A/N: Hi, guys! Here’s the next chapter! Hope you’re all ready to hear about Minhyun’s “milestones”! :D

As usual, the spoken lines that are completely italicized are said in Chinese. Yeah, Minhyun’s going to end up eventually as a simultaneous bilingual (So cool, Minhyunnie~).

Also, before we begin, I want to make a disclaimer: Truth be told, I know next to nothing about babies/kids. I’m an only child. There weren’t really other children around me when I grew up. I’m also still quite awkward around kids now. So, yeah. I had to research about baby milestones a bit for this chapter. If there are any inaccuracies, I apologize. Let’s just go with them for the sake of the story, yes?

Now, on to the actual story! I hope you guys like it. :)

Book 2: The (Crazy) Baby Years

Chapter 6: Crawl

Time sure flies.

Normally, Kyuhyun didn’t have a problem with this fact. As an irritable, evil maknae, he wanted time pass by fast; he was impatient and didn’t like to be kept idle or waiting. Time passing by fast was a good thing, in Kyuhyun’s opinion.

Normally.

Not when it came to Minhyun, though.

As every parent will realize, kids develop and grow up quite fast. Especially babies.  It seems as if one minute, they’re just helpless, newborns … and then the next minute, they’re already causing chaos to the world (in Minhyun’s case, at least).

To make matters worse, it seem as if Kyuhyun was right when he said that Minhyun will be a genius like him. The baby seemed smart; he was more advanced than other babies and was developing fast for his age, at least.

As Minhyun’s mother (“What do I have to do to get the author to understand that I am Minhyun’s father!” Kyuhyun would grumble), the baby’s milestones made Kyuhyun very proud.

They also made him quite emotional. His baby was growing up too fast!

Sitting Up

Once, Kyuhyun was about to give yet another bottle of milk to Minhyun. He was already by the baby’s crib, hand holding the milk at the top of the wooden side. Then, his phone rang, and Kyuhyun was interrupted from giving the bottle to the ever-hungry baby.

As Kyuhyun talked on the phone for a while (code words for being grumpy and snapping at the worry wart Chinese man that was checking on him for the gazillionth time that week), the evil maknae didn’t notice at first that the baby was slowly starting to sit himself up.

Apparently, the son of the food monster was too hungry and impatient for his next meal that he didn’t want to wait for his mother to finish snapping at his uncle. Minhyun seemed to have thought that he should just sit up and reach for the bottle himself rather than wait for this mother. The process was tedious and hard—Minhyun fell flat back down on his crib a few times.

But he really wanted that bottle of milk!

Eventually, will power for food succeeded, and Minhyun was soon sitting up all by himself! Hooray!

The baby reached up and grabbed the bottle of milk from his still-too-busy mother. He happily and smugly (as smug as a baby can be, at least) drank his hard-earned milk.

“I am fine! If you call again today, I am not going to answer! Goodbye, hyung!” Kyuhyun threatened bid goodbye to his hyung and ended the phone call.

That was then that the evil maknae realized that his other hand was empty. ‘What the heck?’ Kyuhyun thought in confusion to himself. Where’d the bottle go?

Then, he spotted the bottle, already held and being drank by Minhyun.

Minhyun… who was sitting up.

All by himself.

Kyuhyun swelled with awe and pride. That was his baby! So smart, and so advanced, and so clever, and so… hungry. Kekeke. The evil maknae would have gone on with usual motherly gushing, but a thought suddenly entered his genius brain.

His baby was growing up. Fast.

That thought immediately deflated the maknae.

A few minutes later, Xiari opened her door to find an emotional and upset Kyuhyun, insanely (as much as it was hard for a fangirl to think something negative about her idol, not even Xiari could deny that the maknae was behaving in an insane manner) asking her if there was a way to stop time and/or stop babies from growing up.

Teething

Kyuhyun absolutely hated it when Minhyun started teething.

Not only was it yet another sign that his little baby was growing up, but as any parent would know, lots of babies turned into a nightmare when they were teething. Teething was painful for babies, and it made them grumpy and irritable.

Hankyung’s second visit happened to be at the same time Minhyun as beginning to teeth. After the Chinese man ended up with a bowl of pudding on his head because of a grumpy-and-in-pain baby (pudding that was made by Hankyung, meant to be eaten by Kyuhyun, and flung aside by Minhyun), Hankyung decided that it was in his best interest to postpone visits until Minhyun finished teething. Yes, he’s still worried about leaving the mother and son duo by themselves, but Xiari was there now, and he could always bother Kyuhyun with endless calls and texts. Dealing with the evil maknae was already hard enough; if a grumpy, teething baby was thrown into the mix, Hankyung feared that he wouldn’t survive.

To cap it all, teething toys didn’t seem to satisfy Minhyun.

So, the baby seemed to have decided that he’d make do with his mother’s hands instead.

“Ouch!” Kyuhyun yelped as Minhyun surprised him with another bite on his hand. The evil maknae glared at his son, who was currently sitting on his lap and biting on his hand. Unlike lesser beings, the evil glare didn’t seem to have fazed Minhyun one bit, and he carried on trying to lessen the ache in his gums by biting on his mother’s hand.

Seeing that his glare was sadly ineffective, Kyuhyun tried again to tempt Minhyun with one of his teething toys. “Yah! Minhyunnie! What are you, a dog? Let go of my hand and chew on this instead!” Kyuhyun pleaded in vain as he waved a teething toy in front of Minhyun with his free-and-not-being-bitten-by-a-baby hand.

Minhyun simply ignored his mother and carried on with his biting.

“He’s already evil!” Xiari, who was hanging out in Kyuhyun’s apartment at that time, chirped happily. Oh, ELF already has an evil baby prince! What joy!

And normally, Kyuhyun would be oh-so-proud that his son was being evil, but still—his poor hand!

Eating

As Minhyun got bigger, he of course eventually needed more than just baby formula. Which was a great problem for the self-proclaimed genius who can’t even cook to save his life. Luckily, babies started out with soft food first. And Minhyun quite liked some of the pureed baby food that you can buy in stores.

Note the emphasis on “some.” Minhyun liked some of them. And he absolutely despised some of them.

And the only way to find out which ones the baby liked and which ones the baby hated was to go by trial and error.

Pureed apples, bananas, and sweet potatoes were happily eaten by the ever-hungry baby.

Pureed squash, carrots, and peaches ended up thrown on the floor, the walls, and Kyuhyun respectively.

Also, similar to how Minhyun would cry if you don’t get his milk bottle fast enough to him, you were in big trouble if you were the one feeding the baby and you didn’t get the spoon into his mouth fast enough. Kyuhyun, Xiari, and Hankyung (when he visits) have all had their fair share of having to comfort a loudly bawling baby and/or being covered with the pureed food that they weren’t able to feed to the impatient baby quick enough (so the impatient evil-in-the-making baby seemingly threw the food at them instead as punishment of their “incompetency”).

Things became more problematic for Kyuhyun as Minhyun soon progressed to solid food. He can’t even feed himself; how the hell was he supposed to feed his son? You should have seen the look on Minhyun’s face when his mother tries to feed him with instant food!

How Minhyun can already tell which was just instant and which was actually cooked and yummy food, Kyuhyun had no idea. He supposed he should blame Changmin and the DBSK’s maknae’s stomach, though.

Luckily for Minhyun, Xiari was there to the rescue! At least there was now someone around who could actually make something edible. And doesn’t burn down the kitchen in a mere attempt to cook. Unlike other people (*cough*Kyuhyun*cough*).

And Hankyung also had horrible flashbacks when he tried to give Minhyun sliced bananas.