Troubles and Treats (Chocolate Lovers #3)(17)

The wails from the five girls grow louder, and we all wince at the sounds they are producing.

“Oh my God, make it stop!” Carter complains.

“GIRLS! Calm down!” Jim yells in an effort to be heard. Living in a house with three girls and a wife, he is quite the expert at the trials and tribulations of females. But even he looks shocked at the amount of noise that is coming out of them.

They begin crying even harder because they think Jim is yelling at them, which in turn produces snot, dry heaves, and honest to God foot stomping.

“No, no, no! Please stop crying!” Carter pleads with them, getting down on his knees so he is eye level with them.

“I WANT MY MOMMY!” Veronica shouts.

And thus begins a half hour chant of “I WANT MY MOMMY” from five little girls.

Instead of calling the wives and admitting to them that we have no idea how to control the situation, Carter calls his own mother. She tells him to bribe them with candy. Exactly six seconds after he hangs up the phone, each girl has a sucker in her hand and a smile on her face as they walk back to the toy room to play “Headless Barbie Princess Parade”.

The peace and quiet lasts exactly fifteen minutes.

I manage to get Billy changed with only a little bit of puke coming up my throat but then I actually throw up in the kitchen sink when I look down and realize I have some poop on my finger. Carter takes over at that point and gives Billy a bottle and rocks him to sleep. Gavin is sitting next to Carter on the couch playing his Nintendo DS when all of a sudden, more blood curdling screams start coming from the toy room.

“You have got to be kidding me with this shit!” Jim complains.

We start to get up to see what the problem is now when all five girls shuffle out into the living room in a giant clump. Upon closer inspection, once we are able to get them to finally stop screaming and ask them why they are walking around with their heads all touching in the middle and refusing to separate, we find out that unsupervised suckers with little girls is a no-no.

“Oh sweet Mary. What happened?” Jim asks them.

They all start talking at once, each one with a different version of the story and who is to blame. One says it had something to do with a giraffe and a cell phone, another says it was because there were birds flying around and the princess fell out of her tower, and yet another says the crayons were talking and told her to do it.

I am beginning to wonder if the girls are dropping acid in the toy room instead of playing nicely while enjoying suckers.

I guess the giraffe on the phone talking to the birds who buzz Cinderella’s tower while the red crayon stabs people is the reason there are currently five suckers stuck in five long piles of hair which in turn are all stuck together in one big ball of hairy stickiness. They look like a set of sextuplets joined at the head. It’s funny for a few minutes until we realize the only way to get the suckers out is to cut their hair. And there is no way you can cut a little girl’s hair without their mother noticing.

The three of us stand there staring at the girls in horror, wondering what to do.

“Claire is going to kill me. She’s been growing Sophia’s hair out since she was born. She only gets trims,” Carter says nervously as he walks up behind us with Billy still asleep on his shoulder. “Maybe I should call my mom again.”

“NO! We are not calling your mother. We are grown ass men and we can figure out how to fix this shit!” Jim scolds.

“FIX SHIT!” Molly yells.

“FIX SHIT, FIX SHIT, FIX SHIT!” all five girls chant.

“We’re out of our depth, man. We’ll never make it out of this alive,” I yell to Jim over the girls chanting.

“We just need a plan. Where is the closest wig store?” Jim asks.

“That’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard!” Carter argues.

I look at Billy in envy as he sleeps soundly on Carter’s shoulder through the chaos.

“Do you have a better idea, genius?” Jim asks him.

The three of us stare at each other blankly, not one single idea coming to mind that will ensure our wives don’t gouge out our eyes with spoons.

“Get me some scissors, a razor blade, a jar of peanut butter and some safety goggles,” Gavin says, coming up next to us. “I got this one.”

~

Jenny walks into our bedroom a few hours later to find me sprawled out on top of the bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Why are their Barbie heads hanging from our ceiling?” she asks as she climbs into bed next to me and rolls over onto her back.

“Well, Gavin decided all the other Barbies needed a warning. He figured if they saw what happens to Barbies that disobey, they’d think twice about putting Ken in a frilly pink tutu and purple stilettos during a Barbie parade.”

We stare in silence at the twenty little plastic heads affixed to the ceiling by their hair with scotch tape.

“Where are the kids?” Jenny asks.

“They’re both in bed. It was a long day.”

Before I even finish the sentence, Jenny is on top of me, straddling my hips and ripping off my clothes. It’s been so long since she took control like this, I’m momentarily stunned and don’t move. She has my pants and boxers off before I can blink and pulls a Hulk Hogan and rips my tee shirt right down the middle.

“Oh my God! That was my favorite shirt!” I yell, sadly glancing down at the torn lettering that used to say: Bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks – Ghandi.