All familiar characters belong to Janet.
Kane and Harper touched down on the island, and their arrival meant date night for my wife and I with my men watching Olivia.
"Are you two really up for this?" I asked them. My question is a serious one. "She's small, but she knows not to take any prisoners."
"Olive being Steph's daughter is challenging enough," Cal told us. "Adding your genes into her, means we're likely signing our death certificates, but nothing will stop us from taking on the job."
"You two deserve a night out," Brown told us, "even if Kane is involved."
"Kane's a good guy," Steph said. "He's still in the puppy-phase rather than twenty-four-seven guard dog-mode, but he's just about there. Once he has a baby to take care of, he'll mature the rest of the way real fast like I did."
"You've become even more affectionate, Babe, that's the only change in you since Olivia."
"Thank you for saying that, even when we both know it isn't exactly true. Okay, Olive, give Mama a BIG kiss before we leave."
Olivia looked at her and immediately puckered up. They made simultaneous "Mwaaaa" sounds upon contact, causing huge smiles to form on both faces as they pulled away from each other. We'd spent a quiet afternoon together, just the three of us, since Steph and I would be gone in the evening. We had a shared lunch of more cooked and then pureed apples-ala-Ella, which were better received this time around. But Steph and I still ate more of the mush than our daughter did. She didn't send it flying, but Olive still seems to enjoy pushing the food out of her mouth more than actually eating it.
I'm half-convinced she does it solely to entertain her mother, considering the faces and jokes Steph makes every time the baby food she tries to spoon into Olivia ... reappears outside of her. Since she's my daughter, I see nothing except the humor in it, instead of feeling the need to bark my usual "Stop playing with your food and just eat it" like I order Lester and Ramon.
In our hotel room in front of the double glass doors that look out over the ocean, we sat on the floor with Olivia as she continued her efforts to go from a push-up and butt-scoot, to a full-blown crawl on her play mat, with many breaks for playtime with her new favorite toy, a small 3-D, semi-transparent beach ball that Bobby bought and had blown up for her when she'd had her fill of the sand and water. It looked like a clown fish had been caught and left suspended inside it. Olive hasn't lost any of her original fascination with it, and she spent a solid twenty minutes laying on her back and moving the ball with her chubby feet or her little hands. As she murmured a lot of 'BA' sounds, she used her shoeless/sockless feet to grab the ball and then she'd raise her legs up so she could grab it with her hands and fling it towards one of us to catch.
"Look out WNBL," Steph said to me.
The determined look in Olive's eyes as she chose her target, brought to mind a battlefield more than a basketball court.
When it got close to the time we'd have to start getting ready to meet Kane and Harper, we gave our baby a bath and I got her into a new diaper and her pajamas so all her babysitter-guards will have to do is warm up a bottle from the fridge that Steph had pumped and prepared earlier, and get Olive to sleep. It sounds easier than it is, but she's comfortable with Uncles Bobby and Cal, so the two of them should be able to protect, play with, and put to bed, one baby girl.
