May 2020
George smiles at the camera as it turns on, sending a little wave to the stream. "Hey chat! How are we?"
He has his camera on a tripod in the corner of his guest bedroom; the space empty from where he's cleared it out of furniture and the random things originally stored in here. All that's left is the boxes of new furniture, and a pile of Nina's toys in the corner that is going to be kept in here when he's done redecorating.
She's asleep in his bedroom, and likely to be for a while since neither of them slept much last night after she accidentally banged her head on his desk and then refused to sleep for a good few hours afterward.
He had been stressing about it for a while, wondering if she'd been seriously hurt or this was something that could affect her long-term. But after he found no bruise, and realised the wood was soft and she hadn't even hit herself that hard, he figured she was just being dramatic.
So now he's put her down for a nap earlier than usual. She is likely to stay down, but he has the baby monitor next to him just in case anyway.
The chat seems excited by the change of scenery, and that he has his webcam on; a rare feat since his eyebags have darkened an excessive amount since her teething, and the fact his house is always messy and started to look more like santa's workshop with all of Nina's toys scattered around.
He titled the stream 'decorating my daughters bedroom!', so chat is filling up with the prospect of more 'Gee' lore after he announced her existence a few months ago and then decided to never bring her up again. And with all of the new fans coming in from the 'Dream SMP' (as it was recently nicknamed), they're all desperate to find out what they'd missed in his life considering a daughter was a pretty big deal.
With all of the creators that have been invited to join, and the amount of viewers they individually bring, the 'Dream SMP' has started to become seriously popular in the minecraft community, especially since Covid means that everyone doesn't have anything better to do but watch twitch streams.
The manhunts have also only become more popular, indirectly bringing the viewers of their 'Minecraft but' videos up as well. Dreams now on __ subscribers, while George gets to his first million in May .
George is having the time of his life on the server, all of their new friends seem to be exactly on his wavelength. Wilbur and Tommy, despite how.. unusual he found their humour at first, turned out to be pretty funny people. Despite the kid's obnoxious personality on stream, he turns out to be a fun person to hang out with, and despite how annoying he initially was George can't deny how talented he is in terms of drawing in new viewers.
Quackity is cool as well. Quackity's humour matches George's own perfectly and he's relieved that Wilbur's british as he finally has friends in his own time zone.
He's on his own today, but Dream promised he'd try to find the time to call him in an hour or so and join the stream.
"I'm sure you can guess what we're doing today." He gestures to the various IKEA flat-pack parcels around him, all ordered online due to the current pandemic, though he'd of much rather taken the trip to the shop for a day out. "It's been a long time overdue," he laughs, "but she's finally got enough toys that i can't go any longer without somewhere proper to store them otherwise I literally wouldn't be able to walk around my flat."
He has been putting this off for ages, and the new furniture has been sitting in here for long enough. He's very good at procrastinating, and after a month of putting it off he realised he was only going to do it if he had some kind of motivation. So streaming is a win-win for everyone; chat gets content, and he gets paid, plus incentive to get stuff done.
The room isn't overly large; about his height in length and width. It's big enough to house a crib, changing table, and some shelves for storage, but not big enough to feel big with all of the furniture in it. He's also ordered a fluffy rug for her to play on as a substitute for the rough carpet, and some wall stickers of a jungle to liven up the plain white walls.
That's normal for a nursery, right?
George has no idea what he's doing.
Dream's advice when they'd been on call shopping had been to go with the flow. He knows his daughter best, he's the one who's been raising her the past five months, what does he think she needs? regardless of what capitalist companies think.
When George had suggested that he should buy _ though, Dream had changed his ideology to go with the flow with supervision.
Its with this motivation that George also buys her some baby books for the shelves (for better late-night entertainment than random movies), a white noise machine (because she always sleeps best when he has the dryer on), and some harry potter movie posters (specifically ones of buckbeak, as it seems to be the only character she's enthralled by in the entire series).
"I'm going to start with the changing table." He thinks aloud. "It looks like the easiest, so."
The changing table is not easy. He struggles through every step, and when it's finally done almost two hours later he's ready to end the stream and go into his bedroom to curl up next to Nina on the bed. He needs to get this room done though, so he arranges the table in its position next to the door, and perseveres.
The crib looks like the most difficult, as it's a fancy one that his friends had pitched together for Christmas that he still hasn't put up five months later, so he decides to get it out of the way and get that done next. All the while he's making conversation with chat and humming along to the music playing in the background.
Half-way through the construction of the frame of the crib, Dream joins the call, and so he has the blonde to entertain chat for a while as he knuckles down and powers through the rest of the construction. And then after that he only has to build two simple bookcases and put up the wall stickers before the room is complete.
It looks.. like a nursery, and now everything's up he can see some of the things he's missing in the room. Like a mattress for the crib, and some cuter curtains than the plain white ones, and something to put in the corner by the window. But it's a nursery. It's a bedroom. For his daughter. In his house.
"Time for a full tour." He grins over the lump in his throat, plucking the camera from its stand. "So here's the door.." It makes Dream laugh as he shows the closed door, as there's nothing special about it, and George laughs too. "And then next to it is the changing table." He pans down to the few boxes of nappies he'd put on the shelves underneath it. "And baby shit, of course."
He turns to the next wall. "Then there's the window..." The curtains are closed so he doesn't show outside and dox his location, but on the sill there are a few plastic cars that Nina doesn't really play with to act like decorations, though the chat can't see them.
"And underneath it the little bookshelf that she can reach.." The shelving unit for all of her books is significantly shorter, so that she can get them herself when she eventually starts walking, though it's very far in the future. But the one opposite it holds some more random things he can't fit elsewhere, like formula and her blankets.
Then between them is the crib on the far wall, with the jungle stickers snaking up the wall behind it so a mildly creepy-looking monkey can watch her sleep. "And that's it!"
"The green of those leaves is so ugly against the blue-y grey of your walls." Dream snickers.
"Huh?" George squints at the wall. "Is it actually?"
"Sorry George, the stickers are gross." The blonde laughs.
"I think she'll like them." He protests. "She likes nature documentaries and can almost say the word lion." He brags.
"She can say lee-oo. It's not the same thing."
"Stop being annoying." George grumbles over Dream's loud wheeze. "Sorry, sorry. You're right George, your daughter is very talented."
"She is very talented!" He complains, and Dream bursts into laughter again.
He gasps though, and turns the camera away from the door as Luca pushes it open so that he doesn't show the rest of his flat. "Ohh the cat is here!" He proclaims as he shuts the door behind the feline. "He's intrigued by the new room."
"Show him!" Dream insists, so George does, and instantly chat begins to spam 'aww's. "Your cat is so cute George."
"I know."
Luca sniffs around for a bit, eyeing the new furniture warily, but seems pleased by the small rug George layed out as he scratches at it happily. "No.. Stop it! Dumb cat." George gently pushes him away, and Luca side-eyes him but stops and instead lies down on the rug to nap.
"Awwww." He can hear the grin in Dream's voice,
a/n
this chapter is unfinished, however the rest of the chapter would detail Luca coughing a worrying amount, Nina seeing the room and loving it, and its revealed that she can crawl and sit up alone