Hunter liked food. Since his folks wouldn’t let him use the stove, he persuaded them to buy him an Easy Bake oven for his creations.

“You should try this one,” he told Forest in between bites of muffin. “I remembered the sugar this time, and it’s a lot less crunchy.”

“Um, thanks,” Forest said. “I think I’m going to have a can of soup.”

“I’ve been planning on what to do with my math homework,” Forest said while he slurped. “I tested out of arithmetic, but now I’m stuck in algebra, and they told me that nobody does Calculus until high school at least. So I was going to tell my teacher –“

He stood up suddenly, looking surprised. “I was supposed to do something wasn’t I?”

“Wow. I was thinking so hard that I didn’t even notice I had to go! I’ll make a note to check before dinner.”

“Yeah,” Hunter said, looking from the puddle to Forest’s bemused face and back again. “You do that. Go pee before dinner.”

Forest gave his brother a hard stare across the table. “This never happened. I mean it.”

Hunter shrank. “Right. Don’t know what you’re talking about. Why don’t I go run you a bath?”

But no sooner had Hunter turned on the bath water than the hot water knob came off in his hand. The fountaining leak got all over everything.

“This always happens,” Hunter said forlornly.

“Let your mom fix the tub when she gets home,” Zahra said. “I used to do that sort of thing, but now she’s the up and coming technician in this house. Why don’t you pick out a story, and I’ll read it to you.”

Hunter picked out the one about the dryad defending her forest from the builder who wanted to cut it down. It was his favorite story, and he never tired of listening to it. Listening was easier than reading it himself. He still had trouble with some of the words.

Veronica came home to find her quietest child curled around her pillow, smiling at some happy dream. She sighed. “Zahra could have used her own bed.”

Sky woke up in the middle of the night. “Daddy? Why are you sleeping in Hunter’s bed? Where’s Mom?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Charles whispered back.

———-

Stop the presses, Sara! I got February into the game. It turned out the alternate installer was throwing errors, but it was actually working after all. I even got February’s custom hair. So if you haven’t wasted a bunch of time making a new version for me, forget about it. If you have, well, sorry about that :-p

This is a bit disjoint. I’m trying to assemble some episodes from the pics I took of the kids. Some later events resolve themselves better.

It turns out that Sky is underrepresented in childhood. I think that’s going to remedy itself during teenagerhood, since she’s a Virtuoso who is *not allowed to play any instruments* while a child. Ugh. These people have clearly never heard of the Suzuki Method. Or, really, actually looked at a school music program. I started at age 11 with the viola, and that was kind of late.

Sigh. More peeing. There was a lot of peeing in the first few days of the triplets’ childhood. Yes, Forest is Absent Minded, and Hunter is Clumsy :).