cute things :: hadley

"Who's the prettiest baby in the whole wide world?" Remy cooed to twenty month old Mollie. Mollie giggled at her and answered in the sweetest voice Remy had ever heard, "Me!"

"That's right!" Remy told her, rubbing her nose with Mollie's. "Mollie's the prettiest baby in the whole wide world."

She'd just gotten Mollie up from her nap, and now she was carrying the toddler out to the living room where Hadley was currently seated at the piano, filling the house with beautiful music. Beautiful music for their beautiful lives with their beautiful daughter. Ah. It seemed like life had just been getting steadily better, day after day, once the war had ended, and it didn't look like it'd stop anytime soon. In a few months they'd be getting married, and then they'd live the rest of their lives together. The most attractive family in all of Amelia.

"Oh, Daddy!" Remy sing-songed as she entered the room. "A little cutie pie has awoken from her slumber!"

Hadley paused in his playing and smiled when he heard Remy enter the room with their little girl. She was over a year and a half now, and learning new words every day (her first word had been "Dada", which Hadley never let Remy forget). Though being a parent could be tedious sometimes, he found the experience of his baby daughter learning about the world around her fascinating.

"Where's my Moll Doll?" he asked, turning around on the piano bench.

A little voice answered back, "Me! Me, Daddy!" and Hadley got up and held his arms out for Remy to pass him the baby. When he had her (she was getting big!), he carefully ran his thumb across her cheek. She reached up and did the same thing to him with her little hand, just much less carefully and gently.

"Did mean Mommy wake you up from your nap?" he asked teasingly.

"Yep!" Mollie said simply to her dad. She leaned over and banged her hand on the piano keys, and squealed, "Music!"

Remy laughed out loud at the squirming baby in Hadley's arms. Mollie loved mimicking her dad on the piano, and enjoyed beating the keys with her chubby little hands and fingers. Remy came over and slid onto the piano bench next to her favorite clio. "One day maybe you will play a duet," she laughed.

Hadley laughed too, wincing a little bit at the cacophony. He situated Mollie in his lap at the piano and took one of her little hands. "Look, Mollie, like this," he said, taking her hand and having her hit each key in a normal scale. "Music. Yaaaay."

"Yay music!" she repeated, pulling her hand away and banging randomly on the piano again.

"She's a natural," Hadley declared. He hoped as she got older she would develop a real interest in music and let him teach her how to play.

Remy laughed again, "She sure is." It was so cute, how much Mollie loved her daddy. It made Remy love him that much more, seeing him through Mollie's eyes. Who would have ever pictured them as parents? Of course, now half of the other overloridians were pregnant now (copy cats) but Mollie would always be the cutest.

"Hold on," she said, jumping off the bench and walking over to the table where a camera sat. She picked it up and did whatever you needed to do to get the Amelia camera ready. "Say cheese!" she instructed. Mollie was trained to smile brightly whenever someone said that, and sure enough, she looked up and gave the cutest, happiest smile.

While Mollie may or may not have been looking at Remy's camera with the cutest, happiest smile, Hadley wasn't, because he didn't know where the camera was and he felt stupid sitting there smiling like an idiot at nothing. He didn't usually smile for photos unless Remy got annoyed and made him.

"Cheeeese," Mollie said sweetly. With Hadley's luck, she would end up interested in photography instead of music.

After hearing the shutter of Remy's camera click about five thousand times, Hadley finally scooped Mollie up in his arms and stood up. "We should do something," he decided right then and there. "Let's go do something somewhere."

Remy frowned when Hadley scooped the baby up. She hadn't been finished capturing the cuteness that was her family. Oh well, there would be plenty of time for that later. She slung the camera's strap around her shoulder and walked over to Hadley and Mollie.

"What about the P-A-R-K?" she asked him. Mollie loved running around the playground and that would be a good spot to get some cute photos. Mollie also loved ice cream, and the park had a cute little shop that served all sorts of flavors.

"Hm, I dunno, the park wasn't really what I had in mind," Hadley said without thinking. The park was kinda boring. Unfortunately, since he said the P word without thinking, Mollie immediately started squirming in his arms.

"Park!" she said excitedly. "Go park!"

"Well...shit. Okay, park it is," Hadley said, trying to keep a grip on the baby that was now trying to free herself.

Remy couldn't help the laugh that escaped her throat. She was curious what he'd had in mind, but now that he'd gone and said park it didn't matter anyway. Not unless they wanted a disappointed toddler, that was.

