While holding a crying baby to his shoulder with one hand, Will Riker was trying, unsuccessfully, to push shoes onto Matilda's feet. He could have used another pair of hands, but Deanna was at work, the boys were in school, and Lwaxana was taking a "spa afternoon" as she called it.

"I won't arrive on Earth looking like a space derelict," she'd laughed earlier in the day while trying to get her hair to cooperate.

And so she'd commandeered one of the holodecks, sought out Margaret, and they'd both gone to the spa. Over the past weeks, the two had become fast friends. While she loved her own grandchildren, there was only so much she could enjoy with the boys, and Matilda and Lucy were still too young to receive the full benefit of their loving, yet eccentric, grandmother. Margaret, on the other hand, was enthralled by Lwaxana – much to the chagrin of her father. And that still made Will laugh. What once had been a vexation for Jean-Luc Picard was now a fascination for his daughter. But Jean-Luc saw the mutual adoration the two had for each other, and he actually encouraged the friendship, regretting at times that his children had no grandparents, and feeling, at other times, old enough to be their grandfather.

Lucy let out another wail that pierced his eardrums, and Will dropped the tiny shoes on the sofa in order to free up his other hand so that he could shift the infant to his other shoulder.

"They not fit," Matilda grinned up at him, wiggling her toes and laughing.

"No, they don't seem to fit," Will sighed, contemplating replicating a new pair. But they'd fit the day before when Deanna had put them on. "Let me go put Lucy down and we'll try again."

Will walked into the nursery, laid the baby in her crib, and leaned over close to her. "What is wrong, Miss Lucy?" he crooned even as she waved her tiny fists in the air, face still red with every cry. She wasn't usually this fussy. He'd tried feeding her, burping her, changing her – all to no avail. And so he tried singing, something that Deanna claimed upset the children more than soothed them.

But apparently not with this one. As soon as the first few words wafted down to her, Lucy drew in a small breath, hiccupped, and stopped crying. By the time the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again, her eyes were closed and her chest was rising and falling in even breaths. Will smiled. She'd just been too tired to sleep. With four children, he knew that feeling. There were many nights when he probably needed a lullaby, but the sound of Deanna's breathing had always been music to his ears. And he smiled again at the sentimental thought.

"Daddy!" Matilda's voice called from the other room, and, after placing a soft kiss on the top of Lucy's head, Will straightened and headed back to his other daughter.

No rest for the weary, he thought. But he loved every minute of it. Even when he was exhausted, pulled between duty and family, he would never want it any other way. The family he had with Deanna meant everything to him.

And it made him think.

In three days, they'd be back on Earth, and he'd see his father again, and he wasn't quite sure how he felt about that. The last time they'd seen each other had been strained. Of course, it had been years, and their conversation a month ago had gone well. Deanna had assured him that all would be fine – Kyle and Kate would be excited to meet the children, the children would be excited to see them, and father and son would be all right. He sighed. He'd always trusted Deanna's intuition. He supposed now wasn't the time to start questioning.

"Shoes, Daddy!" Matilda demanded.

And so he turned his thoughts to more pressing matters: two little feet and a pair of red shoes.

~vVv~

She'd been granted permission to miss her afternoon classes, a special privilege indeed, for education was greatly valued in the Picard household. But both Beverly and Jean-Luc recognized that learning came in many forms, and time spent with Lwaxana Troi held some lessons that Margaret couldn't get in school. Although for the life of him, Jean-Luc couldn't understand how spending an afternoon at the spa could possibly benefit his daughter, but Beverly had convinced him to let her go.

"Jean-Luc, Margaret adores Lwaxana. She's the closest thing to a grandmother she'll ever have. And now that I'm back at work, I feel like I don't get to spend as much time with her. Sometimes a girl just needs to do… girl things."

And he couldn't argue with that. Other than braiding hair and picking out which shoes went with which dress, there weren't many other "girl things" that he confessed to know about. It still tickled his first officer to no end that he knew about hair, shoes, and dresses in the first place.

And so, he'd consented to let Margaret have a "spa afternoon" with her Grandmother Lwaxana. And now, the eight-year-old was dressed in a fluffy white terrycloth robe, reclining by a pool, with mud plastered to her face while a beauty therapist placed cucumbers over her eyes. A tall glass of pineapple fruit punch was cradled in her hands, and every few seconds she sat up a little to sip from the red and white striped straw.

"Ah, this is the life," Lwaxana sighed from her position next to Margaret.

And Margaret sighed in imitation – the highest form of flattery. "Did you and Aunt Deanna have spa afternoons when she was little?" she asked.

"Oh, my, yes. Every chance we got," Lwaxana replied. "Sometimes you just have to pamper yourself. That's what I always say. Take care of yourself and you can take care of others."

"Mama and Aunt Deanna work out together almost every morning. On Saturdays, they let me go with them to the gym. But they do exercise, like stretching and yoga. Mama dances sometimes. She's teaching me how to do tap."

"Dancing is a wonderful skill. Every man likes a good dance partner," Lwaxana smiled. "Why once, on Declan Four, I won a dance contest, which wasn't an easy thing to do on Declan."

"Why?" Margaret leaned up and took another sip of her drink, then settled back, replacing the cucumber slice that had slipped down on her cheek. She wasn't sure how cucumbers were supposed to help your eyes, but they did feel nice and cool.

"You've never seen a Declanian dance. Contrary to popular belief, two left feet can be quite beneficial in dance contests!"

"They have two left feet?" Margaret questioned. She loved listening to Lwaxana talk about the many planets she'd visited.

"Two left feet and four right ones. And more rhythm than a twentieth century swing band."

Margaret giggled at the image. And she actually knew what a swing band was. Sometimes, Uncle Will would play swing music on his trombone, and once they'd all gone to a concert on the holodeck – Benny Goodman, the King of Swing.

"Will you show me a picture of a Declanian on the database?"

"Oh, we don't need to look at pictures," Lwaxana exclaimed, and then directed her voice toward the ceiling. "Computer, one Declanian manicurist."

And a few moments later, the six-legged Declanian appeared. Margaret pulled the cucumber slices away from her eyes and tried not to stare. But along with the six legs, Lwaxana had failed to mention the four arms, four hands, and forty fingers.

"That's what makes them wonderful manicurists," Lwaxana announced, removing her own cucumber slices and smiling up at the female Declanian.

The alien hologram simply waved her forty fingers in front of her and laughed. Every fingernail was a different color.

"Can I have different colors?" Margaret enthused.

And Lwaxana smiled at the girl's eagerness. "You can have any colors you want!"

~vVv~