URGENT NOTE: As you may know, the BBC starts shooting the 50th anniversary special this week. If you'd like to see a proper tribute to Sarah Jane in the special, please consider signing the petition at www dot ipetitions dot com / petition/sarah-jane-smith-dr-who-tribute (automatic link removed because we don't want to break any rules) and passing it on to any groups you belong to. If we all pass it on, we can make a difference! Time (ironically) is of the essence! Thanks!

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Several weeks, four truckloads, and one lightning strike later, we are finally finished moving, so it's back to posting! We actually wrote this one before we started, but we were just too tired to finish it, so now that we've rested up a bit, here it is.

For those of you who have just joined us, in "Unfinished Business" Sarah Jane became a Time Lord, in "Family of Choice" she and the Tenth Doctor got married, and in "A Lot To Give Thanks For" she gave birth. (Yes, yes, we know, Time Lords are sterile. Explanation is in the previous stories.) Now it's time to see what happens when the pitter patter of little feet can be heard in the TARDIS.

It occurs to us that we do a lot of fic with small children. Sorry about that, we've got six (not all at home) so sometimes we tend to think along those lines! Don't worry, we have several stories coming up, and most of them are not kid-centric.

Um ... except for that sequel to "Little Girl, Big Magic" we have in the works.

Enjoy.

The first thought Sarah Jane had as she opened the door to her son's bedroom was how normal it was. Posters of superheroes, space ships, and dinosaurs festooned the walls, like they would in any four-year-old's room, in any house, in any city on Earth. But this four-year-old, like his father and his mother, was a Time Lord, and the bedroom was not on Earth, but in the TARDIS.

"I'm sorry, dear, but you'll have to stop playing now. It's time for your nap," she said, looking around for him.

A moment later, she found out where he was when he leapt off the laundry bag hanging on the back of the door with a cry of "Kazoom!" and latched onto her shoulders, towel tied around his neck as a cape. "Did you think you'd get away?"

"Oh no!" cried Sarah Jane with mock horror. "Wonder Man is about to defeat me! Where's my partner, Captain Evil?"

"I have vanquished Captain Evil," he said, dropping to the floor and standing in front of her with his hands on his hips, chin thrust upward. "So his mind control can't make you evil anymore, Mummy."

"Mummy? Mummy? That's right! I'm your Mummy, and you have saved me, Wonder Man." She swept him up in her arms and hugged him. "My hero," she said as she kissed him on his cheek.

"Eeew, Mummy, you can't kiss Wonder Man!" Then he looked up at her, and snuggled into her shoulder. "Well, maybe a little."

Suddenly, a tall boy whipped into the room and smiled wickedly at both of them. "Aha, Wonder Man, I'm back," said DR. "You should have realized that you couldn't keep me locked in the saferoom forever. That door opens from the inside too."

"DR, have you boys been playing in the saferoom again?" scolded Sarah. "I thought your father told you to stay away from it. It's only for emergencies."

"But Mummy," David said, "it was an emergency. Captain Evil was controlling your mind. Now I have to vanquish him again!" He started wriggling to get out of her arms.

Sarah Jane kept a good grip on the small boy. "I'm afraid that will have to keep until later, Davy. Because right now, it's nap time and even Wonder Man needs to sleep." She slipped the towel off of his neck and hung it on the side of his bed. "Did you brush your teeth yet, my darling?"

"I'm not Davy, I'm Wonder Man! How come DR gets to stay up?" he pouted.

"Because I'm evil," laughed DR. "Good guys have to take naps."

"Don't taunt your brother, DR," said Sarah Jane as she leaned over and tucked David in. "It's only because he's older, Davy. When you're fourteen, you won't have to nap either."

"What's this about taunting people?" the Doctor said, sticking his head into the room.

"DR said good guys have to take naps," David said, crossing his arms petulantly.

"Oh did he?" the Doctor said. He winked knowingly at Sarah Jane, who in turn, nodded silently at him. "Well, that may or may not be true, but do you know what else good guys get to do?"

He shook his head.

"They get to fly," the Doctor said, his eyes wide. He took David's 'cape' off the side of the bed and hung it over his neck, then held his arms out. "Sure you don't mind?" he asked Sarah.

Sarah beamed at 'her boys'. "Not at all," she doted.

"Thank you," the Doctor said officiously. He lifted David up until he was over the Doctor's head, then started running through the halls, David holding his arms out in front of him, his cape flying behind him, yelling "Kazoom!"

DR and Sarah watched them go. "Dad's going to spoil him," DR said.

Sarah looked over at her eldest son. He was so much like his father. From his shock of brown hair down to his Chucks, you could tell in a glance who his Dad was, even if at the moment, he was going through a gangly awkward phase in his growth. He was already taller than she was and far too sure of himself. Quite the typical teenage boy, thinking he was a gift to the universe. Sarah reached up and rubbed his shoulder affectionately. "When you were that age DR, you decided that you wanted to fly the TARDIS, and you pushed a button that landed us in a tar pit in the stone age, dinosaurs and all," she laughed at the memory. "The TARDIS got good and stuck in. As I recall, a T-Rex tried to make a snack out of her, and we barely escaped with our lives."

"Sure," DR said, "but we got some great dinosaur teeth as souvenirs," he said, pointing to the large calcified teeth decorating David's T-Rex poster.

Sarah chuckled at him. "You didn't see the look on your father's face when he pulled those teeth out of the TARDIS door. You were our first, and I think we may have fussed over you a bit more than we should have. But then, we cut our teeth on parenting while you kept us up cutting your baby teeth." She reached up and mussed his hair playfully. "We indulged you quite a bit while you were growing up, and you've turned out fine so far. Come on, let's go and get some cookies from the kitchen, shall we? I'll tell you about the time you hid from us and wouldn't come out for a whole day," she said, laughing at the memory.

Meanwhile, the Doctor reached the open front door and plowed through it onto the red lawn, where their four remaining children were playing a game of Tripodian Football, keeping the almost-lighter-than-air ball in the air using anything but their feet.

"More, Daddy, more," David called.

"Alright, but just one more flight, then back to your bed and nap time," the Doctor said. He 'flew' David back to bed and, hanging his cape on the bedpost, he tucked him in. He tried not to play favorites, of course, but David was even more a character than his older siblings had been at his age. "Good night, Davy," he said, giving him a kiss on the forehead.

"Good night, Daddy," David said, snuggling into the blankets.

The Doctor went back out onto the porch and joined Sarah, leaning back up against her.

They weren't really outside, of course. This was the "Gallifrey room", the room he'd built to look like his home world, where he and Sarah had bonded 16 years prior. Somewhere between their second and third child, the TARDIS had suddenly grown this space to twice its size; they'd taken the hint, and the Doctor had built the house for Sarah, who wanted as much of a normal life for their children as possible, adding extra rooms with the assumption that Colin, now ten, wouldn't be the last. Now the Doctor watched his children play and mused at how lucky they were.

Oh, they were Time Lords, their children, but they weren't your typical Time Lords. He and Sarah had gone out of their way to keep them out of danger as much as possible, but of course with their lifestyle, that had met with a limited amount of success. Still, they'd been lucky; tragedy hadn't touched them in all that time, and while the children knew what to do in case of an emergency, they were happy children with the universe at their disposal. The contrast between that and his own childhood, regimented by the Academy and haunted by the vision of what he'd seen in the Untempered Schism at the age of eight, was striking, and as Sarah started to rub his shoulders, he just smiled contentedly.

Sarah Jane smiled warmly and kissed the top of his head. "DR's in his room working on his interoceter. Cookie dear? I saved you a few."

"Thanks, darling," he said, staring out at the children. "Maybe later. Right now I'm just enjoying the rest of our anniversary. Hard to believe it's been sixteen years."

Sarah sighed contentedly. "Yes, it seems like we just got married. Here we are sixteen years later, and with six children," she laughed softly. "And there I was, bemoaning the fact that we couldn't have children. You know, I remember exactly how I felt when I found out we were having DR. What a time that was."

"I think that was the last time we were alone," he laughed.

Sarah rubbed his shoulders. "First DR, then Victoria, followed by Colin, Thomas, Elisabeth, and finally David." She sighed again, then laughed softly as she shook her head. "When you told me that you were were the last Gallifreyan, I had no idea that we would end up repopulating the planet in the TARDIS."

He laughed with her. "I had no idea you'd like having babies so much. I think you just like hiding out in the vortex for a year or two after each one is born while we wait for them to get old enough for us to breathe."

"Oh drat, you figured out my evil plan," she laughed. "You know, Davy's four years old, that means we're overdue for the next," she said, playing with his hair.

"I thought you were just catching your breath," he said, turning to face her and giving her a look that was somewhere between seductive and mischievous.

She wrapped her arms around him. "What would you say if I offered you a night in the zero room as part of your anniversary gift after the children go to bed?"

He smiled. "I'd say that -"

"Mummy, Colin's not playing nice!" Elisabeth came running up to them before he could complete that thought. At six, she was a little short for her age, but otherwise a perfect cross between her two parents, and always eager to complain when something wasn't fair. "He's not letting me and Tommy get the ball."

And the subject of her complaints was right behind her, his brown curly hair flopping on his head. Ten year old Colin held the ball in his hand, and was ready to defend himself. "I am too playing nice, it's just that she's too short to reach. The rules say that we can hit the ball with anything but our feet. It's not our fault that Lissie and Tommy are too short."

"I'm not short!" eight year old Thomas called out from where they'd been playing.

"And he called Tori a 'cootie face'," Elisabeth continued.

"Well, she was being a cootie face," Colin insisted.

"Was not," said Tori as she came up behind Colin, her red hair ringlets bouncing as she ran. "Dad, Colin got upset because I told him he had to wait his turn to ride the scooter."

Colin glared at her. "You were taking too long."

"Want to take this one," Sarah asked the Doctor.

"Not really," the Doctor said, "but I will." He turned to his son, and motioned for him to come over and sit down on his knee. "Colin, we've talked about this before. You have to wait your turn, even if you think it's taking too long. And quite frankly, how do you expect people to share with you, when you won't share with other people?" He looked at Colin, waiting for an answer.

"Yes, I know, but she was taking too long on purpose," Colin pouted. "She took so long it was almost two turns."

"Maybe we should put a timer on the scooter, dear," suggested Sarah.

"Don't be ridiculous," the Doctor said. "These children are Time Lords, they know how long something takes. Tori, did you take extra time on the scooter?"

Tori put her head down contritely. "Maybe just a little. I'm sorry Colin."

The Doctor turned to Sarah. "Want to take this one?"

"Not really," she smiled, "but I will." She looked over at the four faces standing there waiting for a fair judgment. "And, I'm beginning to have second thoughts about tonight," Sarah said as she turned to Tori. "I think that you should skip your turn next time and give it to Colin. Colin," she said, turning to him. "Name calling is not acceptable. You need to apologize to Tori. As for the rest of you, tattling isn't very nice either."

Four faces looked at her contritely.

"Yes, Mummy," said Tori.

"Sorry, Mummy," said Lissie.

"I love you, Mummy," said Tommy.

"Does this mean we can still have desert, Mummy?" asked Colin hopefully.

"It does, if you apologize and promise to play nice in the future," Sarah said. "Now say you're sorry to each other and the lot of you scoot, before I change my mind." Sarah smiled at them.

They did, and a moment later, they were once again playing, as though nothing had happened.

The Doctor turned back to Sarah. "Have I told you lately what an awesome mummy you are?"

"Thank you, and I think that you are a wonderful daddy. Now then, about tonight," she said with a twinkle in her eye. "Feel up to taking a chance?"

"With you?" he smiled. "Anytime."

"You know, seven has always been my lucky number," she said as she put her head on his shoulder and kissed his cheek.

The Doctor and Sarah Jane spent the rest of their wedding anniversary enjoying each other's company. They'd had a wonderful dinner and after all the children were asleep, they spent the night reminiscing, cuddling and relaxing together.

"It's been an amazing evening, darling," said Sarah Jane as she snuggled up against the Doctor, yawning contentedly as she snuggled into him.

"Absolutely," the Doctor said. "You know, it just gets better and better."

They were asleep and still wrapped in each other's arms when the cloister bells began to ring.