Brackett frowned in confusion. If Dixie was up, why was Jake still crying? He forced himself to get up, walking past the living room on his way to the nursery, and got his answer. Dixie was on the couch with Sophie, enjoying a mother-daughter nap of sorts. They were both dead to the world.
Jake, however, was very awake. Kel walked into the nursery, and picked his son up out of the crib. He put the infant over his shoulder, patting the tiny back, and soon quieted the baby. Jake cooed something in a language understood to only himself, and went back to sleep. Kel gently laid him back down in the crib, and checked the clock. It was close to 6:00 A.M.
Ah, well...he'd needed to be up about this time anyhow. Watching Dixie sleep for a moment, he was amazied by the fact that their own personal alarm clocks had let them sleep this long.
'Just once', he thought, not for the first time since the twins had been born, 'I'd like to be ASLEEP when the alarm clock goes off.'
He envied Dixie in a way. While he knew she was starting to get a little tired of her maternity leave, at least she got to stay home and be with the babies all day. At least she could sleep while they did. Kel couldn't recall having been this sleep-deprived since the early days of his residency.
Getting ready for work didn't take long. He grabbed a shirt and pants from the closet, picked a tie at random, and was just fastening the buttons on his customary lab coat when Jake began demanding attention again. With a small sigh, Kel went in to see what the matter was.
It didn't take him very long to find out this time. The baby's diaper needed to be changed. There was just one small problem. Kel had never changed a diaper in his life.
Dixie had always taken care of it while he was home...and she'd obviously done it while he wasn't. He was a doctor, sure, but he wasn't a pediatrician. Babies were not his strong point. In fact, he hadn't known much beyond the bare basics when Jake and Sophie had come into his life.
Oh, well. He was going to have to learn to change a diaper eventually anyhow. Might as well start now. After all...how hard could it be?
Ha. Famous last words.
Jake began squirming the moment he was set down on the changing table. His father frowned at him in confusion.
"I don't get it," Kel muttered, to himself, more than his son. "Why make it more difficult? Don't you want to get that thing off?" Getting it off, he soon realized, was the only easy part. The cloth diapers were closest, so he grabbed one. Besides, that was what they usually used. There was a package of disposable diapers under the changing table, but they were rarely used. Not that he was an expert on what Dixie was using to diaper these kids. Not by far.
After several misguided attempts, and after coming this close to sticking Jake with the safety pin a couple of times, Brackett finally got the diaper pinned shut. He smiled with a sense of personal accomplishment, pulled his arm back...
And had to quickly slide a hand under his son as Jake nearly flew off the changing table. He'd pinned the stupid diaper to the sleeve of his coat.
Jake wailed in protest, frightened but not hurt. Kel tried to soothe him as best he could while holding the baby in one arm...using the other hand to unpin himself.
'Please tell me I'm not the only person in the history of the world to have done that', he begged silently of whatever powers might hear. 'I cannot have been the ONLY one to make that mistake. Hey...the diaper...the coat...they're both about the same shade of white...yeah.'
He got Jake back onto the changing table...got the diaper off...but he couldn't, for the life of him, figure out how to refold it properly. After failing more than a few times, he gave up, and snatched one of the disposable diapers. At least he wouldn't be able to pin it to his lab coat again.
It was a bit of a struggle, put he finally got the thing on. Brackett held the infant out in front of him, admiring his handiwork. He noticed Dixie standing in the doorway behind him with Sophie in her arms. After wondering for a brief moment just how much she'd seen, he held Jake out to her for inspection.
"Hey, Dixie, look," he told her, admittedly proud of the accomplishment. "I put the diaper on him, finally."
She smiled at him affectionately. Then her brow furrowed as she noticed something. "Um...Kel...?"
"Yeah?"
"The diaper?"
"Yeah?"
Dixie took a breath. "It's, um...it's on backwards, Kel."
He opened his mouth to reply, but she quicky stepped forward to kiss him on the lips, stopping him.
"I'd prefer it if 'Dammit, Dix!' weren't our son's first words," she whispered teasingly.
He smiled at her, and they traded babies. Sophie cooed happily in her father's arms, then proceeded to try to eat his tie. Dixie noticed, but decided that Kel probably wasn't in the mood for her to make a crack about his fashion sense (which she had definite plans to change), and let it be. There'd be plenty of time later.
Kel pulled the tie out of his daughter's mouth and, after some debate, decided that the baby drool on it wasn't really noticeable. He used his free hand to ruffle Sophie's dark hair lightly. She gazed back at him with eyes filled with what could only be called adoration. Yep, this kid had him wrapped around that tiny little finger of hers...as did Jake.
Fatherhood, as he had discovered, was certainly a challenge. But Kel had always loved a good challenge. As he left for Rampart some twenty-odd minutes later, he glanced back at the family that had been handed to him so unexpectedly. Sure, there had been a lot of problems along the way...but he wouldn't have traded it for the world.
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"Just wait 'til you have children of your own."
--Just about any mother you'll ever talk to :)
"Children are the most expensive form of entertainment."
--source unknown
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