April 1st 2024

Chapter 92
The Return to Diapers & Bottles

False labor was nothing new to Maya or Lucas after four pregnancies and now this fifth. It still fooled them, naturally, but once it was over, it was just a brief disappointment and then they moved on. As they headed into the month of March, they realized that not everyone had been left unaffected by the late February night. For Nellie, it had been a wake up call, like she was finally thinking about the fact that in just over a month it would be her turn to give birth. And it was her first time.

It wasn't as though she hadn't been preparing for the baby, or for the birth. She'd gone to classes, Maya and Lucas accompanying her and Bobby, she'd read up on all she could… But it was only now that she saw her sister's false start that it changed, that it felt real, and now she was getting nervous. She tried not to show it, but it was hard to do so in a house of people who knew her as well as they did. In return, they would all do their best to make her feel more at ease without showing their hands, but it wasn't easy. Either way, the experience would be one she'd have to live.

Maya's false start had affected Nellie, and this had turned right back around to affect their younger sister. They had all been running with the arrangement they'd set up for her to get to live with her siblings. She would be with them through the week and then she'd be back with their parents over the weekends. Some nights, Katy, Shawn, and Grangie would be at the Friar house for dinner, partaking in this space where all five of the Hunter-Hart kids were coexisting. But now with her sisters' pregnancies advancing as they were, and all that had happened after the false labor, she had been sticking around full time. None of them really had the heart to tell her no. They understood, couldn't not understand. When things had resolved themselves, she would return to the usual schedule. In the meantime, her being there gave her parents and her grandmother plenty of reasons to be by the Friar house, too, looking after Maya and Nellie, and spending time with the children… The Friars were all very happy to have them over, as were the Hunter siblings.

No one was as devoted to looking after Nellie as Bobby, naturally, but then her twin was right there with him, neither outpacing the other. Gracie was in the middle of her own situation, working through her post-op recovery, and she was making some progress. Plenty of it was on her own merit, but a lot of it went to Nellie, too. No one could encourage her better, and it turned into a mutually beneficial bit of care. Any of them who had been there to see the two of them when they'd been small, still learning to walk, would be hit with an amusing memory of how they would both be babbling at each other as though encouraging one another to get on their feet and move. That was kind of what they were doing now, too, wasn't it? They would always remember this moment in their lives, for what was happening to each of them as for what was happening to the other, at the very same time. They would carry that story with them all through the years of their lives, leaving the worries in the past and keeping the rest in their hearts.

When they would share the story, it wouldn't be long that their little brother would go ahead and state how indispensable he had been through that time, and they would gladly confirm it. Maya would say that she could think of no better example for her own boys to take, outnumbered as they were by their many older sisters, than that of their uncle MJ. He had been right there, ready for whatever they needed over the last several months, and now that both of his new nephews were getting closer and closer to being born, he seemed to have developed super powers of speed and foresight. Sometimes they could swear they had barely had a thought of something they could want and a second later, there he'd be, bringing it to them. The joke was now that he was looking at not one but two opportunities for him to have a nephew named after him, and he was going to do everything in his power to make it happen. Whether or not he would actually succeed would remain to be seen, but even if it didn't happen, Maya and Nellie knew that their boys would be so deeply loved by their uncle from the moment they were born.

"Oh, here they come," Nellie announced as she moved back from her spot by the window to sit with her sisters. "You took my spot," she told Maya in mock complaint as she found her right by Gracie, showing her what she'd been working on throughout the day, for the camper house murals.

"Are you going to make me move?" Maya challenged with a smirk.

"Thinking about it," Nellie sighed.

"Come here, you'll be fine," Gracie gave her twin's arm a light tug, and Nellie groaned but relented, settling in the free spot just before MJ and Haley came through the door. He would pick her up from school whenever his schedule allowed it.

"Good afternoon, Mamas and Mouse!" MJ greeted them as Haley let her bag fall with a thump and moved to climb into the spot at Maya's side, hugging her big sister and getting hugged back at once.

"I smell donuts," Nellie stared at the bag in MJ's hand and stretched out her own in demand.

"Okay, Sugarhound, take it easy, don't bite my fingers off," he approached and handed the bag over.

"Love you, brother," Nellie beamed up at him before reaching in and distributing the treats among them.

