Nobody's Fool

Babies, Babies, Babies

***Meme’s POV***

This first months of marriage has passed by so fast to me.  Jonathan won the building show against his brothers and has the bragging rights until they decide to challenge him once more.  But due to the babies, yes, babies, coming in a few months he is thinking about retiring to help raise them.  They have a production company in Vegas so he will take a desk job.  As for the first ultrasound, well, everyone was there, and Jonathan will be getting a vasectomy since I’m having 3 babies.  Yep, twins in one sac and another fraternal triplet in another.  We will have to wait a few months before we know if they are boys, girls, or both, which brings us to today and my 16 weeks checkup.

The whole family, my brother included, packed into the room so they could see the genders of our babies as they were revealed to Jonathan and me.  Believe me, we tried to keep this appointment a secret, but Anna is a sneaky person and figured out my passcode on my cell to find the appointment on my calendar.  The doctor moved us into the biggest room so they could all sit on the couches and watch the TV.  Right now, I have someone spreading that cold gel on my belly, which I think is huge already, but Jonathan said is perfect.  I wanted to just let my brother in on the secret of the genders of all 3 babies, so we could do a gender reveal party for the family.  That flew out the window when they all showed up in the reception area to wait with us.  Anyway, turns out that the two in the same sac were boys and they had a little sister growing beside them in her own sac.  I had been secretly creating a mural on the wall for the room we are going to be using as the nursery.  I convinced Jonathan to leave the room alone until we knew their genders.  I was going to have to figure out how to keep him out until I finish the wall.  I know for a fact all of them would freak out if they saw me on the ladder trying to reach the high points. 

I spent hours tracing the pictures onto overhead projection transparencies and then lining them up perfectly to match up on the projector pointing at the only solid wall.  Then the images were painstakingly traced on the wall with colored pencils, it took longer than I wanted to since I had to climb up and down to trade out transparencies as I moved the 6 foot tall ladder along.  I started with the highest points first to get it out of the way, then moved to the section I could reach on a small step stool, and finally the lower area which included closest to the floor.  At one point I was almost laying down to avoid casting a shadow on the projection.  I had found coloring books with woodland creatures, which were traced onto the transparency before shading in color on each and scanning into the computer.  I used Jonathan’s expensive layout software to place each animal where I wanted them on the virtual wall and added a pond for one to be drinking out of as well as a tall tree, hence the 6 foot tall ladder, filled with fall leaves. 

The wall had a bunny hiding in grass eating a carrot, a squirrel climbing the tree, an owl on a branch looking down, a fox on a tree stump, a raccoon playing with cat, a puppy joining their fun, and lastly a fawn drinking from the pond near the tree base.  I had been able to get the reflection of the fawn in the water and that was what was causing the delay as I transferred it all to the wall.  I have no artistic skills at all, I’m a cut and paste kind of gal on the computer.  I mean I can keep the color in the lines and trace like nobody’s business, but don’t ask me to free hand anything.  Even a simple apple won’t look right, that’s Jonathan’s skill and I will let him have that, but I wanted to do something special for the babies without the master decorator’s help.  I researched how to keep the painting safe for little hands as the kids got older by covering the finished project with a clear shellac.  I was going to have my brother help me with shading in the sky, since he is much taller than me and has longer arms.  I also need another set of eyes to look at how I am doing, I mean I think it looks ok, but if he starts laughing at how bad it is, I’ll just paint it over with primer and no one else has to know.

That was my plan, until Anna’s sneaky little butt found her way inside the nursery while I was shading the leaves on the tree.  I thought I was alone in the house, so my 80s rock music was on and I sat on the top ledge of the ladder adding various tones of green, yellow, red, and orange to multiple leaves.  I could only sit up there for like 20 minutes before my tush would go numb, and I would move to work on the lower section coloring in the blades of grass.  By now I had but the highest branches filled in to work on those would require me to be standing the entire time.  She must have slipped into the house while the brothers were showing my brother a house for him to buy close by mine.  I told him to keep them away for as long as possible since I wanted to get as much complete as I could.

