Game Changer

Chapter 19

"How long have you been up?" I heard Nadia ask me.
"Good morning beautiful!" I said. "I think i've been up for an hour or so."
"Only an hour?" She asked, looking around. "You got some things brought in, I see."
"I actually just brought in the last of it, everything is in now. So all we need to do is go buy everything else we need, and we'll be good to go!" I said. "You want to help me bring everything to the kid's rooms?"
"Of course." Nadia replied. "Let's bring the changing tables first, we can get those out of the way."
•••
Once we had everything in their proper rooms, we decided we would sit down for a couple of minutes. I did love how everything was on one floor in this house. The basement was there if needed, but with four little ones, it wasn't needed.
"Daddy?" I heard, and before I could respond, I heard little feet running across the floor and Piper came running in the kitchen. "I want ketchup!" She exclaimed when she came in.
"You want ketchup?" I asked, confused as to why she would even say that.
"I want ketchup!" She said again, crossing her arms.
"I guess we're going to have to go buy some ketchup, aren't we?" I said to Nadia, laughing.
"I guess we will!" She said.
"Do you want to go to the store when the babies and Owen wake up?"
"Store! Store!" Piper started shouting and jumping up and down.
"We have to be quiet until they wake up, though. Right?" I whispered.
"Oh.. Shhhh!" Piper whispered back to me, giggling.
"It's almost eight, we should wake them up anyway." Nadia said. "Can you go give the babies a kiss, Piper?" She asked.
Piper happily ran off to the living room. She climbed up on her chair beside the play pin that the babies were in, and she kissed each one on the head. I followed her in and watched her. Ava woke up first, she opened her eyes pretty wide and just stared. When Asher woke up, he wasn't as happy. He started crying almost immediately.
Owen heard Asher crying and woke up. "Baby?" Owen said as soon as he woke up.
"Greg?" Nadia said without moving. "Did you hear that?" She asked. "Owen just said baby."
"Owen!" I said looking at him, smiling. "Who's this?" I asked him, pointing at Asher.
"Baby!" Owen said again, clapping.
Nadia picked him up, hugging him.
"My babies are getting so big!" She started crying. "Piper made a new friend yesterday, and Owen decided to start talking, finally."
Ava started to cry, too. I picked her up and I brought them both into the boy's room to change them. Piper ran behind me and Nadia brought Owen in. "I'll take the girls over to their room and get them ready." She said.
She put Owen on the floor and I handed her Ava. "Come on, Piper. Come help me get the baby ready!"
Owen crawled over to me and hauled on my leg. I picked him up and set him on the changing table beside Asher. "Are you going to help me?" I asked him. He nodded his head. "Okay, can you pass me a diaper?"
He turned around and grabbed one for me. He put it in the air and started saying "yay!" I clapped for him and changed Asher's diaper.
"Baby's all done." I said. "Owen's turn!"
Owen's face brightened. I put him on the floor, and then I put Asher into his bouncer. "Let's get Owen's bum changed!" I said, Owen went and grabbed me a bigger diaper and sat on the floor. I changed him and he started running around. I got an outfit out of the box with his name on it and got him all dressed. I got Asher an outfit, as well and dressed him.
"Ready to go to the store?" I asked Owen.
He started bouncing. I took that as a yes.
I picked up both boys and walked across the hallway to the girls room. "You ready?" I asked Nadia. She turned around and her face was red. She had obviously been crying. "What's wrong, my love?"
"I'm just thinking about how fast Piper and Owen have grown. It seems like they were just this age and I was a single mom."
I put Owen down by Piper and I put an arm around Nadia. I kissed the top of her head and squeezed her tight. "I love you, baby." I said to her.
"Baby!" Owen shouted. We both started laughing.
•••
We loaded everyone into the rental van and headed to the city. It was so nice to live in a place that wasn't right in the city, but was only fifteen minutes away. "I'll go get a cart to put these guys in." I said. I got out of the van and walked over to the shopping carts. I got the shopping cart seat cover out of the back of the van and put it in. I got Owen out and put him in the seat. Piper got in the bottom part and we put the babies in our carriers so we could just wear them.
"You still want ketchup?" I asked Piper.
"Ketchup! Ketchup!" She kept shouting over and over.
•••
We got Piper's ketchup and a couple of other things and headed to the furniture store.
When we walked in, we were overwhelmed by sofa's, chairs and love seats. We looked around for about ten minutes and couldn't find anything we really liked. I turned around to look for Piper and I didn't see her. "Piper!" I yelled, panicking just a little bit.
"Daddy!" I heard, and then I heard giggling. I knew she was close, so I just stayed where was. I turned in a circle, and when I looked back behind the way I had been walking, she popped up from a grey sofa. I walked over to get her and she sat down on it. "Nadia, come look." I said.
"Oh no, what did she do?" Nadia asked me, worried.
"She didn't do anything, but I really like this sofa." I said. It was a grey sectional sofa with cushions that matched that had yellow flowers with black and white accents and two more cushions that just had yellow dots with black and white circles around them.
They were perfect. They matched the living room perfectly. "Good job Piper!" I said. "But don't ever run away again!" I told her with a serious look on my face. "Running away is bad!" I said.
The man working in this area was pleased with our selection. He brought the tag up to the front.
"Is there anything else you need?" He asked.
"Yeah, we need a bed. Or a couple of beds. We're thinking a bunk bed for this little lady and we would like a king bed.
"Well, we just sold out of bunk beds, actually. And we have one king bed left. It's not the best, but it still is pretty nice." He told us.
"Well, maybe we'll come back some other time for the beds." I said. "We'll just take the sofa for now."
We paid for the sofa and we all piled into the van. The sofa was going to be delivered later.
•••
On our way back home, Nadia was looking on Pintrest. When we went inside she started talking for the first time since we left the furniture store. "I found this DIY bed that we could make for Piper, and we could make one for Ava when she gets older, too!" Nadia said.
She showed me her phone and it was a playhouse loft bed with stairs from Ana White, it was perfect for Piper, especially because she normally sleeps with us so we didn't need to worry about her falling trying to get down without us there.
"I think we should do a DIY bed for ourselves, too. I saw this infinity bed on the Internet once, maybe we should make one of those. It's got the other bed around the bed. It's pretty neat, and it would be great for the kids to watch movies and sleep on."
"That is actually a really good idea." I told her. "But we should wait until the twins are a bit older. We can deal with a regular king bed for now, right?"
"I guess so!" Nadia said. "That does make more sense."
"Now, I'm going to find someone to build this bed. I don't have the skill to do that. I'm going to call Mike to see if he knows anyone."
I called Mike and he gave me the number for the man who built their deck. He built loft beds before and Mike had said that he shouldn't have any trouble.
I got off the phone with the builder and he said he could have it done in two weeks.
"That's great! I'm so glad he can do it." Nadia said.
We heard a vehicle out front of the house, so I went to the door. It was the people with our sofa.
I helped them carry it in while Nadia corralled the kids in the kitchen and they watched.
As soon as it was in and set up, Piper was right on top of it. She was so excited that it was home. "Do you want to go have lunch?" I asked her. We had to go somewhere else to eat because all we had was a microwave in the kitchen.
•••
After lunch we went and bought some tv's. One for the living room, one for our bedroom, and two small ones with just DVD players for the kids' rooms.
We got satellite for the living room and our bedroom, and let Piper pick out some DVD's.
We brought everything inside and brought everything to the rooms.
We set up the tv's and then we sat down. The kids were playing with their toys, the babies were sleeping, and it finally started feeling like home.