The donuts were accompanied with stories from the youngest Hunters as they shared the tale of their trip to the donut shop, and Maya couldn't keep from smiling the entire time. They would often say how good of a tag team those two were, and it really was something that deserved to be said again and again. Katy and Shawn would say that, with their having Nellie and Gracie there as their older siblings - at home - it had only felt natural for MJ to turn to his baby sister and find a partner in crime for life.

When the two of them went into the kitchen, Gracie was using the fact that she was sitting between both of her pregnant sisters to set one hand on either of their bellies, seeing if one or both of the boys would get a move on. She was very good at eliciting a response a lot of the time, which had their father calling her the baby whisperer. Nickname or none, Gracie had been deeply happy at the thought of becoming an aunt twice in such a short time. It made the future cousins feel like they could have been twins themselves, and maybe that was how she would see them.

The boys answered the call before long, both of them, and to hear it from Gracie, it felt like they could have been having a conversation, using her like a telephone line. Whether that was actually what was happening or merely a funny picture they made up for themselves, the sisters entertained themselves as they imagined what the boys could have been going on about.

"I say, when they're both born, you should be the first one to get to hold them both together," Nellie told her twin. It made Maya smile, thinking of a day that really did not feel over twenty years ago when she'd held the two of them at once. Gracie received this suggestion with immediate tears in her eyes as she thought of that moment she had already been looking forward to ever since she'd found out about Nellie's baby.

"Yeah," she nodded, and Nellie put her arm around her shoulders. Their heads came to lean against one another as though magnetized, and Gracie found Maya's hand by her side and clasped it.

The space between them now liberated when a noise from the kitchen sent Gracie to investigate, Nellie scooted her way to her elder sister's side, where she was happily welcomed, both she and Maya chuckling as their bellies met.

"I would be a lot more scared if I was doing this by myself," Nellie stated, after a beat of silence. Off her sister's look, she clarified. "Not 'by myself' by myself, I mean if you weren't pregnant, too, at the same time I am."

"You don't have to be scared…" Maya shook her head, now that she understood.

"Don't I?" Nellie insisted. "Never mind that I still remember seeing you in that hospital bed after Aubrey was born, I… I read so many things about what can go wrong, and I…" her voice quavered, and Maya sighed, hugged her as she would do when she was still small, not a mother to be.

"I know what you mean, I do. I have those thoughts coming back at me every time I get here… And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling it even more since Aubrey, okay? But if I let myself stay in that headspace, I'd be missing out on so much, and so would you. When you close your eyes, when you think about that baby boy in there, I bet you can see his little face, can't you?" She felt her sister's face relax into a smile.

"He looks just like Bobby. Except he's got my ears," Nellie declared, and Maya laughed. It wasn't as though the Davis twins had oddly shaped or sized ears, but anyone who had known Bobby for any length of time would have seen him press at his like he was self-conscious about them. Nellie found them adorable, so maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if their son had them, too.

When Gracie returned, they shared Nellie's vision of her unborn son, making her laugh so much that she nearly lost her balance on her crutches before MJ swept in behind her and steadied her. Gracie wouldn't tell him what had made her laugh, and he knew better than to try and get it out of her. Later, she would explain how Ethan had told her that some of their teachers would only tell him and Bobby apart because only one of them fussed about his ears.

With the five siblings reunited, and little time left before Lucas arrived with the kids, the discussion turned back to Maya's sketches and turned into their wanting to have one room's mural be inspired by all of them together. Maya would do the drawing, of course, taking their suggestions and making them 'all awesome' as Haley stated, and then they would all work to get it done on the walls in time for the first campers to come along. It was instantly adopted as the kind of project they had to see through. Here they were, getting to live all together for the first time in all their lives, and when they got this room all done up, it would stand in memory of this time, all too brief as it would feel once they all split up again.

"We can all pick a color that will be ours," Gracie suggested.

"In all its shades," Nellie intoned.

This set off a debate that wasn't over by the time everyone else arrived, but they would figure out their choices by the end, setting Maya's mind in motion to piece together the Hunter room that would represent her and her siblings, even as it got her rethinking her vision of the other rooms, too. She imagined she would be spending much of the next several days with pencils in her hand every chance she got, and she couldn't wait.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners