bakerstreet | Papa don't preach

Papa don't preach

The Parenting Meme

HOW IT WORKS:
➔ Post with your characters, one per comment please.
➔ Others tag your muse with a number choice. Either use the RNG or pick whichever you like. For optimum fun, be adventurous! Throw random characters at each other and see what fun shenanigans you can get up to.
➔ Congratulations! Now you're parents. Hopefully you won't screw this up too much.
➔ Have fun!

01. You’ve just gotten the news, you’re pregnant. Time to tell your spouse. OR You’ve just gotten the news, you’re approved for adoption! Time to tell your spouse.
02. Oh my God, you’re in labor! OR Oh my God, time to meet your adoption prospect.
03. It’s the first night home with your new baby. Good luck.
04. Now you know why they call it the terrible twos. How are you and your spouse coping?
05. It’s your little one’s first day of school. You and your spouse are seeing them off.
06. Sitting in the stands for your kid’s big sports game. You two cheer as loud as you can!
07. The only thing worse than a two-year-old is a teenager. Time to discuss what's an appropriate punishment.
08. Hopefully you’ve got fresh batteries in your camera for prom pictures. Maybe your spouse remembered.
09. Your kid is off to college. You can’t believe the number of boxes you’ve got to fit in your car and carry to their dorm.
10. You’re older, wiser and probably going to cry at your kid's wedding. At least you two still have each other.

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"You know, I feel a little bad putting him into the system," Kay told her partner, the five-year-old Evan's still-chubby hand still clasped in hers. "And not for his sake." She looked down at their younger son, dressed to his tiny nines in first-day-of-school digs and grinned, asking the serious-faced youngster, "are you looking forward to it, Evan?"

"Yes," the child responded, though without a lot of excitement apparent; he did, however, slide his eyes towards the door where other parents were dropping off their tiny students. Evan had started talking early, and well, but he never did it a hell of a lot; somewhere, and Kay wasn't sure where, the boy had picked up the habit of being concise. Maybe it was in contrast to his noisy sister, who they had dropped off in her grade four classroom not ten minutes earlier.

Jokes aside, however, Kay had been worried about their second child entering kindergarten. When Evan started asking the questions that endlessly curious toddlers always tended to, the 'why's and the 'when's and the 'how's, she and Aaron had quickly learned to pay close attention because whatever he was asking after was prone to later be at the center of some disaster that, in all his toddler cunning, Evan would usually pretend to know nothing of. Kay had joked that with Aaron's genius-selected genetics and her own wildcard factor that their kids would grow up incredibly intelligent or incredibly nuts or both, but Evan's early genius was no joke. His teachers, however, would have to learn that for themselves -- or preferably not; Kay was not a huge fan of parent-teacher meetings and if Evan could avoid getting himself caught, well, all the better. Learning experience gained. She'd do her part and encourage him not to do anything fatal or incurring of too serious property damage.

Speaking of which. "Remember," she swung around and crouched down in front of her son, meeting his eyes seriously, "don't play with fire." It was a serious warning and a handily innocuous code-word all at once, and one that she'd made sure both her elementally-prone children understood.

The boy looked up at his mother, frowning faintly as he listened to the warning, then giving a small nod to show that he'd perceived it. Aaron watched the two with a sense of pride mixed with foreboding: either this was going to go well, or it was going to go astoundingly badly. There was a part of him that worried that the latter was all but inevitable.

He crouched down, too, offering his own advice: "if the teacher is speaking, make sure that you're capable of reciting back her last sentence, whatever else you're doing." If it weren't for Cassie's constant meetings for being inattentive in class, he'd never have picked up that little gem.

That at least was one the boy hadn't heard before, and earned a look of serious consideration and a curious nod from the youngster. He chewed on his lower lip and seemed to be thinking, but whatever it was that was going through his head, Evan didn't deign to share just yet.

That was par enough for the course that Kay simply nodded response and stood again, putting her hand out once more. Evan automatically took it and looked up at her, and she grinned again at the undemonstrative kid, and then at her partner. "I guess we should get the he...ck out of here before class actually starts. Alright, Evan," she pointed out the kindergarten teacher, waiting and greeting children and parents at the door, "you see that lady? Go to her. We'll pick you up later, alright?"

Evan was frowning more deeply than they'd seen from the child for a while, and whatever he'd been thinking before, now he shook his head a little. Kay, who was used to more independence from her wild brood, tilted her head. "Want us to walk you there?"

Evan shrugged. "Yes."

Sometimes Evan left his father feeling uncertain -- the kid was smart, and so different from his sister that the man had trouble figuring out where, exactly, he was at. This, however, seemed to be a universal trait. He grinned over to Kay, offering his hand to the boy as well, just in case he'd like both their support.

