Marriage is Murder

"Come on, Jack. Crawl smaller. Shall I shrink you, then? As for the children, Max doesn't really mind," Kate said. "He minds more when he thinks you lot are taking care of them all wrong. He believes if you just let him do it, they'd be fine."

"If we let him do it, they'd be eating kibbles and using sandboxes," Michael said sarcastically.

"You'd be surprised what a good father he can be. He spent a lot of time with Dakota when she was little."

"The food thrower," Michael said sarcastically.

"He didn't teach her that," Kate laughed. But he did probably help create that love of adventure in that child. I bet I'm not the only one that remembers all the time she crawled after him behind the couch."

She watched one of the boys looking for Max behind the couch, and Max jumped onto the back of the couch and simply looked down behind the sofa, watching the boys looking for him.

"It looks like he's managing just fine," Edward laughed.

"He's quite fond of babies," Kate said.

"Well, that's a good thing. This house doesn't have any shortage of them," Michael said.

Jess chuckled and nodded as Jack came out and looked at Kate "Their moving too fast" he said and chuckled seeing Max on the back of the couch he shook his head and moved to sit with Jess, Brant moved to head back to the lab and his books. Jim looked up from his paper that he had found and was sat reading quietly.

"If they don't do, they don't learn" he said softly and popped a sweet into his mouth as he looked at them all.

Abbey seemed to struggle with feelings of fear all day. She seemed to be alright as long as she was with someone, and as long as they kept her distracted. But when it came to being alone, or if there was a loud noise or if there was something out of the ordinary, she seemed to become exceptionally frightened.

It was unnerving for Khaat. She went upstairs and got into her mother's divination things and started to try to find out what Abbey had been seeing.

Kate found her working upstairs in her room.

"Are you sure you should be doing that?" Kate asked her gently.

"If my daughter is seeing something that frightening, and if it involves my children, I want to know what sort of danger they're in," she said.

"You don't know that it does involve her. It was a dream of a four year old. She's not trained. She's not come into her real skills yet. You don't have any way of knowing anything," her mother said. "And the error rate of any sort of dreams of a child seer are extraordinarily high. All you're going to do is stress yourself when you shouldn't be. If you really want divination work done, then let someone else do it."

"If I have reason to be afraid, I want to know why," she said.

"Are you sure?" Kate asked. "Sometimes it doesn't change a damned thing even by knowing."

"If I don't look, what do I do?"

"Be her mother," Kate said supportively. "Comfort her. Focus on her and on taking care of yourself and the babies. Let the rest go. You're as well protected as your father can design. Maybe you don't need to go monster hunting unless you know there is a monster."

Jess saw Kate leave not long after Khaat and sighed she knew Khaat wanted to help Abby be safe and happy but as she had been told it could be nothing so she left it alone. Though inside she was hoping it was nothing. Standing she stood up and moved to Khaat's room where she could hear Kate and Her talking.

"She's right, its what we're here for, to check things out when you can't, to do the dirty work that you can't yet." she told her but stayed by the door so not to intrude on Kate and Khaat's moment too much. "Sorry, I over heard as I came up the stairs" she said softly.

"You're right, though," Kate said to Jess. "All the divination in the world, even if you were sure you knew what was going to happen step by step, it might change nothing. Stop living your life in fear. Trust your staff." She took the crystal pendulum from her and cleaned up the other things. "Enough. You're stressing yourself when you don't need to.

"Let me change the subject for you for one moment. You're less than a month from Easter, and...."

"Easter?" Khaat frowned. "Who can think of Easter when...."

"You'd better," Kate said firmly. "You're going to have very precious little time to prepare anything. And you're going to be recovering from having twins. Not only that but you're going to have seven children of your own to buy Easter clothes and gifts for. And that's just the start. And they're old enough this year to understand bunnies and eggs and candy. I suggest you give it some thought. That does come up before any of the birthdays."

"Can't Angus just bake some pink cookies?" Khaat moaned.

