Dinner that evening consisted of the usual chaos: Quinn struggling to eat her dinner and hold a nursing baby at the same time, while Puck struggled to get the boys to sit down and eat their vegetables. There was maybe a total of five minutes during the entire meal where everyone was seated at the same time.
Even so, Quinn enjoyed the chaos. It was the only time of day where her entire family was together. Quinn knew she had to treasure these moments. Her kids were growing too fast to take even a single moment for granted. How was it possible that her oldest son was now in kindergarten? Even little Izzy was growing bigger each and every day. She and Puck had agreed long ago that Isabella would be their last baby, but every now and then Quinn had an inkling that her family didn't feel complete.
Quinn was snapped out of her daze when Liam knocked over his glass of milk. Everyone had finished eating anyway, so she started clearing dishes while Puck cleaned up the mess. While standing at the kitchen sink, Quinn realized they were out of dishwasher detergent.
"I can go pick some up," her husband offered, "I'll take the boys with me so you can have a little quiet time."
"That would be great," Quinn responded.
"Anything else you want me to get while I'm out?" Quinn handed him the grocery list that was hanging on the refrigerator. "Might as well just go ahead and do all this week's shopping while you're at it." Puck stuck his tongue out at his wife before leaving her with a goodbye kiss.
Once the house was quiet, Quinn sat down to watch TV for the first time in what felt like months. There was nothing good on anymore, but it was nice to have some background noise. With Izzy asleep on her chest, Quinn responded to a few emails and checked the weather forecast. When Izzy started to stir, Quinn gently set her laptop aside and rocked her daughter back to sleep.
"Alright. Milk, check. Toothpaste, check," Puck muttered to himself as he went over the grocery list one last time. Once her verified that everything on the list was accounted for, he headed toward the checkout. Unfortunately Puck didn't manage to make it there without going through the candy aisle. Puck tried to back out of the aisle before his boys noticed, but he was too late. Within seconds of sighting their favorite sweets, four arms reached out of the cart, attempting to grab all the candy from the shelves. The ear-splitting tantrums that resulted from Puck taking the candy away could have shattered glass.
After nearly ten minutes, the boys had finally calmed down and Puck hurried to get to the checkout before the store closed. The cashier was young, maybe sixteen, and seemed very amused by the boys' antics. "They remind me a lot of myself when I was little," she remarked. Puck smiled and thanked her then headed for the parking lot.
With Izzy finally down for the night, Quinn took the baby monitor and went back downstairs. When she passed the kitchen she noticed the answering machine light was on. She walked over and played the message then listened as she finished cleaning the kitchen.
"Quinn? It's Shelby Corcoran. Give me a call when you can."
