I followed the ‘ba’ noises until I found Miss. Olivia lying on her stomach on the blanket she loved napping on top of on the floor, hitting a cuddly toy banana off of it. She refused to sleep in her Pack ‘n Play during the day, so she napped on top of the mattress from it on the floor with a blanket instead. This meant that I was smiling down at her when she rolled over onto her back, and as soon as she saw me, she threw it to the toy to the side, rolled back over onto her stomach, and started wildly kicking her feet up and down.
“Well, hey there, pretty princess. Where are your Ellis smiles?” I asked her, bending over to pick her up and grinning as she squealed and giggled at me, her arms reaching out to catch my face. That’s when I saw the tiny little white bumps on her bottom gums and pulled her forward to have a closer look. “Hey, babe?” I called to Jose. “She has teeth!” I shouted over my shoulder and then turned my attention back to the wiggly baby. “Is that why she’s got her butt in the fridge? Did you bite it?”
Throwing her head back, Liv started chuckling like I’d told the funniest joke in the history of mankind, and it was the kind of laugh that made a man feel twenty feet tall. No baby had ever meant as much to me as she did – and my sister wasn’t included in that, seeing as how I’d only just been turning four when she was born – and the fact I was the one who’d made her laugh like that? Yup, I was totally a giant right now.
“Yeah, she drew blood on Dave’s hand when he watched her earlier today,” Jose called back weakly. “Tabby promised her a puppy for doing it.”
Chuckling, I sat her on my hip, leaving me free to safely give her a high five with my free hand. “You bit the mean sheriff, gimme five,” I congratulated, then a thought occurred to me. “Wait, what kind of puppy are we talking about? Not the same kind as Law, right?” I mean, I liked the little guy and all, but I’d heard him snore and Jesus it was like listening to a bear. Plus, he didn’t so much eat as stick his face straight into the bowl of food, pushing a majority of it over the edges. I could never relax when I looked after him because all I could do was picture him drowning in his meal or walking through and finding Liv eating it with him. “Whatever she wants.”
Turning back to Liv who was grinning up at me, I gave it straight back to her, earning rapid smacks to the cheek. This was her version of patting your face, except she put her entire body behind each one, so you had to catch her hand quickly to save your jaw. “I’ll take you puppy shopping, princess. If I hear you made the sheriff cry, I’ll get you two,” I told her, walking back through to the kitchen to get her something to eat.
“No can do,” Jose informed me, leaning her head out of the appliance and moaning. “Tabby’s already served a sentence today for aiding and abetting a minor when she helped distract him so that Liv could eat the last spoonful of the banana dessert y’all love so much. I might also have also told him that it was the last jar, and he still doesn’t know it wasn’t.”
Meaning that DB had arrested her again, awesome. “Was that today’s excuse?”
I wasn’t sure if she answered as I picked out a jar of baby food and held it up to Liv for her approval, making a mental note of what it was and never to buy it again when she growled and bit my shoulder. Beef, tomatoes, potatoes, and apple. Who the hell comes up with this shit. What adult picks those ingredients up and then mixes it together thinking it would make a great meal for themselves? None of them, that’s who, so why do it for a baby? Picking up the next one, I nodded when she held her hands out and started opening and closing them rapidly with excitement. Squash, chicken, and carrots was a firm yes – noted. Jose wasn’t a huge fan of bought baby food but she kept a supply just in case, and it had definitely come in handy recently. I’d discovered that I was a panicker when it came to the perfect size of the lumpy bits in Liv’s food, and by that I meant – was she going to choke if she had a lump this size? It meant I struggled to make her food and not blend it down until it was a puree or soup, and at her age she was supposed to be having a certain degree of ‘lumpage’ so she could master chewing and swallowing, and having none of them was counterproductive. For some reason, I trusted in the genius chefs at the baby food companies with their lumps more than I trusted my own, so when I fed her, I went for the jars unless Jose had been the one to whizz it up in the food processor. Looking over my shoulder, I reached for another jar from the cupboard, and then snuck it out and under my arm. Bananas, stewed apples and peaches, and strawberries. I could eat this entire jar myself and would – and regularly did – go back for another one. Because I knew how great it tasted, I tended to give in and get Liv another one when she was done if she wanted it, so Jose had put a limit of two jars a week on it, and we were already on four so far. I didn’t regret my dessert choices at all, that shit was awesome!