"He can't, and you know it," Kate laughed.

"I have no ideas whatsoever," Khaat sighed. She looked at Jess. "You usually have some ideas. Got any?"

Jess chuckled and nodded " ow I do and its got Jack and a pink bunny suit" she said grinning ear to ear. " he could dress up and hide the eggs around the house " she said looking to Kate " I'm almost done with the suit just got the tail to add, he's not going to like me for it but " she shrugged " he can lump it " she said " while he's doing that the kids could decorate boiled eggs, pain them with sparkly bits and such" she said. " though we could do this out side if the weathers warm" she suggested but then frowned " hum..maybe not with everything that's gone on until we know the perimeters safe"

"My yellow ducky outfit suits him better," Khaat said, remembering changing him into a little yellow duck.

"A nice new spring outfit for every child," Kate said. "And a few new spring toys."

"They have thousands of toys," Khaat said.

"Well, yes and no. Have we bought thousands? Yes. But they also are very good at breaking them too," Kate said. "And an Easter egg hunt would be fine. We can manage to keep a bit of the yard safe for them for that long. Khaat, is there anything in particular you want the house elves to fix?"

"Probably a ham dinner," Khaat said. "And sugar cookies. The cut out cookies Angus makes with the different colored sanding sugars on the top."

"No cheesecake?" Kate asked.

"I'll leave that up to him. I saw him looking at some rather over the top Easter cakes the other day in some magazines. He seems to have ideas of his own."

"I haven't picked out any new receiving blankets for the new babies," Khaat sighed.

"Brian has," Kate said. "I saw them. He wants you to be surprised, so he doesn't want you to see them yet. He's got good taste, though."

"Speaking of taste, I really could use the taste of some French roast about now," she yawned.

"Are you sure you should be drinking coffee?" Kate asked.

"A wee bit won't hurt," Khaat said.

Jess nodded and chuckled " ow I forgot about that " she said then stood listening to them both seeing Khaat looking tired she accioed a tray of coffee from the kitchen Jack ducked as if flew past him and up the stairs.

" Khaat must want a cup of coffee, Jess doesn't like French roast" he said and saw Jim chuckle and nod

" must be planning something for easter" he said and Jack looked suprised. " yep already" Jim said and Jack groaned.

" aw now I know what that pink suit was for...a bunny" he paused and looked at Jim who laughed" shes going to make me dress up as the you know who" he said Jim chuckled.

" its for the kids Jack " he said and Jack shrugged as he smiled feeling for the kids he would do it.

"You ought to let Michael make each of them an enchanted Easter basket. You and Brian used to have great fun with them," Kate said.

"Oh, I forgot about those," Khaat said.

"Michael used to buy Khaat and Brian a new wicker basket every year. They were lovely handpainted ones in brilliant colors. Then he would put a little charm on them that lasted all day on Easter Sunday," Kate said. "The baskets would grow four little legs and would run about after Khaat and Brian all day long. It was actually very practical during the Easter egg hunts to have the baskets run along beside them. They could gather twice the eggs, and if they fell out of the baskets, the baskets just scooped them right up again."

"It was always sad when the charm wore off though," Khaat said.

"Only because you wanted to keep them all as pets," Kate said. "But they were a bloody nuisance if the charm lasted longer than that. They wanted to scoop up everything in the house small enough to fit in the basket."

Jess chuckled as she listened to them as they talked about keeping a section of garden safe for the kids she nodded. "Thats not a bad idea, now thats theres more of them," she said " I can get Jim to fetch some baskets from diagon alley, the kids could paint them the night before, " She suggested " Would keep them occupied. "She added just as the tray reached the room she took it and laid it on the table. Poring a cup of coffee she walked over to Khaat and handed it to her smiling.

Jack walked up behind Jess and heard her " I can do that yes though I think we have some baskets in the closet bu the back door I remember seeing some, about two dozen I think , more than enough" he said looking at Khaat and Kate.