Remy and Hadley put on their jackets and then Remy helped Mollie into her cute little red one that was covered with ladybugs. She pulled a little hat onto Mollie's head, too, before taking her into the front yard and loading her into the stroller. "Ready for the park my little ladybug?"

Hadley pulled on his jacket and grabbed his cane while Remy got Mollie ready. He walked next to Remy as she pushed the stroller. It was a brisk day, but not too incredibly cold. Mollie obviously wasn't bothered, as every so often she would cheerfully pipe up with a few words or, more often, some gibberish.

"I hope there's not too many other clio there," he said to Remy as they walked. He supposed it was good for Mollie to interact with other toddlers, but he found other parents incredibly annoying more often than not. They just looooved giving unsolicited advice.

"Hopefully not," Remy audibly agreed, although she didn't fully mean it. It was fun to watch how advanced Mollie was compared to the other kids, and Remy sometimes enjoyed giving unsolicited advice to their parents. Also, their outings had become suddenly more newsworthy once Mollie had been born, and Remy loved seeing her family in articles in the paper or magazines.

When Hamy and Moll Doll got to the park Remy was slightly disappointed to see that they were alone. "Looks like we have it all to ourselves!" she announced as they approached. "Yayyy!" Mollie screamed, not about being alone, but just because she could see the swings. "Swing swing swing!"

"Thank gods," Hadley said when Remy announced that they were alone. Mollie agreed with him and screamed excitedly, demanding to be taken to the swings. He went to go get Mollie out of her stroller, but Remy apparently had the same idea because he bumped right into her. "Shit, sorry. Do you have her? I can take her if you want." He liked being the one to hold and carry Mollie when he could.

Remy laughed when she collided with Hadley. "You can take her," she told him. Mollie was reaching for him anyway. After Hadley picked her up, Mollie did that cute hand-brush thing Remy loved, where Mollie lovingly caressed Hadley's cheek and jaw. Remy reached for her camera, wanting to get a picture of the sweet, candid moment, when Mollie said, "Shit," in the cutest, most innocent voice.

Remy paused for a second, leaving the camera at her side and staring at her adorable baby gazing lovingly at the dad she'd just sworn at. Remy couldn't help but laugh, "She doesn't just pick up the cute stuff, apparently."

Hadley paused for a second, before bursting out laughing. Mollie laughed too, which just made him laugh harder. Few things were funnier than a baby swearing. "Oh my gods," he said, calming down while Mollie continued to giggle. The juvenile part of him wondered what else he could get her to say, but he held back. He was sure she'd learn new and exciting words on her own just by continuing to imitate him in the future. "What a smart girl you are Moll Doll, learning new words every day."

Remy stifled her laughter in enough time to get some of the most beautiful shots of Hadley and Mollie laughing together. She hung the camera back at her side by the time Hadley had stopped, and walked back over to them.

"The smartest," she agreed. She booped Mollie on the nose with her pointer finger. Mollie didn't care about being the smartest however, because she'd caught sight of the swings again and started squirming. Her pudgy baby hand pointed at the rounded baby swing.

"Daddy swing!" Mollie demanded.

"Damn, you really do take after Mommy," Hadley said to Mollie when she demanded he take her to the swings. He half-hoped she would repeat his 'damn,' but she was now single-mindedly focused on the swings. He readjusted the squirming Mollie into one arm so he could use his cane with the other and headed that direction.

It was a little bit of a process, finding the swing set, setting his cane somewhere where he'd remember (or more likely forget and have Remy or Nila point it out later), finding the swing itself, getting Mollie into it properly. She was clearly getting impatient with the whole thing, becoming increasingly whiny in her demands to be swung. But once she was finally situated and swinging gently back and forth, she calmed down and started to giggle again. What a little mood-swinger. Ha ha. Mood-swinger. Oh gods, he really was a dad now.

"We can't help that we know what we want," Remy told him simply, but she smiled. She knew it was simply a toddler's way to be pushy, but she did like to imagine that Mollie would end up just like her.

Remy left the baby bag and stroller next to where Hadley put his cane, and then followed him over to the swing.

"Whee!" Remy said as Hadley started to push Mollie in the swing. "Whee!" Mollie repeated, laughing as she swung through the air. Remy walked over to the front of where Mollie was swinging. "Mama pushes Mollie this way, and Daddy pushes her that way!" she said, as she and Hadley pushed the swing back and forth.

So Hadley and Remy pushed Mollie on the swing until she got bored of it (which incidentally was long after Hadley got bored pushing her, but such was life with a baby), then they took her to a few more of the playground fixtures until eventually she got tired and passed out. They bundled her back up in the stroller and returned home.