August 1, 6 AM
Hitomi wakes up to the sight of her wife sleeping peacefully beside her. Quietly, she gets up out of bed and heads down to wake up the girls. She smiles when she opens the door to their room and finds them both peacefully asleep. As she quietly walks towards their beds, Wonyoung stirs and instantly reaches out for her mama to pick her up.
“Mama?”
“Good morning Wonnie,” Hitomi said while cradling her youngest in her arms. “Do you know what today is?”
“Mommy birfday?”
“That’s right Wonnie! You wanna go with Ddaengie to wake up Mommy?”
“Mmm.” Wonyoung hummed her approval while snuggling into Hitomi’s neck.
With a light chuckle, she moved over to her oldest, and lightly shook her awake. Yujin instantly shot up and stretched her arms.
“Hi mama,” Yujin said with a smile on her face.
“Hi Ddaengie, you remember what’s so special about today?”
“Ooh, ooh! It’s mommy’s birthday, right?”
“Yep! She’s still sleeping, so let’s go wake her up?”
“Okay!”
So with Wonyoung in one of her arms, and Yujin holding her opposite hand, Hitomi brought the children up to Chaewon and her shared room. She laid Wonyoung next to the still sleeping Chaewon and led Yujin to Chaewon’s opposite side. Wonyoung instantly snuggled around her mom’s arm, and Chaewon stirred. Seeing this, Yujin quietly exclaimed “Happy birthday Mommy!” not wanting to wake up her little sister.
Wriggling her way out of Wonyoung’s grasp for a bit, Chaewon sat up and picked up Yujin, peppering her with kisses and bringing her in for a bone-crushing hug.
“Thank you Ddaengie!”
Looking over to Wonyoung, who was still laying down, eyes shut, Chaewon picked her up and said, “Hi Wonnie!”
“Happy… mommy… birfday...” Wonyoung said as she phased in and out of consciousness.
“Aigoo~ is Wonnie still sleepy?” Chaewon brings Wonyoung closer in a warm, tender embrace
“Mmm,” she responded into Chaewon’s shoulder.
As Chaewon placed a tender kiss on top of her youngest’s head, Hitomi said to her, “Chaewonnie, I’ll take Yujin to go down and make breakfast for us. You stay here with Wonyoung, okay?”
“Go ahead Hii, this little one looks like she needs more sleep anyways,” Chaewon replied, leaning back into the bed with Wonyoung into her bed. “Have fun with Mama, but don’t give her too much trouble, okay Ddaengie?”
Yujin nodded her head enthusiastically as her mama led her out the door and down the stairs. As the pair left her sight, Chaewon placed yet another kiss on Wonyoung’s head, and cradled her as she slept.
“Ddaengie be careful okay? The pans are really hot,” Hitomi warns Yujin, who’s standing on a chair, as she watches her mama fry eggs and bacon on the stove. Yujin stands patiently on the chair, watching the food slowly but surely get cooked. After a couple minutes Hitomi noticed Yujin start tapping her foot in anticipation, so Hitomi turned off the stove and took Yujin over to another part of the kitchen, taking halved oranges out of the fridge along the way. After opening up a cupboard and taking out an orange juicer (a/n: the manual kind, not the electric juicers; safety first kids), she turned to Yujin and asked, “You wanna make some orange juice Ddaengie?”
The look of confusion slowly turned into one of excitement as she nodded eagerly. Hitomi then took the time to teach Yujin how to use the juicer, showing her where to put the orange half, where to put her hand, and how to push down. After helping her through it a couple times, she made sure she could do it on her own, and then went back to finishing the bacon and eggs. After she finished with those, she made some french toast, 1 piece per person, and stood to the side as she watched her daughter work hard with the oranges. She smiled as she saw her push and squeeze every bit of juice she could muster out of each piece.
“Mama, help!” she heard Yujin exclaim when she found a piece of orange she couldn’t squeeze the juice out of, her strength dwindling. She quickly rushed to her aid and the mother-daughter pair finished making the orange juice. She put a lid on the container of freshly squeezed orange juice and placed the food and four empty cups on a tray. She handed the juice to Yujin, and holding the tray of food, she followed Yujin back up to their room to eat breakfast with Wonyoung and Chaewon.
As Hitomi enters the room, she’s met with the sight of Chaewon tickling Wonyoung. Chaewon has a mischievous look on her face while Wonyoung is laughing with a smile so bright, she could replace the sun.
“STOB MOMMY STOB”
Hitomi smiles hearing the pleas of their youngest and stands at the doorway with Yujin in front of her until Chaewon notices that food has arrived. After a minute or so, Chaewon finally takes her eyes off of her poor victim and sees her wife and oldest daughter standing at the door with food and orange juice. With an abrupt motion, she lifted Wonyoung into her lap as Hitomi laid the tray on the bed and took the juice from Yujin to place on the bedside table.
As the adults got situated on the bed, Wonyoung made her way over to Hitomi, who greeted her by saying:
“You missed me Wonnie?”
