#i want you to do the very same thing w camryn post haste btw

[lunaryrs]

austin parenting headcanons pt. 1 :)

cora was the absolute love of his life when she was first born; he was entirely enamored by her. he spent the first couple of weeks in a state of disbelief that she was real and she was half of him. she was so precious to him and he treated her delicately, almost preferring to hang back and observe camryn interact with her in the earliest days. prior to becoming a parent, he'd never held a baby. in her infancy there were times where he'd wake up to her fussing, shuffle into the living room, click on whatever was on TV, and recline on the couch with her. she'd fall back into a sound sleep on his chest. those are the moments he remembers most fondly and recalls wistfully at every major milestone. no matter how old she became or how dismal she became; even now that she's a parent herself, cora will always be regarded as his "peanut."

ezra is his boy. ezra's toddlerhood was one of austin's favorite stages. austin is of course the kind of dad to be excited about his first born son, so ezra was immediately his buddy. they did everything together. austin's camera roll was full of ezra wearing kid-size sunglasses, and also silly adult-sized sunglasses, forward hats and backwards hats, sucking the salt off of drive-thru french fries in his booster seat, holding on to camryn with both hands on the very outskirts of the ocean on a visit back home. austin would pick him up and toss him around, ezra squealing with glee all the while; he loved to play faux-rough like that. not to literally apply a taylor swift song out of context here but something that keeps coming to mind for me is "my wild boy and all this wild joy." i imagine austin chasing this teeny thing around the house in only a diaper with a whole bunch of shaggy hair (resistant to both clothes and haircuts).

zoe had hair like camryn's and a cherubic face, so of course he'd be wrapped around her little finger. he learned to braid for her. he'd let her swipe chalky purple children's eyeshadow across his eyelids and goop up his lips with claire's lipgloss in a garish color, then made her giggle as he transferred that gloss to her cheeks and forehead, the tip of her nose and down to her little chin with a billion swift kisses. you are my sunshine was her favorite children's song, so austin and camryn were in the habit of singing it to her since she was very small. in her adulthood, austin gifted her a music box that tinkled to the melody. and of course, he still to this day always completely omits the umlaut in her name in all written correspondence <3