Chapter 158
Lessons in Spring

On the whole, as hectic as it could seem for them to have three boys under the age of four to deal with, plus two dogs, and two cats, they actually fared very well. They had a good system, and most importantly they had help. They had his grandparents right there in the little house behind their own, and they had their parents not so far away, and many friends… They did not hesitate to call on their help when it felt like the thing to do, but at the same time, it was and had always been very important for both Maya and Lucas that they show themselves to be self-sufficient. Maybe it was something to do with how the world could sometimes perceive them, looking from their age to how many kids they already had… Regardless of that, they would have wanted to be able to handle things on their own, and they did.

Their boys were generally well behaved, and that was always something that they had been proud of. It did not mean that they never acted out. Some days would feel as though they were all spinning out of control, and nothing could go right. They'd had one of those just the day before, and it had been enough that, by the time they finally got to bed, Lucas floated the idea of going out with Elliott, Noah, and Jamie the next day, giving Maya a bit of peace and quiet. She'd quickly seen the merit to the idea, but at the same time she hesitated to take him up on it. She knew that it made sense to sort of step aside and take a breath, that it all went hand in hand with the vows they'd made to one another, as husband and wife and then as parents to their children. Had it been the other way around, she would have offered him the same thing, and acknowledging this had made it so that she finally accepted.

"Just… don't be gone too long, yeah?" she'd asked him, looking barely a blink away from falling asleep, and he'd promised they would all be back before she knew it.

When Elliott and Noah were told about the plans for this new day, they were immediately curious. What would they do? Where would they go? They were particularly thrilled that it would be all of them and Jamie, too. It wasn't as though he never went anywhere with them, but it would usually be that if they went somewhere with one parent, their baby brother would often be back home with their other parent. Then again, it was becoming more of a thing to have Lucas and all three of the brothers with him now that the littlest of them had crossed into the latter half of his first year. He was seven months old now, and the boy had energy for himself and then some.

They'd taken to calling him 'wiggle butt,' a fitting new moniker for the tadpole, as the last few months had seen him grow more and more… rhythmic. It wouldn't matter if he was sitting or lying down, all he needed was music of any kind and he would start shimmying around. Sometimes he didn't need music at all, suggesting maybe he had all the tunes he needed somewhere in his baby brain. Coupled with that goofy smile of his, it made him into nothing short of a people magnet. They would see him go and they would chuckle and encourage him to keep going and he would do it gladly.

"Well, what do you guys want to do?" Lucas asked Elliott and Noah as he followed behind them, Jamie balanced in one arm, as they went upstairs after breakfast to get dressed. "You want to go to the park? Or to the ranch?"

Those seemed to be the easiest options to offer them at this point. He might have suggested they go to the movies, but they hadn't taken Jamie yet, and this didn't feel like the time to try and see how he'd cope. If they wanted it though… maybe they'd give it a shot. Unless…

"Or what if we went to the aquarium?" he offered. They'd been there before, more than once, though the last time Jamie had not yet been born. Even now, the mention of the place was enough to draw memories in the young brothers of Otto the Octopus and his band of aquatic friends, and that just about erased any other potential ideas for this day out. They were going to the aquarium.

"Can Alex come, too, Daddy?" Noah asked.

"Of course, we'll call Nana and Grandpa, see if…"

"Can Max come? And Max?" Elliott jumped in.

Three phone calls later, their day for father and sons was bumped up include a few more. Shawn would come along with both MJ and Alex, Ingrid McAllister with daughters Max and Rosie, and Brian Farrell with daughter Kelsey and son Max. They would all meet up once they got there.

"Elliott, hold your brother's hand, please, and don't go too far," Lucas called out as the boys sped off ahead of him and Jamie in his stroller.

It was strange to think that, even as they'd been discussing Noah's next birthday, which was less than a month away, it was only now hitting him that he would be three years old already. And then, just under a month after that – a couple of weeks after he himself hit his twenty-sixth birthday – Elliott would be turning four. It never seemed possible, but then he'd look at them together, and there'd be no choice but to face the facts. They were still little, but not so much as they'd once been… It made him look down to the boy in the stroller, who had gone and found his tune, going by the way he waved his arms and legs around, and want to just hold on to… this, all of it.

By the time the rest of their group started to arrive, Elliott and Noah were both standing before the stroller and giving their baby brother a very animated preview of what he'd see when they went inside. Jamie watched them both in such a way that made Lucas think if he wasn't ready for the movie theater after all. But for now, today, they were going to have a great time at the aquarium.

"Have you guys been here before?" Lucas asked the McAllister and Farrell children as they all headed inside. Max and Rosie had not, but Max and Kelsey absolutely had.

"We come once a month, sometimes more than once," the Farrell girl informed him with a great spark in her eyes to suggest that these trips, eager as her brother also appeared, were usually for her benefit. "I love the turtles," the nine-year-old added. She had just the hint of an accent cresting over her words, showing that the years she'd spent growing up in Japan were still very near to her.

"I had a feeling you did," Lucas smiled, pointing to her t-shirt… and her shoes… "You know what, I think they're pretty great, too. I bet you know a lot about them."

"She could give the tour," Brian Farrell told him with a proud smile as he guided his daughter's wheelchair along.

"Yeah? Go for it," Lucas nodded.

It was just as well that all the kids were excited to be there together, or else their parents would have been at further risk of losing track of them. Instead, if they ran ahead to look at one thing or another, they would do so in a cluster, so all Lucas, Shawn, Ingrid, and Brian had to do was watch the cluster go.

Beyond that, Lucas would have found it difficult not to pinpoint watching Jamie's fascination just… expand. Whatever concept he may have had in his head at the moment of all these living things he'd only ever seen as pictures, usually cartoon versions, or on television, now that he saw them in person, nearly close enough to touch… It was almost too much for him to process.

