"I don't think you have games of Legos. I just think you build things out of them," his wife corrects.
"Well you and me are going to figure that out, aren't we, bud?" Daniel asks the baby in his arms.
*Teal'c calls something Daniel says is Latin Goa'uld in Argos. This is probably one of those things the writers of Stargate would rather we forgot now that we've established Latin as the language of the Ancients. However, it is really going to make Rya'c's life easier.