Amelia stares at me and places her chubby little toddler hand over my mouth. Then she calls me Mum-Mum while frowning. Oh, maybe I can be called Auntie Mummy. It has appeal.

When Jennings comes through the door Amelia pumps her chubby baby legs in excitement as if she didn’t just see him minutes ago. “Dada!”

I hug her closer and take another whiff of her baby scent before she abandons me for the more alluring arms of her mum or dada. “Amelia, did you know that once upon a time your daddy fired me?”

“Good to see you as well, Daisy,” Jennings replies in his dry British way. I know he doesn’t mind my teasing though, as he’s smiling. “Glad to hear that joke never tires with you.”

“You’d think it would get old, yet I really enjoy bringing it up.” I shrug. I give him a hug with my free arm and Amelia nearly has a fit at being within arm’s reach of her dada without being passed to him, but I distract her by bringing her to the kitchen so the guys can get the luggage upstairs and Violet and Jennings can unpack. We still have one of the bedrooms set up as a nursery for whenever Violet and Jennings visit and I keep all their preferred baby items on hand so it makes it easy for them to visit without lugging a bunch of things. I have similar duplicates in Violet’s guest house for our visits to London.

I settle Amelia into a high chair in the kitchen—again, just something I keep on hand for Violet’s visits, since my own two are past that stage—and prep a snack for the kids. Shish-kabobs made up of alternating slices of banana, strawberries and grapes with a couple of marshmallows added to the skewer for the older two, and tiny cut-up pieces of strawberry, banana and grapes directly onto the tray for Amelia. The kids call them berry kabobs because there was a brief time in which they couldn’t quite manage the word ‘shish’ and it was sounding like they were asking for shit kabobs and yeah. Kyle is right, we adapt a lot.

“I love you, Mommy.” Kellan appears at my side, one arm slung around my thigh so he can hug my leg while I prep. His little head is tilted upward and his dimple flashes at me as he smiles and I’d probably give him anything he asked for because he’s the sweetest best boy in the world.

“Can I have jelly with my berry kabob?”

Except that. I’m not sure where this new jelly obsession is but I feel confident that no is the right answer. “You can have jelly tomorrow at breakfast on some toast or an English muffin, okay, buddy?”

He makes a funny face, scrunching up his nose, and I nearly cave but I don’t. And he doesn’t expect me to because I rarely cave once I’ve set the parameters.

“When it’s my birthday, can I have ice cream with jelly on it for snack?” he asks hopefully. I laugh and wipe my hands clean before ruffling his hair. He just had a haircut so it falls neatly between my fingers. His eyes are a darker blue like mine, but otherwise he’s all Kyle. His dimple, the shade of his hair, his nose. All Kyle. I’d be really put out by it since I did all the heavy lifting getting him here, but then Kinsley came along and evened things out in terms of resemblances enough to mollify me.

“Sure, buddy. I think that sounds like a very good plan.”

“What plan?” Kinsley has worked her way back to the kitchen.

“Plan Jelly Ice Cream!” Kellan tells her.

“What’s that mean?” Kinsley narrows her eyes, hands on her tiny hips as she prepares to conduct a full investigation in order to uncover the latest in gossip from her own kitchen.

Kellan takes both their plates to the table and proceeds to explain how they’ll be getting ice cream covered in jelly for a snack on his birthday. Then he attempts to convince Kinsley she should request the same for her birthday, so they can have it twice. Kinsley listens with rapt attention, eyes wide while chewing on a banana slice.

“I get to choose on my birthday,” she informs him when he’s finished, unruffled by the sales pitch for jelly ice cream. She’s headstrong, my girl. “I’m asking for jelly waffles.” Then they high-five each other to celebrate their conspiratorial overthrow of their parental jelly-rationing government.

I wipe Amelia’s hand clean of a banana slice she’s squished into oblivion and wonder how time flies so fast. I’m sure it was just last week my babies were this tiny, now they’re halfway to teenage-hood and conspiring against me. Humph.

Oh, wait… do I have baby fever? I’ve never really experienced baby fever before so I’m unsure. I’ve never had a chance to yearn for a baby, since I got pregnant with Kellan before I’d really considered motherhood and then Kinsley immediately followed in the way that babies do when you have a lot of sex and aren’t very careful.

We decided to be more careful after Kinsley—obviously, since we only have the two. But maybe it’s time to revisit the subject. We do have all these bedrooms, after all…

The doorbell rings again and Kinsley takes off. I don’t chase her because I can see the front door and Kyle’s got it. It’s the inflatable bouncy house from for the party tomorrow. Yeah, yeah. We’re those parents. But it’s not like we’re putting up a circus tent in the backyard and bringing in farm animals. Just the bouncy house. And finger-painting. And a dinosaur excavation station. And face-painting. But that’s it. Really. Besides the bubble station and the unicorn headband crafting area.

And yes, maybe two cakes is a bit of overkill, but they can’t help having birthdays so close and it’s not like they’d pick the same cake. A three-tiered unicorn cake for Kinsley and one shaped like a dinosaur for Kellan. It occurs to me now that Kellan asked for strawberry jam filling in his cake. Kinsley asked for rainbow sprinkle filling.

Fine. It’s all me. I just really adore celebrating their birthdays. It doesn’t feel like that long ago I thought I was going to be a single mother and here I am, a happily married mother of two. So I go a little overboard.

Which reminds me. I’ve left Kerrigan assembling the party favor bags in my office. I wipe Amelia’s face and make sure she’s not hiding any chunky bits of banana anywhere, then carry her to my office. My office is a dream and part of why I said yes to this house. It’s located next to the kitchen and has vaulted ceilings and French doors along the back wall overlooking the yard and pool. The kids aren’t old enough yet to play outside unsupervised, but I’ll be able to watch them from here when they are.

My office gets a lot of use because I still run my blogging businesses. Both of them. The travel site is mostly freelance writers I hire for new content, but I do a bit of those posts as well. But hiring freelancers has allowed me to expand my reach. For example, instead of one post about London from a singles’ point of view, I have content about Paris for families, Paris for couples, Paris on your own. I’ve focused on the cities I love most and then ensured there’s a relevant post for everyone.

My other blog is a mommy blog. I produce content targeting moms, focusing on pregnancy, parenting, recipes, activities, and a whole lot of fun parenthood memes. I now average a million monthly visitors to that site, which is a really big deal. The site requires so much new content I have two part-time employees who help me manage it and it just keeps growing. I’ve had some offers to sell the site, but I’m not interested. Not yet. I have more I want to do with it first.