Lyon
Chapter 89

“Caitlin baby give daddy a break will ya?”

“Dada, da, da.”

“I’m gonna da, da, da you in a minute get over here.”

My little princess is nine months going on fifteen. She can’t really talk yet but her first word was dada then came mama. I won that fight. She started crawling at six or seven months and all hell broke loose from then on.

She gets into everything so I have to watch her every minute that I’m alone with her or I’m afraid she’d hurt herself. Her mother is a little more lax than I when it comes to parenting. She says ‘oh she’s supposed to do that or don’t worry Colt that’s normal’.

I didn’t take shit for granted. In the first three months after I’d started putting her in her crib at night I stood over her to make sure she was breathing right and shit before I went to bed.

I spent almost every waking hour worrying about one thing or the other. Anything that could go wrong I tried to head off at the pass. Now realistically I know there are no guarantees in life but I couldn’t help myself. Now instead of one I had two people to protect and take care of.

While Kat was healing from the birth I saw that she had everything she needed and was doing everything that they told her to do. Believe it or not she was up and about in just a few days; which I found unfucking believable after having seen the birth process.

I had to keep an eye on her to make sure she didn’t overdo it but all in all things went fine. I was tired as f**k most of the time because Caitlin woke up every hour on the hour that first two or so months.

Half the time Kat slept through the feedings while I held the baby in place. Those were our bonding times because as she got older she stayed up longer and longer after her feedings and that’s when she and daddy had their talks.

Now she’s growing like a tumbleweed. She smiles and my heart melts and she’s so much her mother’s daughter that she knows it and uses it. She gets into shit and heads for me with her pouty face and those teary eyes that I can’t resist.

I always know she’s done something that she wasn’t supposed to but I can’t scold my baby. She’s going to be a handful if I keep that up or at least that’s what I keep hearing from everyone around here. Like I give a f**k.

“Caitie don’t do that.” Shit I’ve been trying to teach her not to push things in the light sockets it’s an ongoing battle, which I’m losing handily.

“Baby being a naughty girl?”

“Da da.” She lifted one of her stuffed toys up to me before stuffing it in her mouth and grinning.

She’s so f*****g cute how can I stay mad at her? Her mother is off Xmas shopping with her grandmothers and her aunts. Why the f**k a kid that’s less than a year old needs all this shit is beyond me.

The basement’s already wall to wall with gifts and shit. The house looks like Santa and his elves threw up all over the damn place, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many decorations in one place at once.

The tree scares the crap out of me because I swear it’s going to topple over on my little girl since she likes pulling on it and shit. And I’m not sure those decorations are safe. They seem like choking hazards to me.

I found a way to nail the tree into the ground though, which was just one more thing for the peanut gallery to laugh at.

She dropped the bear and was off and toddling towards the brightly wrapped gifts under the tree, set on destruction no doubt. I picked my little darling up so she couldn’t get into any more trouble tearing into the gifts and looked for something to entertain her with until her mother got home.

“Come on baby you want to play with your blocks?” I don’t let her watch TV, Elena didn’t let us do that shit when we were growing up and I agree with that. Plus I have way more fun playing with her and teaching her things. Daddy couldn’t have taught her the ABCs if she was sitting in front of the TV all day now could he?

We built shit for a half an hour before I went to fix her something to eat.

“What should it be today Caitie bear? Bananas, pears, carrots?” She banged away on her highchair and babbled away at me as I pureed her banana, which was her favorite.

I fed my girl while playing airplane with her to make it more fun. Of course she didn’t go off to sleep like every other kid does so I was back on entertainment duty after cleaning up the mess she’d made of her face.

She pointed to the unlit fireplace and I g*****d. What’s with this kid and fire? I lit the fireplace and she clapped her hands in glee. She rocked back and forth on my lap talking a mile a minute about who knows what.

I always play along like I know every word because I’d read somewhere that communication was very important. She soon grew bored and wanted down so she could go off and do something else. I looked around at all the shit in the room from beneath the tree to the middle of the floor.

“Stay away from that fire or I’ll get your butt Caitlin.” Who am I kidding? The kid gets away with murder. Truth is my little princess is spoilt. I may or may not play a part in that endeavor but so what? I’m her dad I’m supposed to.

She’s always finding new shit to give me heart palpitations, constantly getting into shit. Lately her new thing has been the fireplace she’s fascinated by the flames. I’m raising a little pyromaniac.

She would sit there for hours just gazing at the fire. I had the thing covered with a protective screen so she couldn’t hurt herself but I still worry about her getting in there somehow because she’s proving to be as hardheaded as her mother. Those books sure didn’t give me the sense that she was going to be this damn smart at her age.

I shudder to think what she was going to get up to in a year or two. I checked my watch for the one-hundredth time; it’s like that every time Angel leaves the house without me. She still doesn’t know her vehicles have trackers on them so I can protect her as much as I can even when I’m not there.

I took my eyes off Caitlin for one minute and by the time I turned around she was at the fireplace trying to pull the screen off. How the f**k?

I didn’t think just reacted and when I reached her side I swatted her hand and told her no. Well f**k me. Her little face scrunched up, her l*p trembled and big fat tears filled her eyes; gutted.

“No baby, please don’t do that.” She looked at me like I’d gut punched her. I’ve never felt so low in my life. It was the first time I’d ever hit her and it wasn’t even really a hit.

Her cries tore at me and I found myself apologizing and promising myself that I’d never do that shit ever again. She clung to daddy’s neck and thankfully the cries didn’t last too long because I couldn’t have borne that. I spent the next ten minutes walking up and down with her in my arms talking to her.

Anything to get the memory of daddy smacking her hand out of her head, I’m such a sap. She was back to her shit as soon as I put her back down. Giving me sneaky looks just like her damn mother, go figure.

“Come here you.” I snatched her up before she burnt herself and looked around for something to keep her occupied.