Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 74577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74577 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
“So what do you think?” I asked, reaching over to rest a hand on AJ’s belly. “Does Mark finally get to win a bet, or what?” I asked, feeling the baby kick restlessly against her stomach. Like it was ready to get out and get moving. We were a week past her due date. So it probably was.
“I think Mark’s losing streak is going to continue,” she said, pressing her hand over mine. “I’m pretty sure it’s another boy.”
We figured when we’d started this whole parenting journey—thanks mostly to a drunken night trying to warm each other up in a ski lodge in Colorado where we’d stopped using protection—that, given my own family dynamics, we were likely to have a bunch of boys.
We didn’t care what we had. We just wanted them healthy and happy.
We’d spaced them out. Each four years apart. It gave us time to bond, and figure out how to navigate traveling with extra passengers.
It got a little harder with each kid. But we were determined to give our kids the world. As well as a home they wanted to come back to over and over afterward.
A home we’d had to put two additions on so far. We’d considered just selling, but something had always stopped us.
“This house is what brought us together,” AJ had said, all teary-eyed with her early pregnancy hormones. “I don’t think we should leave it.”
So we didn’t.
We just blew it out to add a few more bedrooms. Another bathroom. A kitchen big enough for two or more people to actually move around in, a proper dining room, and an extra family/toy room for the kids.
It was there in that house where I’d met AJ. Where I’d slowly fallen in love with her as my body forced me to slow down and learn what ‘home’ meant.
We’d built love there.
Then a life there.
And, finally, a family there.
Woof!
An alarmed little bark had both of us turning to see the Golden Retriever mix, Delilah, using her body to push our four-year-old away from something on the beach.
“Probably a jellyfish,” I said. “I’ll go look. Good girl, Delilah,” I said, patting her head.
She was still all long-limbed and gangly, barely a year old, and full of energy and love for the kids.
We still had Samson, though he was kind of a couch potato now in his old age. A little blind, very deaf, very spoiled, and still a part of the family.
We’d gotten Delilah on a whim when there’d been an adoption event at the doggy daycare AJ used to work at.
We hadn’t been sure if it was the right time for a new dog, what with Samson old and slow. But the kids had fallen in love with her. And we figured having another dog in the house would be good for all of us.
Her presence seemed to calm Samson, who no longer felt the need to try to look after the kids, or bark at the delivery men, or check the perimeter of the yard. He left all of that up to Delilah now.
“They sting, remember?” I said to my son, pointing toward the jellyfish.
“Like a bee?” he asked, making a buzzing noise. He’d been stung on his foot not long back, and it had become a teachable moment.
“Like a hundred bees all at once,” I told him, picking him up, and bringing him over to his brother who’d now abandoned his surfboard to start building something out of the wet sand.
I’d opened my business not far from where we were standing, lucking out when a local business decided to sell and move somewhere they could live on a beach year-round.
It had cost a small fortune. But after the success of our travel vlogs, and some careful investments, we’d been able to swing it.
And now, several years into it, we had something really good going. Sure, it was only income in the summers. But, fuck, was the money good in a beach town where locals and tourists alike flocked to the area to bake on the beach, play in the waves, and learn to engage in some fun water sports along the way.
It allowed us to have a mostly calm, quiet fall and winter where we could all cocoon up, enjoy the holidays, take a winter vacation to somewhere real snowy, since Navesink Bank wasn’t exactly known for much accumulation, and make plans for the coming summer.
There was still travel.
And I still enjoyed it.
In fact, since I’d just about seen it all in my day, it was much more fun to show the world to AJ. And then the kids. To watch them experience all the things I’d set out to do when I was younger.
More and more these days, though, I found my comfort at home.
With my kids.
With my wife.
With my siblings and their families.