It turned out that Evan did, at least until they caught the teacher's attention. At that point, the boy retracted his hands and quickly folded them in front of his small chest, a gesture that was endearing, even with his sombre expression.

"Ah, the Friave-Goodlaces," the kindergarten teacher greeted the two adults. Her glance had flicked from the two familiar faces (the number of calls she'd had to make about papier mache alone were outstanding,) to the boy. "You must be Evan. Your sister is very famous around these parts."

Evan didn't respond, apparently finding nothing worth acknowledging in the statement.

"Well, I'm sure you'll have lots of fun. Come on in," she gestured. At first the boy didn't seem to want to go but, casting a glance up to his parents and seeing their nods of approval, he stepped forward into the class.

"He shouldn't cause a stir," Aaron told the poor woman. "He's better behaved." Was that a note of apology in his voice?

At least, along with anything else that she might be thinking, the teacher was well-versed in tact regarding parents and their ill-behaved offspring. Most kids came to kindergarten halfways wild, anyways -- Cassie Friave-Goodlace had just been a particularly special case. She smiled, but before she had find some graceful way to assure them that no kid could dream of following up the shit that Cassie had pulled, Kay butted in. "If he gets bored or antsy, try giving him a puzzle or something spatial. He's a -- he likes problem solving," she offered, brow furrowed as she watched her youngest offspring look tentatively around the classroom. "He gets bored if they're too easy though." At least stumping a five-year-old, even one of Evan's level, shouldn't be hard.

"I'm sure we'll find him plenty to do," the teacher offered soothingly, and Kay allowed it. Stepping aside for another set of parents dropping their kid off in the last minutes before the doors closed, she craned for one last peek of Evan before he disappeared inside. She was frowning.

This was the point where Aaron was supposed to pat her on the shoulder and reminisce about how they grew up so fast, wasn't it? He couldn't quite bring himself to do so, even though it was eminently true... rather, he put his arm around her and walked her down the short hallway towards the cubby-hole laden boot room. "You going to be okay?" he asked, not entirely teasing.

Kay snorted, as much at herself as at his teasing, and shook herself out of the maternal concern... well, as much as she could bring herself to, in any case. It wasn't like she wasn't right to think that other people wouldn't know how to deal with her child as well as she did. "Just assessing what all in there might be flammable. It's a veritable fire-trap."

"He knows better," Aaron replied soothingly. It was true, after all -- but whether Evan would decide whether or not to practice that knowledge wisely was yet to be seen. The one incident where he had burned his sister's favourite stuffed cat (subsumed by flame with the everloving horror of its plastic-headed babies, no less) for some child-based retribution had been firmly drilled into the boy's head as an extremely bad idea. He hadn't done anything quite so outright cruel since, though when there was a precedent like Evan had set for wily cunning, that couldn't be too much of a relief.

"Yeah, I guess." Kay snuck an arm around Aaron's waist, pausing in the boot room to retrieve their neatly discarded shoes, the habit one enforced even on parents.

Thinking back to Cassie's first day at school, she did have to reassure herself that Evan probably wouldn't be sent home early, at least not for those reasons. That had been a special day... particularly as she'd had the newborn Evan to contend with at the time, too. Come to think of it... Kay grinned up at Aaron. "House is going to be empty. We could get on making another." She was only about ninety-five percent joking.

"You know what?" he said, after a repressed snort of his own. "That would be one of those that ranks up there with 'bad life choices.'" After he'd horned his big feet into his shoes, however, he turned back to her, grinning. "Not to say that I'm completely dismissing the option. We should celebrate our freedom somehow."

"What, all four hours of it?" Erring on the side of caution, they'd decided that they'd put Evan in the half-day kindergarten program - or at least try it out; the school was not unaccommodating for the first little while if parents changed their minds. Her dubious look turned to sly enough, though. "You know what, four hours isn't nearly enough to refresh myself on how to be totally irresponsible. We'll have to tackle one topic per day."

"That's a perfectly admirable goal," Aaron told her, slipping his arm around her hips as they ventured out into the cloudy autumn day towards their recently upgraded car. "Any preferences, or care to leave things up to chance?" By which to say, up to him, of course.

"Take me on a wild ride, tall and blonde," she shot back at him with a smirk.

((Okay, in the context of this meme, I think a fade to black is called for. XD))

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Papa don't preach

Kay, OC, you know it, 05

Bye bye babby babby bye bye

This one isn't going to even need matches.

Re: This one isn't going to even need matches.

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Aw hayl naw

Bender time!

Oh you think so do you? (Just so long as it isn't of the gender variety. XD)

I dunno, "Lady Agate" is totally a formula that works... >:D

Does this look like the face of a Lady Agate to you?! Does it?!