A Fine Mess (16 page)

After another minute or so, the blocks lost all appeal and, quick as a snap, he crawled over to where Jack lay on the floor. But other than his ears perking up in interest, the dog didn’t seem to mind the little body trying to crawl all over him. Annie, on the other hand, did mind.

“Oh yuck!
Sam, no! You’ll get dog hair-” She picked the baby up, whose hands were now covered with dog hair.

“If he’d keep his fingers out of his mouth, the hair probably wouldn’t stick to them like that.”

“Ya think?” Annie said with a laugh. “It looks like we’re going to wash your hands, young man.”

“You’ll probably need some help,” Ian offered, hoisting himself out of the recliner. “That kid wouldn‘t be still if you paid him.”

“Stop calling him ‘kid.’ He’ll develop a complex or something.”

“Well, he is a kid, so he’d better get used to it.”

“I wonder how Becca manages?” she wondered aloud as Ian did the actual hand rinsing at the kitchen sink. He was right. It took two.
One to hold and one to wash.
“She has two cats.”

“I expect the cats are smart enough to run for cover when they see him coming.”

“Funny. Are you saying Jack isn’t smart?”

“I’m saying Jack isn’t used to babies and hasn’t developed any self-preservation instincts against him yet. There. I think I got it all.”

“Thanks. I’m not sure how I’d have managed alone.”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

“Would you also be here for warming a bottle for me? It’s almost bedtime. Or you could hold him if you’d rather.”

“I’ll warm the bottle thanks. Twenty seconds?”

He pulled one of the five Becca had left. Each slightly less than half full, and only to be used at nap and bedtimes because they were trying to wean him. More information than he needed to know.

“Yes. I‘ll see you upstairs. Thank you, Ian.”

“No problem.”

And it wasn’t. Not really. Now if she’d asked him to change a diaper or give the little monster a
bath, that
would be a problem.

When the microwave dinged, he removed the bottle and headed upstairs. Twenty seconds was just to take the chill off, from what he gathered. And it had.

Annie was singing softly, rocking Sam on the edge of her bed. With no light except that from the hallway, the bedroom was shadowed so it almost felt like he was looking at silhouettes.

“...Yes, Jesus loves you. Yes, Jesus loves you. The bible tells me so.”

He remembered Maddie telling him about her part in the Christmas program. No, he had no idea what she sang like as a little girl. As a woman cuddling a baby, though, she sounded like an angel. So much so that he got a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Annie?” She glanced over at him.

“He’s almost asleep. But I think he’s waiting for the bottle before he gives in and conks out for the night.”

He walked quietly across the floor and handed it to her. Sam grabbed it greedily and began to drink as Ian squatted down before them.

“Do you think he’ll sleep okay?” he whispered, reaching out to gently stroke the soft, chubby baby cheek.

“I hope so. I’d sure hate to haul him out to the car for the night.”

“You’d drive him around?”

“No, I’d lock him in the car and let him out in the morning.”

“Annie! Oh. You’re kidding.
Right?”

“Yes, I’m kidding. I wouldn’t hesitate to drive him around for awhile, though, if the need arises.”

“Wake me up if it does. I don’t want the two of you out alone in the middle of the night, okay?”

“We’d be fine, Ian.”

“Would you just humor me? Please? Wake me up if you need me.”

“All right.
Thanks.”

“Thank you. Do you think you’ll go back downstairs tonight?”

“Probably not.
I’d be nervous about leaving him up here alone and not hearing him if he needed me.”

“Okay. I’ll lock up and turn the lights off then. Good night, Annie.”

“Nite, Ian.”

~~~~

Annie closed her bible and set it carefully on her night stand and stared at nothing as she contemplated what she’d just read.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t read the verse several times throughout her life. She had, in fact, read through the entire bible numerous times. Except none of the verses regarding marriage had ever jumped out at her like they had been doing lately.
Especially tonight.

‘And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband: But and if she
depart
, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife.”

Straight out of first Corinthians chapter seven, verses ten and eleven.

Like other verses, this was crystal clear. If you got married, you stayed married. Annie was pretty sure that the Lord did not recognize the agreement she and Ian had made as a valid reason for divorce when the time came.

“I guess all I can do is
pray
for your will, Father. If you want me to stay with him, I’m willing. I like and respect him and I think I could make him happy. But
You
will have to work in his heart, Lord. I can’t make him love me, or want to stay with me.

“Lord, I also ask that you bless and keep us. Heal my mom. Give me opportunities to be a laborer in
Your
harvest. In Jesus Name I pray. Amen.”

