Revision (COMPLETE)

Chapter 30

Chapter 30

"Mommy!"

Having a colicky newborn constantly strapped to her and a toddler that fought for her attention by clambering on her leg, left zero time for writing.

Life didn't even leave time for thinking, let alone planning out Delaney's next novel and actually putting the pen to paper, or fingers to keys as it would be in her case. Whenever she had a spare moment of peace, which usually happened in the shower, she fantasized about her next set of fictional characters and where their story would take them. And no offense to her own two beautiful children, but it would probably be a story that included grown-ups doing grown-up things with no interference from children. A small amount of escape was exactly what she required these days. And as for her finished novel, well, she'd sort of dropped the ball on that too. During some well-crafted downtime, she'd found a website that directed her toward finding an agent for her manuscript, that was if she ever wanted to think about it being published. She sent out copy after copy of her proposal, called a query in the writing world, and heard back with rejection after rejection. She never understood how one could properly represent a ninety-five thousand word novel in a two hundred and fifty word letter, so the rejection wasn't really all that surprising. Frankly, she was beginning to think it was all a grievous waste of time. So, these days when she had a spare minute, she spent it napping, reading a book or even neurotically checking her email on the off chance one of her letters had struck a nerve with someone, somewhere.

Just this morning, in fact, she had been trying to steal a couple of moments to write out a scene that came to her as she was lying in bed. It was a perfectly crafted setting with spot on dialogue, and she could feel the emotion teaming between the characters. However, somehow the mood was lost as shrieks rang out through the house and the baby, still comfortably nestled against her chest in the carrier, had began trying to suckle on her t-shirt.

Declan, her first-born son, was positively over the moon about his new baby sister Aislinn. That was until he realized that Aislinn wasn't going anywhere and had indeed become a permanent fixture in their house. And since his moment of clarity he'd been backpedaling so fast that Delaney was afraid he was going to revert all the way back to infancy, leaving her with twins. Since Aislinn's arrival he'd taken to giving up all usage of the toilet, and since Delaney refused to put an almost three-year-old boy back into diapers she had to contend with quite a mess, daily. Constant temper tantrums had become the norm and her almost preschooler was now staring at her wide eyed, with a pacifier in his mouth as he firmly attached himself to her pant leg.

"Unnd jjsd," he said. He stared at her awaiting his answer, big blue eyes expectant.

"Declan, I told you, mommy can't understand what you're saying when you have that binky in your mouth. Do you need to go potty?" she asked hopefully.

He plucked the binky out of his mouth with a sucking sound. "I did."

You've got to be kidding me! She silently screamed. "Mommy told you, Declan, big boys go on the toilet, like daddy."

"I'm not a big boy, I'm a baby like Aislinn," he said. He forced his bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout.

She surveyed the damage to find his pants soaking wet, and his socked feet standing in a small puddle on the tile floor. She groaned. "Declan, you are not a baby. You're a big boy. Do you want mommy to have to put diapers on you again?" She looked at the stubborn toddler hoping that would do the trick. She was beginning to get to the end of her rope.

"Yes."

It backfired, great. She closed her eyes for a brief second, taking a deep breath. Now what? Maybe she should've been forced into taking a child psychology course before she'd been allowed to have any children. "Don't you want to go visit Grandma Rose today? I know she doesn't want you going pee pee on her floor."