An inconvenient surprise

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One year and some-odd months later...

"Masha, if you're going to be right next to Adrienne, of course she's going to try to use you for support, you silly cat!"

"She can't understand you, Wednesday," Thing signed. "But yes, Masha should have figured that out by now. It's not like this is Adrienne's first attempt at walking. Or her first time using Masha for support, even."

"Sasha is looking much smarter right now," Tyler said, pointing to where their younger cat was curled up and watching the scene down below from the safety of a stack of boxes. Or maybe she was just taking a nap, it was hard to tell. "Out of reach of the grabby hands."

"Eventually Masha is going to be there too, I bet." Wednesday kneeled down on the carpet, watching Adrienne trying to balance herself on the furniture (and their older cat) before taking a shaky step forward. "Masha, you're just getting in the way now."

"A cat getting underfoot? You don't say." Tyler grinned, then hopped to his feet at the knock on the door, making sure to give the trio on the floor a wide berth. "Your parents are here!"

"Oh, good." Wednesday glanced up as Tyler answered the door, letting Gomez and Morticia in. "Adrienne! Look who's here!"

Adrienne looked up and lit up at once, falling to her hands and knees so that she could crawl over faster. "Nana! Abuleo!"

Morticia grinned, handing a large pot to Tyler so that she could bend down and scoop Adrienne up. "Hello my little spider! How's my little rain cloud doing today?"

"She's working on walking again," Wednesday told her mom, pushing herself up. "She's almost got it, I think."

"She'll pick it up soon enough, and then you'll never be able to contain her." Morticia beamed down at Adrienne as she held her tight. "And then comes the climbing, and then nothing is safe."

Tyler laughed. "Yeah, you've told us before. We're trying to baby-proof as we unpack, but it's hard."

"Yes, well, that's why we came over today, isn't it?" Gomez grinned down at Adrienne, then returned his attention to Tyler and Wednesday. "I see that you've gotten some stuff unpacked already."

"Just the furniture, really. And a couple pots and pans." Tyler headed into the kitchen to set the pot down, then returned to the front room to take the bag that Gomez was carrying. "I'm glad we got a company to help us with the move. We would have been spinning in circles if we had tried to move everything ourselves. Do you want a tour first?"

Gomez and Morticia agreed eagerly, and so they started with the living room/dining room area. It was larger in their three-bedroom apartment than it had been in the two-bedroom, which was nice.

It gave Adrienne more space to tumble around, and once she was joined by another sibling (whenever that happened), then there would be space for them to play together without taking up the entire floor. The kitchen was larger, too, which Gomez and Morticia heartily approved of.

"It's larger than ours, which will be nice for you," Morticia said, looking around. "And it's open to the living room, so you can watch Adrienne while you cook. I love all of the counter space."

"I can't wait to start cooking in it," Tyler admitted. "I'll be able to have things cooling on the counter and still be able to cook without bumping into them. Or Wednesday and I can cook together and have plenty of space. It's probably one of the best things about this apartment."

"It's lovely," Morticia told her. "It's so nice that your realtor had these apartments as well, so that you didn't need to do a lot of searching."

Tyler could only nod in agreement. There had been hardly any work involved in getting the new apartment, really.