Wonyoung nodded in reply and said, “Mommy tickle,” with the cutest pout on her face. In response, Hitomi cocked an eyebrow at Chaewon, who in turn avoided eye contact to scoop Yujin onto her lap.
“Did you help Mama make the food?”
“Yeah! I made the orange juice!!”
“Did you do a good job?”
Yujin looked at her mama with a questioning look, because she never really heard whether or not she, in fact, did a good job. Hitomi smiled at her little assistant and said to her:
“You did amazing Ddaengie.”
“Mama said I did good!”
“Really? Good job Ddaengie!”
Chaewon places a quick kiss on Yujin’s head and they begin to eat. Hitomi and Chaewon would rotate between feeding themselves and the children in their laps. It’s a comfortable silence with the occasional Yujin antic, but all around a very peaceful start to Chaewon’s birthday. Once the plates are cleared of food and there’s no more juice to be drunk, Hitomi looks at Chaewon and says, “I’ll handle the cleaning and housework today, okay? You just stay in here and play with the kids, or even sleep if you need to. I’ll take care of everything.”
“Okay Hitoma, love you.”
Hitomi leans in for a short kiss and makes her way out with the empty cups, plates and juice container. Upon finishing washing the dishes, she whips out her phone and starts texting.
#ssamu-surprise-party
the wife: where are you guys
the wife’s sister: chae and i parked down the street like you told us to
the wife’s sister’s wife: i swear did yena just drive to the house
the wife’s best friend:sigh she did
the best friend: TURNING AROUND
the cousin’s wife: eun and i are across the street.
the cousin: nako’s asleep
the wife’s sister: so is minju
the wife: i just checked and all three of the girls are asleep, so you guys can come now
the wife: chaeyeon unnie, eunbi unnie and yuri, make sure your s.o.’s don’t ring the doorbell
the wife’s sister’s wife: gotcha
the cousin: roger
the wife’s best friend: on it
Hitomi opened the door to let in their friends and family, with Eunbi and Chaeyeon making a beeline straight for the guest rooms to let Nako and Minju sleep a bit more. The remaining adults get to work on setting up for their surprise party for Chaewon. Sakura put the cake down on the table, Yena and Yuri brought in Korean-style hot dogs (“Yes Hitomi, we got cheese ones too”), and Hyewon brought in the fried chicken she and Eunbi brought. On top of that, after making sure Nako was comfortable, Eunbi made some Kimchi fried rice to be eaten along with the other food they brought. As they finished setting up decorations and whatnot, Hitomi went upstairs to wake up Chaewon.
Chaewon stirred when Hitomi opened the door. “Babe, I need you downstairs, can you come with me real quick?”
“Yeah, gimme a sec.”
She stretched her arms as she got out the door and went down the stairs. She turned and followed Hitomi into the living room when suddenly:
“SURPRISE!!”
Chaewon jolted, startled at the sudden shouts, and then she realized what was happening. There in front of her, were all her friends dressed up and decked out ready to celebrate her birthday, and there she was, in her pajamas and messy hair. Her face turned red in embarrassment from the situation she found herself in, and she turned to her wife, who was visibly struggling to hold in a laugh, and said:
“You couldn’t bother to tell me to fix myself up a little bit?!”
The seven others in the room all laughed and rushed to squeeze her in a gigantic group hug.
“Ya, ya, ya, were you really about to sleep through your birthday and not let your best friend say anything?” said Yena with an accusing tone.
“Hey! Hiichan told me to take the day off so that’s what I did!”
“You really didn’t think my sister would let us miss your birthday, did you?” asked Sakura with a teasing questioning look.
“Seriously she wouldn’t let any of us forget about it,” added Yuri while rolling her eyes.
“Do you really think your cousin would ever forget your birthday Chaewon-ah?’ asked Eunbi.
“Well you’ve done it before,” Chaewon retorted, resulting in a slap fight between the two cousins, waking up the four children.
Chaeyeon and Hyewon saw their kids stumble out of the hallway and brought them over to Chaewon.
“MinMin, Nako you know what today is?” asked Chaeyeon.
After the both of them shook their heads, Hyewon said:
“It’s Auntie Chaewon’s birthday! What do you guys say?”
Nako and Minju then engulfed Chaewon in their own small embraces and they told Chaewon:
“Happy birthday Auntie Chaewon!”
Chaewon smiled warmly and patted the two on the head to show her gratitude.
After another minute or so of the adults hugging and playing with the children they dragged Chaewon out to the dining room table where all the food was laid out so everyone could eat together. They talked about everything and nothing, and shared a lot of laughs. Chaewon smiled to herself as she watched everyone having fun. Wonyoung and Nako were communicating with each other (if that’s what you could call it) using words that no one knew. Yujin and Minju were quietly talking to each other about school. Hitomi was having the time of her life with Yuri, Chaeyeon and Sakura. Yena, her best friend, was having fun messing around with Hyewon, and Eunbi would just be making sure they didn’t get too wild, but at the same time would laugh along with everyone’s antics. Looking at all of this, she couldn’t help but think:
Thank you for making my birthday that much more special.