Battle through

The following days went as peacefully as Jenny and Jason could have hoped. Little Charlie was being as lovable as he could possibly be. Causing the two of them as little trouble as possible, almost not crying at all and stealing the hearts of all that met him. One thing their little one could not help, was disturbing their night as he needed to be fed almost every two hours and was sometimes disturbed by his dirty diaper. Jason, who had in the mean time put his plan of doing his office and class work when Jenny and Charlie were asleep or in the evening hours in action, was starting to be affected by the lack of proper sleep due to Charlie's nightly callings. Though Jenny was the one who got up most of the times to tend to Charlie during the night as she felt it unfair for Jason to take those responsibilities on as well aside from all that he was already doing, his calls didn't leave Jason unaffected.

Jason had always been an alert sleeper, being woken by the smallest disturbances in his environment. The reason for this were his protective instincts that were being at play and they were currently in overdrive with Jenny in a weakened state from giving birth and Charlie still being so fragile. These instincts were something that he was usually happy to have but they were currently causing him unaccounted fatigue, which was jeopardizing his plan. Because despite Jason being the one who would get up early in the morning and was the one who continued working till late at night, which had caused Jenny to insist letting her handle the night calls, Jason would be woken up as well by Jenny worming out of his arms. With him being unable to fall back asleep until she was back in his arms, his bodily reaction to her absence had caused Jenny's kind gesture to be in vain and had caused them to basically both be tending to Charlie in terms of a disturbed night.

Though Jason was determined to persevere and to not show Jenny that things weren't going as smoothly as he had hoped, Jenny wasn't blind to his struggles. She was waiting to see if he would admit that he was having a hard time or if he would continue to battle through like he had been doing during the past few days. She knew that if she asked him if he was having a hard time flat out, he would deny it or say that things hadn't gotten too hard to handle for him yet, that she needn't worry. So, she needed him to have a small fall in order for her to make him face the facts and lean a bit more on her.

She was happy to know that he didn't want her to face any hardships and that he would protect her from any struggles and obstacles before they could even turn into a hardship. But if it meant him facing hardship instead, she would rather face things together instead of relying on him to take care of it all. Though she wasn't fully recovered from giving birth, though breastfeeding and her body recovering were taking up a lot of her energy, she wasn't so weak as to be unable to be of any help at all. Aside from her, they had plenty of people who were waiting for a word from either of them to come rushing to their side as well.

One evening, when Charlie was about four weeks old, Jenny was feeling quite tired during one of his nightly callings. Jason noticed that Jenny was struggling to get up, so with closed eyes he whispered through the small crack he had opened between his lips, "Aren't you getting up? Do you need me to go check on him?" Jenny figured that this was the perfect opportunity to see if Jason was indeed still doing well enough to hold out or if he would slip up and open up the conversation of him accepting a bit more help. So, she responded with the truth as she said, "If you could...I don't know why but I am feeling a bit tired right now. He has been fed an hour ago. So, it is probably his diaper."

Jason, who wanted to assist Jenny in taking care of Charlie in any way that he could, threw the covers off himself before dragging his feet across the room to the other side of the bed. With half opened eyes he softly spoke to his son before lifting him out of his crib. He brought him to the bathroom and placed him on the changing table, where he proceeded to change Charlie's diaper into a clean one. But as he lifted his son's legs to place the clean diaper underneath him and gently lowered him back down, he was suddenly attacked by a warm stream from Charlie's direction. Before Jason had the chance to take cover from Charlie's accurate aim with one of the wet wipes or the other half of the clean diaper, his son had managed to fulfil a longtime promise to his mother. Landing the stream of his natural water gun right in his face.