Chương 920: Day Nine Hundred And Eighteen

Dear Diary, Yeah, so the discussion between all the girls definitely showed me that even though I love them with all my heart, I do not really understand my kids well enough to predict them. But then, predicting them is nice, but what I really need to do isn't that. I need to protect them, nurture them, love them. Give them everything they need to grow, and do everything in my power to keep from letting my trauma seep through to them. They'll have enough of that no matter what I do to try and stop it.

Then again, eavesdropping on their negotiations definitely gave me some more insights into who each of my girls was as a person. Not that I had no idea before, but this just gave me more, and insights into stuff I'd never really thought about before, like which of my girls thrived on having someone with them, which needed their alone time, which liked their private space to be quiet, and which ones didn't much care about having their own private space at all, at least not enough to push very much for it.

Yeah, as a parent I've tried to socialize my kids, but some people are more social by nature. I'm not sure if I went with the 'introverts charge up with alone time and extroverts charge up with together time' or the 'everyone has a tolerance range for socializing, and if they go over it or under it, they get weird', but I know not everybody socializes the same. So giving them this chance to decide whether they wanted to room with their sibs or not definitely wound up being good for them, I think.

Also meant we didn't have to do some weird shit like moving the rooms around and extending the hallway around the bore or something similar. Of course, starting the conversation in the Bath turned out to maybe be a little bit of a mistake. When dinner time rolled around, they'd all gotten pruney or the pruney equivalent for the kits, which wound up being a lesser version of the Maenad's creepy fur thing.

Their fur was definitely shorter, didn't have the same 'translucent, almost transparent' appearance when wet, and their skin definitely wasn't anywhere near as translucent as Marie's. Well, okay, the ones with white fur had that going on wherever their white fur was, which led to some oddly Hel-like semi-creepiness going on. At any rate, they all whined about wanting to keep talking about their new room arrangements, and how Marie and I should bring them dinner in the Bath. Yeah, that did not fly.

Today's dinner wound up being the noisiest I remember for a while, and given that we have, and I'm still kinda weirded by this, sixteen pre-teen and younger kids living here in the East House, that's not a small thing. Yeah, I'm counting little D in that, because he's now moving on to stuff other than milk.

Still only vaguely crawling around, still mostly getting his meals from Sarah and Marie, but today's thick soup wound up being something he could just slurp up the broth once Sarah ate all the solid bits out of it. He does not slurp quietly, even if he hasn't really started talking yet. Pretty much his whole deal is eat and sleep. I don't know if he craps, but he's still gonna stay in diapers until he proves to the satisfaction of at least two adults in the house that he knows how and when to use the toilet.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Of course, the assorted adults in the house had to veto plan 'share baby D on rotation'.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind the two of them, Sarah and D, living in one of the rooms in the girl's hallway, but given that he's looking like he's maybe four to six months already, and my kits are ranging between Anise's 'kindergarten sized' and Isadora's 'might sneak into High School', I am not copacetic with him sharing a room with them. Nor were any of my ladies. Nor was Sarah. The arrangements still hadn't been solidified by the time all the soup was gone, so we all herded the girls back up to the Bath.

They'd mostly stayed clean during dinner, but the mom collective wanted to soak, and I think the humidity in the Bath maybe damped their voices a little. The heat definitely damped their ability to keep the conversation up, especially with the full day of playing in the snow behind them, not to mention bellies full of soup. Got a nice surprise as we tucked the little ones into bed.

Kinda thought I was getting the short end of things when most of my ladies sacked out right along with the kids, because I'd been kinda looking forward to after-Bath shenanigans. Saffron smiled at me as I might have let out the tiniest sigh at that, and said, "such Goof. So inobservant."

"Huh?" Which is when she ruffled the very blond head in amongst the various shades in the kid pile.

"The Lancasters are coming over tomorrow for a post-Yule visit, but I convinced the boys to show up just a little early." I smiled down at her, a little surprised.

"All for me?" She nodded.

"You're not gonna share?" She shrugged, half asleep already.

"It's been a long day, and they'll be staying more than one night. Besides, all of us enjoy watching you." I snickered.

"You just like the all-himbo channel."

"Guilty as charged. Maybe you can bury me in himbos a little tomorrow night?"

"Sure."

"Mmm... Now go, they're waiting for you." Yeah, I assume the ladies all watched on the big screen by my Maw, but I have no ability to confirm that, because I did not sleep at all. Lachlan and Linus are absolutely the best kind of buddies, and the finest of gentlemen. Also, while it wasn't up to the wattage of my ladies or Panther, I think there may have been some Worshipping going on. Certainly hit the bedroom in the morning with a spring in my step after delivering the boys to the Bath for a quick shower.

"So who do I shadow today, Kitten?"

"I think you ought oversee the room negotiations, love. Just to be sure they don't come up with something worse than Dionysus as a shared resource."

"Yeah, that would have been a nightmare. Good point." She nodded, kissed me, then sighed.

"I'm certain it will be once they're all nearly of age, but that's for the future." With that vaguely terrifying thought, that my kits were in fact growing up in the same house as Dionysus, who had no apparent problem with pseudo-incest, I started my day of arbitration. I swear, I did not at any point seriously consider inviting Baba Yaga to mediate in my stead. Not seriously. Okay, maybe a little bit.