Chapter 30

It took forever to get the twins to settle down and take a short morning nap. Eventually, Andi moved them into the master suite and lay down on the bed with them. Bribery worked to a point, but the twins still wouldn’t settle down. “If you guys lay down and be quiet, you can watch poppa Paul and Mr. Donald go fishing this afternoon.”

“Can we go swimming?”

“After poppa and Mr. Donald are done fishing, maybe poppa can get the swimming dock ready for swimming and we can go swimming after supper.”

“Awww, we want to go swimming now.”

Andi tickled Sandy, “You silly! You can’t go swimming when poppa is fishing, he’ll catch you and Yi will have to cook you.”

“I will be delicious; Sandy will be yucky.”

“No, I will be delicious!”

“No, I will!”

“No, I will!”

“Girls, ENOUGH! Now settle down!” Andi used her ‘mom voice’ to some effect, and the twins stopped their sparring and they settled down, but it didn’t last. A nudge turned into a bump which turned into a shove which turned into a poke which turned into a swat. Pretend snores soon turned into giggles and shouts of “Hey! No fair!”

Andi tried to calm them, but as she tried, she wondered from where the children’s anthem “No fair!” entered their vocabulary. They don’t associate with other 5-year-olds yet, and she didn’t hear it on any of their limited television viewing. As their tussling evolved into a tickle fight to rival Andi and Macy’s recent tickle fight, order was established by the most powerful entity in the young girl’s lives: Poppa.

“What’s all this noise going on in here? You’ll scare away the fish.” Paul appeared at the cabin door and used his best ‘drill instructor’ voice, and the girls immediately stopped arguing and pretended that they were asleep. He didn’t shout, but he projected his words with enough force to make it sound like a shout. Paul crawled on to the bed and he and Andi snuggled the girls between them and soon, against their will, the pretend snores became soft breathing and the little girls gently fell asleep.

“How did you do that?” Andi whispered.

“It’s pretty simple. They still don’t know me yet, so they don’t know how far they can push me. Once they figure that out, we’ll both be in trouble.”

“Thank you, daddy.” Andi smiled and closed her eyes, safe and secure in the arms of the family she always dreamed of.

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