Mom Over Miami - By Annie Jones Page 0,41
could I ever live with myself if I were the cause of you canceling your hair?” Hannah smiled, kissed her aunt on the cheek and started taking the baby out of her high chair.
“The baby won’t get in the way?”
Hannah pressed her lips to the child’s chubby, cereal-slimed cheek. “Never. Besides, it’s just two very well-intentioned women slapping some paint on a nursery wall. Nothing I can’t handle. Nothing we can’t handle together—right, Tessa?”
The baby giggled.
“What a happy, happy girl you are!” Hannah cooed. “Ready to go out and take on the world?”
Tessa kicked her legs and laughed some more.
Hannah had barely gotten the first hint of chuckle out when the smell hit her.
“Looks like before we take on the world, we have to make some big changes. And it won’t be pleasant.” She just hoped that wasn’t an indication of what the rest of the day held for her.
12
Subject: Nacho Mama’s House column
Police tape.
In a great big yellow X across the doors of both the baby and toddler rooms!
I’ll give you a moment to visualize. (Checking my watch. Humming.) Got it? Okeydoke, now let me ask you something in all sincerity.
Two sisters working together day in and day out, yet never seeming to get any closer to their goal. One morning you arrive to find the scene of their collaboration cordoned off by police tape. What would you think?
Sister-cide, right? Or whatever it’s called when female sibs have finally had enough and turn on each other with whatever weapons they have at their disposal.
Thank the Lord all the girls could lay hands on were paint rollers and caulk guns. Jacqui will never get that stuff out of her hair. Cydney’s self-designed clothes now have a nifty new color to them—Canary. And as for the nursery suite…
It’s curtains for the window treatments. Dirt knap for the carpets. And Noah’s Ark is sleeping with the fishes.
Trust me, in this case police tape is a vast improvement.
Not official police tape. No crime committed. No names changed to protect the innocent. This bright yellow-and-black plastic caution tape came from one of those megasize home improvement stores. I’m thinking of wrapping both rooms in it, handing the minister the keys and walking away.
Of course, that won’t work. Everyone knows where I live.
Sister-cide. I can’t lie—something akin to it has crossed my mind. But today I am counting my blessings that in all our many adventures from childhood on, my sisters and I have never tried to work together on anything more demanding than rescuing Daddy from another wayward adventure.
—From Nacho Mama’s House column
“Daddy did what?” Hannah pressed her cell phone to one ear and put her finger in the other. And she still couldn’t hear her sister over the bickering of the DIY sisters. Tessa wailed. A freshly primped and permed Aunt Phiz who had run to the rescue when Hannah called to report the mess sang as she worked loose the corner of the paint-spattered carpet. “He said what to who?”
“What?” Phiz jerked her head up. “What’s that baby brother of mine gone and done now?”
“Baby?” Jacqui stopped wagging her finger in her sister’s face long enough to send a disbelieving look at Hannah’s elderly spitfire of an aunt.
“Yes. Baby brother.” To the dauntless Phyllis Amaryllis, Moonie Shelnutt was and always would be her sweet “baby” sibling, even though they were both well into collecting Social Security.
“If only I had been blessed with a baby brother instead of a bossy sister.” Jacqui finger-combed her hair, only to hit a snarl of still-moist caulk mixed with paint. She groaned and drew her hand away.
Hannah and Phiz both saw what was coming, but they couldn’t warn Cydney fast enough to stop her frantic spit-cleaning of her tennis shoe and duck.
Th-wapp!
“Oh!” Cydney took the lightly flung goop right across the cheek. “Why you—”
“Watch your mouth. We’re in the church, baby sister.”
Cydney narrowed her eyes and swiped the mess off with the back of her hand. “Better to be the baby than to act like the baby.”
“Shh, ladies!” And she meant that term in the most lenient sense possible. “Please! I can’t listen to you, quiet my baby and talk to Sadie all at the same time.”
If only God had blessed her with that level of multitasking! Maybe then she’d finally get everything done and make everyone happy all at once. She picked Tessa up from the baby seat on the floor, planted the child on her hip and began pacing.
The noise level dropped to a