A/N: Hope you are enjoying my snapshots of family life for the extended BAU family.

Quick note for fanficlover; I am such a tease, I know. It's deplorable. I might make a brief reference back to the revenge mentioned briefly at the end of Apple Pie in a later piece but it won't be until near the middle of the alphabet if I do. Otherwise you may just have to use your imagination. ;)

Quick note for Hazmatt; I love apple pie but I can eat it either on it's own or with custard. Anything else is just too weird. Knowing little boys though, I figured Jack would happily pile all that on and more if he was allowed. I do like chocolate though and apples are simply mmm…

Please enjoy this delightfully light piece, rated K+.

Babies and Booties

"How's my mama-to-be doing? You seem to be lagging behind at the moment."

Emily smiled as Garcia and JJ returned to her side. They'd been shopping for several hours while Aaron and Jack had a boys-date. In other words they were off to do things most girls wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole and she wasn't invited. Even though she loved the outdoors and getting dirty…

Twice now they'd walked past this store; once on the way to the new clothing store with the 75% off everything sale and once when they went for lunch. This time she hadn't been able to force her feet to move past the display.

"Ah, I get it," JJ said.

"Explain it to the woman who has no children."

"It's the force of the place; it only affects pregnant or clucky women who don't know better that dreaming will make the craving worse. It calls to them so much so that they'll lose all track of time and they have to enter it every time they pass it, even if they have so much baby stuff they don't know what to do with it all already. I still come in here all the time even though Henry's just turned two. They cater for babies and toddlers up to about the age of three."

"Well I suppose it's never too early to start spoiling the newest little Hotchner-to-be."

That statement pulled Emily's eyes from the window. "You are not spending hundreds of dollars on my unborn child today. I will not have this child spoilt before it starts to kick; once I can feel movement in here then you can start buying it stuff and not before. Have I made myself clear?"

Garcia snapped a salute that made her friends laugh. JJ linked arms with her and they walked into the store. "So we're only browsing today?"

Emily nodded as she fingered the soft rug hanging near the entry to Bouncing Baby World. "Browsing only," she murmured with longing.

Garcia watched her friend walk off towards the racks of clothing and said softly, "What do you want to bet she walks out of the shop with at least one bag of merchandise?"

JJ shook her head. "I never bet on a sure thing. Ooh, so cute."

Garcia rolled her eyes and trailed the younger woman around the various displays on the way to the children's toys and began to feel just a little clucky herself.

Emily smiled as she watched her two blond friends walk off. She wasn't going to buy anything today; she'd promised Aaron after all, but that wouldn't stop her from dreaming intensely as she unconsciously rubbed her still flat tummy and hummed softly to herself.

When she finally decided she'd spent too much time in the store without purchasing anything, she walked around until she found JJ and Garcia checking out little boy toys. She watched the glee with which they played and wondered if Henry would appreciate the toys as much as his mother and godmother currently were.

Unnoticed for almost five minutes, she cleared her throat. "Children, it's time to leave. Mummy still has several stops she needs to make."

"Ha ha, very funny," Garcia mumbled as she climbed to her feet. "So where are your purchases?"

"I'm not getting anything today. Besides the fact that I promised Aaron I wouldn't go there, I would like to be with him when we first get something for this little one." She kept to herself that it was a tradition he'd started with Haley and Jack that he was hoping to continue. She didn't mind that it was something he'd done with his deceased wife; she simply didn't want to have to explain it to her friends. Most people, even those closest to her or to Aaron, simply didn't understand why she was so happy to honour the woman who had been married to her husband first and she was frankly getting tired of having to explain that it all had to do with Jack and her gratefulness for how well Haley had raised him while she was alive.

JJ shrugged and Garcia looked disappointed as they exited the store but she was quickly distracted in the comic book store while JJ and Emily waited outside for her. They sat on a bench where they could see Garcia in a heated debate with the owner.

"I've been meaning to catch up with you since Maine but everything's been a little crazy lately. How have you been dealing with everything that happened?"

"Do you mean to ask how I'm doing knowing I've lost a baby even though I'm still pregnant with it's twin?"

"That sums it up better than anything I could have said. If its too painful to answer, you don't need to…"

Emily shook her head and settled deeper into the chair with a quick look at her watch. She was completely ready to take a nap but they had another hour or two to kill before she could safely head home. "It's fine, really. I mean, I bawled my eyes out at the hospital when it fully sunk in that I'd had a partial miscarriage but there was so much relief that I was still pregnant with at least one child that I just let the grief go. I still have Jack who might as well have been my own and there is still this other precious life growing within me. If I long for what I can't bring back, its like saying this child isn't as important as its lost twin and I would never think that."

"That's very wise. And I'm glad that it wasn't more serious than it was. I swear you are one of the most unlucky women I've ever met. First you meet and fall in love with a man who chooses another woman over you, then you end up working with the same man while he is married to this other woman. You've been beaten up and shot at while on cases, been in one of the most serious car crashes in recorded history, spending months in recovery and you've lost a baby. If I were you I might have packed in the towel by now."

"Ah, but see I'm also one of the most lucky women you will ever meet. I not only met my perfect match not once but twice in my lifetime and am now married to him but I also scored the most gorgeous little boy for a son and I'm pregnant with my dreamed-for child; in addition I'm also doing what I love for a living. How lucky can you possibly get?"

"How lucky can you get," JJ murmured in agreement as Garcia joined them looking flushed but triumphant as she explained that comic was a gift for Kevin that she'd been searching for since forever. As they moved on she thought of her own luck and smiled.

Luck really had nothing to do with it.

End-

A/N:Stay tuned for the next instalment; C is for...

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