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LIVY
Three Years Later
There’s a reason God gives most people one baby at a time. Because three in less than two years is more than a handful.
I’ll never complain, except in joking and only to Layton. But I didn’t know the energy and stamina required to be a mom. Much less a wife and mom. Much, much less a working businesswoman, wife, and mom. Being a sister-in-law, daughter-in-law, and aunt is a bonus.
Years ago, I assumed I’d be a single woman who rocked the heck out of her career, vacationed to exotic destinations, and would worry about growing old alone.
I never assumed I’d need the bigger SUV because I’d need a stroller for triplets and an ever-evolving rotation of car seats.
And we don’t have triplets. Maybe that would be easier.
I walk into our room and face-plant into the bed, talking into the pillow. It’s probably not understandable. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve been coherent.
A large hand rubs my back, and within seconds, I’m out.
The sound of crying wakes me over the monitor. “It’s okay, Emme. Get it all out. Daddy’s here.” I’ve almost fallen back to sleep when the soft voice continues. “Ellie, darling. It’s okay. Oh, baby, don’t wipe your face in it.” Directly into the monitor, Layton’s voice comes softly. “Livy, I’m incoming with two pukers. Going straight into the shower if you can start that for me. Lucy is okay for now, but keep an ear out. Seems we’re being ravaged tonight.”
That’s my husband.
I climb out of bed and pad to the bathroom, turning on only the softest lights. My eyes are stuck together with sleep, but I start the steamer and the waterfall showerhead. We’ve had every kind of fun with the carwash, as I still call it. Jets, heads, massagers, rain shower—if there’s a way to move water in these tiles, Layton had it installed.
The steamer has saved me more times than I can count with congested sinuses. The waterfall is gentle with our babies, and the sound is lulling.
Tonight, as it has in the past, it’s going to clean puke off our daughters and off my husband, who doesn’t seem to be fazed by anything that exits the girls from any direction.
“I know, love, it’s horrible,” he coos as a shrill scream comes from our raven-haired daughter. He positions her on his shoulder, walks into the shower fully clothed, and steps under the waterfall. Ellie is on his other shoulder, rubbing her face in his shirt, with the most pathetic quivering bottom lip.
I reach for one, but he shakes his head.
“Go to sleep while you’re able, baby. I’ve got this. I’ll be in bed as soon as I can.”
I step over Kyle, who lies facing the shower, worried about his girls. “Good night, my sweet boy.”
I can’t say my sleep is restful, but my body has decided it’s off the clock. That is, until I hear Lucy’s cries. I reach back, patting the bed only to find it cold. I stumble to the kitchen and through it back upstairs toward the girls’ room.
Layton is sound asleep, sitting on the upstairs sofa, with a daughter on each side of his wide chest. I can smell the stench in the girls’ room before I enter it. Grabbing Lucy, I throw open a window and vow to come back up tonight and strip their cribs. It’s like a scene from “The Exorcist” up here.
I care less about that when she pukes all down my front and blows out her diaper at the same time. “Oh, sweetie, that bug got you, too, huh?”
If I were looking for a silver lining, here it is. My hair is up in a messy knot and won’t get wet when I perform the shower dance Layton did however long ago. His clothes and Emme’s and Ellie’s are piled by the drain, now being joined by Lucy’s and mine.
Lucy is eighteen months old and was our second adoption. She was domestic, and we knew the day she was born, we’d been chosen.
Emme had been home with us for three months from Vietnam when we got the call. She was six weeks old when she was placed with us, and it was a no-brainer that we took her with us to meet her younger sister. In a span of five months, we went from no kids to two under six months old.
The IVF we’d planned via a surrogate took on the first try—a true miracle—and Ellie joined us eight months after Lucy.
We received three miracles in less than twelve months.
And all of them have the flu or some kind of stomach bug.
Lucy calms, and her breathing evens out. I step out of the shower to see Kyle in the same position he was in earlier. “Somehow, when you puke, it seems to be one and done. When the girls puke, it seems to go on forever.”
He slides his tail from side to side and cranes his neck for a chin scratch. I oblige.
The clock reads four in the morning, and I can’t decide whether to wake Layton. A stiff neck sucks. Disturbing the girls whose bellies have calmed seems the greater evil.