"You like the fish, huh? Yeah? Look at that one, look…" Lucas pointed as now held Jamie in his arm, pushing the stroller with the other when they weren't stopped. The boy had both hands stretched out, like if not for the glass… and all the water… he would love nothing more than to hold the fish he saw swimming along.

This eventually turned out to have something of an unfortunate side-effect in that, after a while, this inability to catch left the baby frustrated, and he started to cry, pitching his little voice into the echoing space. For that, Lucas ended up hanging back with his youngest son, letting the group move forward and promising to catch up once he had him calmed down again. This ended up turning into Jamie falling asleep for a beneficial nap, back in his stroller.

When he found the others again, he came upon a couple of smaller groups. To one side, young Kelsey was fulfilling her father's prediction, telling the Hunter brothers, Noah, and little Rosie McAllister about her favorite section of the aquarium (after the turtles). Meanwhile, Elliott, Max, and Max were all stuck shoulder to shoulder and staring up, making plenty of discoveries on their own as one or the other of them would point at something and call it out, bringing the other two to try and see it, too, until someone would see something else, and then it would all start back up again. Lucas had already been taking pictures and videos, as much to remember the day as to share it with Maya and whoever else might want to have a look. There would be more than enough by the time they left the aquarium, enough to make it easy for anyone to feel as though they had been there.

The final stop before leaving the aquarium – before the bathroom, of course – was the gift shop. The boys did not lack in toys, but Lucas tried and somehow succeeded in not running up too much of a bill by suggesting they go in there to find something for Jamie – as it was his first visit – and for Maya, seeing as she hadn't been with them, and she'd be awaiting their return. Elliott and Noah received this mission and fulfilled it in no time.

"I wanna go to the park!" Noah pointed out the window as they were driving home, once again just the four of them.

"Yeah! Can we go, Daddy?" Elliott asked, and before being hit with the chorus of 'please,' Lucas decided that yes, they could make one detour for this.

Oh, did they ever love the park… It wasn't even just because, more often than not, they would immediately follow up a trip to the park with a trip to Nando's Diner across the street. It was just a great big place for them to explore and discover in as many details as they could. By now, they almost had a lore for the place, stories for this spot and that one, right down to made up characters to populate them. It would really be something once they could start and bring Jamie along on those adventures, but until then they would satisfy themselves by running back over and talking to their baby brother as though he had been involved all along. Jamie would always be so happy to see them coming again that it could have been presumed he was following along.

Was it his express intention to bring back the boys as good and sleepy as possible? Not entirely, but that was what they got and, after the day they'd had yesterday, he was of a mind that it was exactly what they'd needed. When they made it home again, they met Maya as she was already making her way down to meet them, and Elliott and Noah moved together to go and embrace their mother like they hadn't seen her in so long and now that she was there, nothing in the world could be more important than her arms around them. Maya was of the same opinion as she scooped them both up and brought them to the couch, there to sit the three of them together in a hug heap so they could tell her about their day. They didn't even make it that far though as, like their little brother in Lucas' arms, they were soon fast asleep.

"Alright, then, guess you're up, Huckleberry Dad," Maya looked over to her husband as he sat by her. Lucas went right ahead and started the tale, complete with visual aids from his phone.

"What about you? How did it go?" he asked. Already, looking at her outfit – complete with the stains to prove it – he knew her day had led to her doing some painting, right up until she'd spotted their return. As she told him, she'd started off with a bit of long-distance co-baking along with her grandmother and her aunt.

It had been three months since the twists and turns that brought Katy's family back into the fold, introduced them outright for the most part. Just as they had thought to do on that day when they'd all been sitting around the kitchen table, instead of barging into the anniversary party, they had made the trip to Arkansas a few weeks later. This had not been without its share of additional reunions and meetings, and while some of them had been a bit more awkward, others had been wonderful, like meeting Katy's cousin Randall. Tanner Clutterbucket had even talked his sister and brother-in-law, Georgia and Christopher, into sticking around all this time after the anniversary, just so that they would get the chance to meet and see everyone. They lived in Australia, didn't make the trip back around Georgia's family as often as they might have liked. Katy and her family had been well worth the wait, and they had also allowed the sole Clutterbucket girl to 'shake her older brothers around,' as she'd put it.

Since their return from this trip, it had been in everyone's hands to move forward however they wished or needed to. Katy was still figuring things out on her end, and so was Maya, though for her part it was just about making the most of this opportunity she'd been handed to get to know this side of her family. More than anything, this had meant semi-weekly baking sessions with Angela and Charlie, especially with her young aunt. Maya and her mother's little sister had really hit it off, and they spoke or wrote just about daily. Once Charlie had given birth to her own baby boy, Harry, they fell into a pattern of calls in the night, and while it could have been that, between one of them who was so deeply connected to music and the other who owned a music store with her husband, the usual topic – aside from their respective children – would be music, but it wasn't. A lot of the times they'd just exchange baking recipes, tips, tricks, product recommendations, attempts both successful and failed… Today, with Angela, they had definitely gone the way of tried-and-true recipes, in the spirit of relaxation.

"So what you're telling me is that there's cake in the kitchen?" Lucas smiled, and Maya shushed him.

"Not so loud, they'll hear you," she 'scolded,' and he chuckled. "Hey…" she spoke again, smiled. "Thank you for today," she told him, with a look to show that, even though it wasn't necessary, she had to say thanks anyway. Lucas surveyed their sleeping boys, recalling so much of today like a kaleidoscope in his brain, and he could say without a doubt that Maya was very welcome. He would do it again in a heartbeat.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you next week! - mooners