~~~~

Becca had warned her that Sam was an early riser. In Annie’s opinion, five-thirty on a Saturday morning was obscenely early, but she hurried to the portable crib at Sam’s first whimper and lifted him out.

No wonder he cried. He was soaked. And now, so was she.

“Thanks, Sam,” she said softly, kissing his blond curls as she carried him into her bathroom."
It's too early to wake Ian so I can have a shower. But I guess if baby wipes work to clean you, they’ll have to be good enough for me until he wakes up, huh?”

In no time she had the baby, and
herself
changed, and had padded downstairs to the kitchen.

“Here you go, buddy.”

She sat him safely in the high chair and gave him a handful of round oat cereal to play with, and maybe eat, before she started scrambling a couple of eggs for him. Becca said it was his favorite breakfast, along with a piece of plain toast. It didn’t sound particularly appetizing to Annie since she wasn’t supposed to season the eggs. And no butter on the toast- That just wasn’t right.

Still, he wasn’t her baby, and the decision wasn’t hers to make. Maybe if it was, she wouldn’t change it anyway. Because, quite truthfully, what she knew about babies and toddlers would probably fit on the head of a pin.

Sure she’d done her share of volunteering in the nursery at church. But there was a world of difference between playing with babies for an hour and a half and raising one!

Her instincts would be to feed Sam rather than spooning the now cooled eggs onto the high chair tray so he could feed himself.
Yeah, feeding.
He might be wielding a rubber coated spoon, but his fists seemed to be the main eating utensils.

“You have no manners,” she said, pulling up a wooden kitchen chair and yawning. “You wake me up before the crack of dawn, and there you sit stuffing your little mouth with eggs.”

Sam flashed
her a
toothy grin. Well kind of a toothy grin. There were only four on the top and two on the bottom.

“You think you’re cute do you?” She reached out and tickled his neck and was rewarded with a giggle. “Well you are. But you’re also a slob. Do you see all the egg on the floor, young man?” Yuck!”

“Yuck,” Sam repeated amicably, shoving most of one hand in his mouth. The other wouldn’t fit and so he proceeded to smear the eggs over his face and through his hair.

~~~~

Ian woke slowly. It felt like someone was watching him. Thinking it must be the remnant of a dream he couldn’t quite recall, stretched and yawned and rolled over on his side before opening his eyes.

To find a big black nose almost touching his.

“Jack!” The exclamation startled both him and the dog, Jack backing away a few feet and Ian sitting bolt upright in bed. “How did you get in here?”

He was sure he closed the door securely before going to bed the night before, but obviously he hadn’t.

“Sam
run
you out, did he?” Ian yawned again before reluctantly climbing out of bed and dressing quickly in jeans and navy and yellow U of M sweatshirt. The late October mornings were getting pretty chilly now.

A glance at the alarm clock on his way out showed it to be six-forty-five. A good forty-five minutes earlier than he preferred to get up on weekends, but once he woke up, he was awake for the day.

“You have too much energy for this early in the morning, buster,” he heard Annie saying cheerfully from the living room. It was followed by a big yawn and he grinned, just before yawning again himself. “No, you can’t play with that. Give me that! No, you’re not having that either.”

Thinking he should probably go help out, he stepped into the doorway, where he watched his wife rescuing a couple of candlesticks that had previously been decorating the top of their coffee table. She must have spotted him from the corner of her eye because she smiled up at him from where she was kneeling on the floor.

“Did we wake you?”

“No. Actually Jack did. I must have not closed my door good last night because he was looking me right in the eyes a few minutes ago.”

“I’m sorry, Ian,” she apologized, rescuing a cut glass candy bowl that had been sitting on a lace doily between the candlesticks. “Wow, he’s fast! I don’t notice a whole lot at five-thirty in the morning, but I did see that he was still sleeping in my room when we came downstairs.”

“
Five-thirty?
That’s when Sam woke you up?”

“Yup.
But that’s okay. After cleaning about half of his scrambled eggs up off the floor, and giving him a bath to get the rest of them out of his hair, we’ve been having fun. Haven’t we, Sam?” She tickled his belly and he laughed.
A delighted laugh that had Ian grinning from ear to ear.

“Sounds like it. Did you fill Jack’s feeding dishes yet?”

“No. I didn’t even think about it.”

“I’ll get it.”

“Thanks.”

He turned to head for the kitchen when he heard Annie exclaim,

“Hey, you’re not feeding the dog!”

A quick glance back showed Sam crawling for all he was worth in an effort to follow him.

“Guess he has to check out everything, doesn’t he?”