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Then almost a month of holiday bliss with my sex-god of a fiancé.

***

By eight-thirty, I feel like I've lived three separate days since leaving school.

Dinner is spaghetti because Theo requested it and then rejected the sauce because there were “green things” in it.

The green things were basil.

He has eaten basil approximately eight hundred times.

Apparently tonight it is poison.

Simon negotiates four bites out of him by promising garlic bread afterward, which Theo somehow interprets as four individual noodles instead of four bites. This results in a five-minute courtroom proceeding at the dinner table where Theo insists that four noodles should count as four bites.

Bath time is only marginally less combative.

Theo doesn't want his hair washed.

Then he wants to do it himself.

Then he gets shampoo in his eyes despite the fact that I warned him six times not to tilt his head forward, and he screams like we've chemically blinded him.

Simon gets soaked because Theo decides the only reasonable response is to launch himself against his father's chest.

By the time he's clean, pajamaed, and tucked into bed, all three of us are exhausted.

“One story,” Simon tells him.

“Two.”

“One.”

Back and forth until I’m ready to throw away every book my child owns and duck tap him to his bed until morning.

We eventually settle on one story with the promise that if Theo stays in bed and actually sleeps instead of coming downstairs twelve times because he's thirsty, hungry, needs to pee, heard a noise, remembered something important, or suddenly needs clarification about death, he can pick two tomorrow.

He falls asleep before Simon is even done with the first story.

There are still Christmas cartoons playing quietly on the television because neither Simon nor I has bothered to turn them off, and the entire front half of our house looks like a distribution center.

Packages are everywhere.

Amazon boxes.

Target boxes.

A box from some sporting goods store containing something Simon immediately took downstairs because apparently I'm not allowed to see it.

Three boxes for Theo that we had to hide in the basement before he spotted them.

Something enormous for my parents.

A suspiciously shaped package Simon says is for Chance.

I sit cross-legged on the living room floor with my phone in one hand and a roll of sticky notes in the other.

“Okay. This one's Carter.”