better together | ethma

Epilogue

Ethan's POV
Two years later

Our third baby girl was born on July 14th. She was basically a carbon copy of Taytum. Their pictures side by side look identical.

All three of the girls look alike.

Reese is a quiet baby, only crying if she needs something. Emma is on maternity leave from work again. I'm still working from home to help take care of Taytum and Reese.

The year went by so fast. Taytum is two and a half, and Reese just turned one. Tenley is eight now.

All of the girls are growing like crazy. Tenley is getting taller, Taytum is sporting a growth spurt, and Reese is walking now.

We put Taytum in dance, and she loves it. Emma and I think that Reese is going to be our little athlete because she's already accurate at throwing her plastic toy balls.

That reminds me. Tenley is in third grade now, and she's playing softball now. She's pretty good, and we put her on a travel team.

She loves it.

Grayson and Alex had their little boy Milo on July 17th, three days after Reese was born.

I'll mention that Grayson finally proposed to Alex two months after Milo was born.

They got married in January.

Now that Reese is one, Emma and I decided to try for our last baby.

She got pregnant on the first try again, and a few months later we found out that we were having a little boy.

Our plan was to originally name him Keegan Grant, but about halfway through the pregnancy Emma and I both decided that he didn't feel like a Keegan.

So, when the baby was born in April, we named him Austin Levi Dolan.

So, now we have a nine year old, and three other kids under the age of four.

Taytum is three and a half now, Reese is about to turn two, and Austin is three months old.

Tenley still has her own room, Taytum and Reese share a room, and the baby has his own room, which is the nursery.

Emma is an amazing mom. She does an amazing job taking care of all four of our kids. The way she is able to handle a newly born baby plus a two and three year old's meltdowns and tantrums beats me. I help as much as I can, but Emma is like the kid whisperer.

I'll admit that having three kids under four is hard, but Emma and I love it. It's awesome that Tenley loves to help with her siblings too. She's an awesome little helper. It's crazy to me that she's in fourth grade now. She's growing up too fast.

I wouldn't trade any of this for the world. We have a sassy but sweet fourth grader, a bubbly three year old who is already hilarious and super creative, and a quiet but adventurous two year old. Baby Austin is still too little to have developed a personality, but he loves his sisters, and he loves it when we turn music on.

And Emma. She's still the coolest woman I've ever met. She's awesome. Still makes the best pancakes, and she still sings the kids to sleep.

Her body has enough resilience that she's somehow able to get her normal body back within a few weeks of having a baby.

She's still the most beautiful and kind and charming woman in the world. I still fall for her over and over again every day.

This life we have together is something for the books.

I'm gonna take care of her and our kids for the rest of our days.

What did I tell her about twelve years ago?

I said "it'll be us in the end."

I promised her.

I'm a man of my word.

-
Emma's POV

Ethan and I went out to a nice dinner at a restaurant by the Navy Pier for our 5th wedding anniversary.

To my surprise, he got down on one knee with a brand new ring and asked me to marry him again.

So, the two of us are going to fly to Hawaii and renew our vows after New Years.

Ethan says that I'm doing a great job taking care of all of our kids, but don't let him make you think that he's not a huge help with them.

He's always running around in the backyard with Taytum and Reese, and Tenley even joins them sometimes. She's only nine, so she still has a ton of energy.

Austin is in his sleep, eat, and poop routine phase, and I get lots of baby cuddles. Especially when Reese and Taytum want to cuddle with us too.

In fact, the two girls are in the stage where they will climb out of bed and come in to cuddle with Ethan and I. We don't mind. It's adorable.

Ethan and I still manage to get our date nights once in a while. My mom and his parents luckily love watching the kids, and since Tenley's old enough to help watch them, they don't mind that there's four.

Plus Ethan's mom raised three kids that were close in age, so we know that she can handle it.

Austin is seven months old now, and he looks just like Ethan.

The only difference is that he ended up with my blue eyes.

The girls all have Ethan's hazel eyes, but Austin managed to get my blue eyes. It looks cool with his dark brown hair. He got the really dark hair like Ethan and Tenley's. Taytum and Reese still have slightly lighter brown hair like my natural hair color.

We like to call Austin baby blue.

Even though ages two and three are huge differences in growth, Taytum and Reese are around the same size, and we get asked if they're twins all the time and almost everywhere they go.

Reese really is a little carbon copy of Taytum.

In all, everything turned out the way Ethan and I felt like it was supposed to, and it never would've happened if Ethan and Grayson hadn't offered me a ride to school when we were younger.