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“JJ! She’s walking!”
Dropping the sandwich he was making on the counter, Jimmy Jr. hurried to the living room. Their daughter was a year old, learning new words seemingly every day and even standing up without help, but until now, she hadn’t tried to walk. She’d stand up for several seconds, only to fall back onto her butt and start fussing.
But sure enough, Bailey was on her bare feet, toddling unaided around the living room as if she’d been walking for weeks instead of seconds.
“Oh my god.” His eyes widened. “Did she just start?” he demanded as he grabbed his phone to take a quick video. He recorded for a few seconds and then set it down, watching as Bailey made a lap around the coffee table.
Will nodded, blue eyes watching the baby like a hawk as she explored the living room. “Yeah. She was playing with her toys and out of nowhere, she got up and started walking around the room.”
Bailey stopped for a moment. Leaning up onto her tiptoes, she reached up and grabbed a mug from the coffee table. “Mine!”
“Oh no. Nope. Give me that. That has coffee in it.” Will quickly pried the mug out of Bailey’s grasp.
Annoyed, Bailey let out a noise of protest and tried to grab the cup again, wiggling her little fingers. “Dada!” she whined accusingly.
“That could have turned into a predicament really fast.” Will set the mug on a shelf out of Bailey’s reach. “It’s not that hot, but there still would have been a lot of screaming.”
“From her or from you?” Jimmy Jr. couldn’t help teasing, earning a mildly offended glare from his husband. He sat down on the floor and patted his lap to get Bailey’s attention as she walked toward the bookshelf and swiped a couple of magazines off it. “Bailey. Walk to me.”
Abandoning the magazine she was about to rip, Bailey turned in his direction and toddled to him. She narrowly missed the coffee table, making him wince— he saw the sheer panic cross Will’s face– but made it to him safely.
“Good job!” he praised, picking her up. “I remember one time when Andy and Ollie were learning to walk, Andy bumped his head on the coffee table. And then Ollie did five seconds later.”
Will frowned. “What happened?”
“Well, Andy hit his head on the corner and needed two stitches. Ollie only hit his to copy Andy, so he just had a little bruise. Dad just wanted to stick a Band-Aid on Andy, but Mom dragged us all to the emergency room.”
“Shit.”
Huffing, Jimmy Jr. glared at the taller man. “Language,” he reminded him. “She already says the D word all the time.”
“The D word? What are we, five?”
“No, but you’re not the one who got a snooty look from the pediatrician the other day because Bailey cussed when she got her shots.” When Bailey started to squirm, Jimmy Jr. set her down so she could resume walking.
Will flashed an amused grin. “To be fair, shots make me wanna use language, too.”
Bailey finally stumbled, plopping onto her diapered bottom. As if she’d understood the word they were talking about, she blurted out, “Damn!”
Okay, he had to admit, it was pretty funny. But Jimmy Jr. bit back his amusement and reached out to help Bailey back to her feet. She immediately began toddling out of the living room, making a beeline down the hallway.
“I think she’s going for the bathroom.”
“I’ll get her.” Will hurried after their daughter and caught her just as she was pushing on the cracked-open bathroom door. He shut the door behind him and carried Bailey back to the living room. “We should probably put everything we don’t want destroyed out of her reach.”
Bailey wiggled until he set her back down. Now that she was mobile, she seemed to want to explore every inch of their condo as if it was a different experience from a crawling point of view.
“Yeah, and we’ll need to make sure we keep the doors shut. She can’t reach the doorknobs yet, but we may need to babyproof those once she can.”
Will nodded and quickly swooped in to stop Bailey from taking an ornament off of their Christmas tree. “I didn’t even think about this when we put the tree up.”
“At least they’re the shatterproof ornaments.”
“But what if she pulls the entire tree down?”
“She’s a baby. She’s not that strong.”
“Famous last words.” Will redirected Bailey towards her toys. She made her way over to them and leaned over, picking up a baby doll that looked like it had seen better days to toddle around the room with.
“You worry too much.”
It was three minutes past two in the morning when Jimmy Jr. roused from his sleep and realized he was alone in the bed. He waited a couple of minutes, but Will didn’t come back, which puzzled him. Normally Will was the heavier sleeper and only got up in the night if Bailey started crying.
Then he heard some noises in the living room and frowned. Yawning, he rolled out of bed and sleepily padded down the hall. The living room lights were on, and he swore the noise he heard sounded like duct tape being ripped off the roll.
Once he stepped into the living room, he realized he was exactly right. “What the hell are you doing?”
Chopped up pool noodles were scattered across the floor. One piece framed an edge of their coffee table, fixed in place with duct tape.
“Babyproofing the furniture like I should have done months ago,” Will answered from where he sat on the floor by the table. He picked up another piece of the pool noodle and attached it to the next edge of the table.
Too tired to process what was happening, Jimmy Jr. blinked and rubbed his eyes. “Did you go to the store at two in the morning to buy pool noodles? Where did you even find pool noodles in December?”
“Of course not. I had them in the trunk. I saw this online several weeks ago and kept procrastinating.”
“I… wow.” At a loss for words, Jimmy Jr. yawned again and stared at his husband as if he’d lost his mind.
“I
did
have to go buy duct tape.”
“In the middle of night, in your pajamas. You only bought duct tape at two in the morning.”
“One-fifteen,” Will sassed.
“Okay, smartass. But isn’t that something serial killers buy in the middle of the night? That’s a really shady thing to buy at one-fifteen in the morning,” Jimmy Jr. quipped. “Is there a reason you couldn’t do this in the
actual
morning?”
“I wanted to finish it before Bailey gets up,” the blonde defended as he used the big scissors to slice off another chunk of pool noodle.
“She’s not gonna get out of her crib by herself.”
“Hey, you got me freaked out with that story about Andy and Ollie cracking their heads on the table. I’m being proactive.”
Okay, that was kind of sweet. Even if it was the middle of the damn night, and he was exhausted. Cute as it was, sometimes Will’s overprotectiveness teetered on the edge of being purely comical. It was just funnier when it wasn’t 2:06 in the morning.
“Will. Sweetie.” Struggling to stifle another yawn, Jimmy Jr. confiscated the duct tape and pool noodle from Will. “I love you, but I am begging you to do this in the morning like a normal person.”
With a sigh, Will relented. He stood up, abandoning the project. “Fine. I just don’t want her to get hurt. Because if she smacks her head, I’m calling 911.”
“They’re gonna block our number.”
“They can’t. 911’s oath,” the blonde retaliated through a yawn as the pair made their way back to the bedroom. “I saw this thing on Amazon. It’s like a little picket fence you put around your Christmas tree to keep babies or cats away from it.”
“That sounds like it looks really ridiculous.”
“It’ll be here Tuesday morning.”
“Of course you bought it.” Shaking his head, Jimmy Jr. crawled back under the warm covers. Once Will joined him, he rolled onto his side and slung an arm across the other man’s chest, smiling lazily when Will pulled him closer. “Love you.”
“Love you, too.”