Complete Chaos

077

"Melody, did you eat the strawberry," he asked with his hands on his hips.

She grinned and said, "no, dada."

He picked up the fruit from her leg and said, "something is telling me you're lying."

With his thumb, he cleaned the side of her mouth; a piece of strawberry was hanging from her bottom lip.

The pair cleaned the mess Melody made on the floor. The house was dirtier than how it was when they got there.

"Remind me to change your shirt," Steve said, throwing the wet paper towel in the trash.

Melody simply enjoyed eating another strawberry. Her shirt was off, and she was sitting on the kitchen floor near the poodle of water.

"Where's your shirt," he asked, surprised she had it on a second ago.

Melody continued to take another bite from the fruit unbothered.

Steve wasn't going to deal with that right now. He needed to move fast. Julia would be downstairs in just a few minutes. He wanted to decorate the kitchen with a few balloons, party paper streamers, and maybe a banner.

He opened the bag of balloons. There were 25 balloons of different colors and sizes. He got out a red one and started inflating it. By mistake, he left the bag in arms reach of Melody. The girl shoved her small hand inside the bag and grabbed several balloons.

Julia walked down the stairs. Melody wasn't in her room, and Steve wasn't in their room, so she decided to check downstairs.

She could hear their voices arguing back and forth. "Bring me that, Melody," she heard him say.

"No," their daughter giggled.

Melody ran away from Steve; her little feet could be heard hitting the floor with every step.

Melody ran out of the kitchen into the living room where Julia was. "Mama," Melody yelled, seeing her mother.

"Why is your shirt wet," she asked her daughter. "And what's on your hair?" She looked at Melody's brown hair a piece of her hair was stiff.

Melody extended her arms toward her, and in one of her hands she had a handful of balloons of different colors.

Julia picked her up. "What do you have there," she asked. Her mother got distracted and didn't ask any more questions.

"Loons," she asked.

"Balloons," Julia repeated.

"What are those balloons for," she asked, looking at her daughter, who dropped the balloon one by one.

"Dada," Melody responded, pointing to where her father was.

Julia walked toward the kitchen. "Wait," Steve yelled, making her stop quickly.

"What happened, are you hurt," Julia asked worriedly, putting Melody down and holding her hand.

"I have a surprise for you, but it's not done," he responded from the kitchen.  

"Do you want me to wait in the living room," she decided to ask.

He took a few seconds to respond. Nothing was turning out how he had imagined.

There was a mess everywhere; he got lucky he was able to keep all of Melody's clothes on. The girl was close to taking off her diaper in the middle of the kitchen.

"I wanted to do something for your birthday, but it didn't turn out how I wanted," he said, walking out of the kitchen.

She held his hand and kissed his cheek close to his lips, "Can I see." He shrugged, "I tried my best."

Hand in hand, with Melody guiding them, they walked into the kitchen.

A stack of pancakes were on the kitchen counter. Next to the pancake was a half-eaten strawberry.

On the floor, there were seven red inflated balloons and three green uninflected balloons.

The small happy birthday banner was hanging backwards.

It was sweet of Steve to wake up early and decorate the kitchen for her birthday.

It was special for her what Steve did. She didn't need a big party or expensive gifts as long as her little family was with her, that's all she wanted.

"You did all of this for me," she asked.

He looked back at her. It was embarrassing this was the best he could do. "Melody helped," he responded.

𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞

𝙸𝚝'𝚜 𝙹𝚘𝚎 𝙺𝚎𝚎𝚛𝚢'𝚜 𝚋𝚒𝚛𝚝𝚑𝚍𝚊𝚢!