Page 177 of Babies for the Big Shot

“Uh… gentlemen, just… uh… give me a moment, please,” he says, suddenly desperate. Then he slaps the laptop shut. “I’ll just… be right back.”

Evelyn also chuckled from the other room. Lucky for her, Lily and Ethan are being angels… for now.

“Come on. Really?” Nick’s voice is muffled as he tries to untangle Samuel from the mess. “I can’t even go a week without some disaster happening.”

I stand up, still laughing, but then pause. I look at Nick, holding Samuel as though he’s holding a ticking time bomb, and feel a little guilty for laughing so hard.

He’s trying to be the calm, cool CEO in the middle of a diaper apocalypse, and it’s working—just not for much longer.

“You know, you’ve got to stop scheduling Zoom meetings during peak diaper explosion hours,” I say, walking toward him. “We need to set some ground rules for working from home with triplets.”

“Ground rules?” Nick looks at me incredulously, his free hand gesturing vaguely toward the mess. “What do you propose? No crying during meetings?”

I can’t help it, I snicker. “Well, yeah. But also, maybe no poop explosions, either. That might help.”

“Oh, perfect,” he replies sarcastically, trying to adjust Samuel, but the little guy just keeps wiggling. “Maybe we can also set a rule about no one else in the house interrupting my meetings with ridiculous demands, like ‘feed me’ or ‘I have to poop right now.’”

I laugh, but there’s a fondness in it. A moment of normalcy in the chaos. This is us now, and we’re figuring it out, disasters and all.

“You know,” I say, “I was thinking, maybe we could set a wedding date. Maybe in… oh, I don’t know, five years? That sounds realistic, right?”

Nick gives me a mock glare. “You’re going to leave me with a whole company to run, three crying babies, and an unplanned wedding? Nice.”

“Well, we could just do a Vegas elopement,” I suggest, teasing. “I’ve heard they have great chapels. Maybe we could even get a package deal with the diaper service.”

“That’s actually not a bad idea,” Nick says, his eyes narrowing mischievously. “We could have our wedding right after the babies’ diaper changes.”

“Perfect!” I laugh, sitting on the arm of the couch and throwing my arms up. “We’ll get married in the living room, with a backdrop of baby formula stains. I’ll even wear the bathrobe you’re currently sporting… if you promise not to wear it to our first dance.”

Nick looks at me, then Samuel, then back to the screen where his meeting attendees are probably wondering if he’s still alive. “I promise, I won’t wear the bathrobe… but only if you promise not to throw up on your dress before the ceremony.”

I chuckle. “Deal. But only if we have cupcakes. Big ones. With lots of frosting.”

“Deal,” he says as Samuel lets out a squeak, and then, finally, a triumphant burp that somehow makes the whole mess worth it.

“I guess we’ve got wedding planning down to a science, huh?”

“Oh, yeah,” I say, grinning. “It’s all in the details, baby.”

And with that, the chaotic noise of parenthood rings louder than the Zoom call as I pick up the baby wipes. It’s messy, it’s ridiculous, and it’s exactly how we like it.

Epilogue

NICK

SIX MONTHS LATER

Well…I wouldn’t exactly call thistraditional.

If you had told me a year ago that I’d be standing here today, surrounded by our three children, an overeager dog, and a series of increasingly ridiculous mishaps, I would have smiled politely and thought you were crazy.

But somehow, here we are.

Jonah, my best man, is standing beside me. I’m not sure if he’s actually paying attention to the ceremony or if he’s just trying to juggle a baby bottle in one hand and keep Meatball from licking his shoes.

Meatball, for his part, is wearing a bowtie, but he’s too busy monitoring the proceedings to actually be useful. As if on cue, he trots up to me with the kind of self assuredness that suggests he’s the one running the show.

I’m beginning to suspect he knows more about weddings than I do.