He was planning on moving to Vegas, since his kids were grown, and his divorce was finally completed.  His now ex-wife had tried to hold out on signing because she was positive I would be giving him some money was he was free.  See, Mom and Dad never liked that lazy, fat, gold-digger, which meant as long as he was married to her they cut him off.  They reworked their will to cut him out and give everything to me, and she tried to contest it once they were gone, but the judge laughed her out of the courtroom after telling her she isn’t blood and therefore can’t responsibly expect my parents to give her one red cent of the money they made in their lifetimes.  Especially, considering the fact my lawyer pointed out that Karen never lifted a finger to work once she hooked my brother by getting knocked up.  His kids, Sarah and Daniel, were bummed that their grandparents didn’t leave them anything, but they knew their mom would have been standing there with her hand out telling them to give it to her if they had gotten anything.  I set up trust funds for them without her knowing and they were getting the dividend payments monthly, now it wasn’t a ton of money, just enough to help them with paying their bills and/or getting their college education.  I had taken it out of the half I would give my brother once his lawyer said it was ok, the divorce was far enough in the past that Karen couldn’t come back to try and get it from him.  In the meantime, he had an ATM Debit card to get access to funds as he needed them, but the account was in my name so she couldn’t touch it.   He needed a house big enough for the kids to come and visit when they wanted to.  Sarah was talking about moving to Vegas as well.  Both were bummed that their mom made their lives a nightmare on the week before my wedding, which is why neither of them were able to come and celebrate with us.  Karen faked a medical emergency, and they were forced to stay with her in the hospital out of pure guilt on her part.  Daniel had already found a job in Vegas as a dealer at one of the bigger casinos and he was driving in with a U-Haul packed full of his and Tim’s items.  Sarah had to wait until they found a house before transferring in her job to Vegas, which thankfully was for a National company and they would pay her relocation expenses.  That is why today was critical to find a home they all could peacefully live still close enough to me to come and see their baby cousins.

Anyway, I was grooving to “Crazy for You!” by Madonna when Anna entered the room.  I swayed on the ladder as she screamed out for JD to get me down.  He rushed through the door before sweeping me off my perch.  After 20 minutes of being lectured about being that high up in my condition, they finally shut up long enough to get a good look at the mural.  “WOW!  Meme, did you draw this?” JD wanted to know.  “I traced it from coloring book pages to transparencies then onto the wall.  I haven’t got an artistic bone in my body so free handing this would have been a nightmare.  I’m not even sure I shouldn’t just primer over this before Jonathan sees it, he could do such a better job at it then me.” I cry.  Pregnancy hormones SUCK!!!!!!!!!  Anna grabbed my shoulders and pulled me back to the doorway so I could look at the total picture that I had put up, “Sister, never say you aren’t artistic ever again.  This is a work of art.  We can see how much love and attention you have put into it already, but JD is taking that ladder and step-stool out of the room because we don’t want to chance you climbing on them again.”  “But I still have to fill in the color on the owl and all those leaves around him.  There is so much that needs to be done.” I try to move back to where I was only to have JD lift me off the ground and put me firmly in front of the rocking chair.  “Don’t make me tell Jonathan what you’ve been doing.  Stay there.  Anna or I will finish the top of the tree, right now you sit your pregnant ass down in that chair and tell us what colors you want us to use.  Babe, do you want to work on the foliage lower while I take the higher spot for now?” he turned to Anna, who nodded bringing me the pencils so I could pick out which colors for him to use.  “I trust your judgements on which to use.” I say as I decline to choose.  She grabbed 3 and handed them to JD, who was already up the ladder working on the highest leaves near the ceiling.  I got my tablet to show them the image I created to kinda give a look of how the finished mural would appear, to the best of my ability.  This gave them a more comprehensive view of where I was going with the entire painting and I was ordered to sit back down while they went to work on the wall.  I must have been more tired than I realized as just the gentle rocking I was doing in the chair put me right to sleep despite the music playing.  I woke up to the angry face of my husband as he carried me to our bedroom.  OOPS!