"Where's my little monster?" Emma calls out as she enters their home.

"Mama!" Lena shouts out in glee as she climbs down off the chair and runs as fast as her legs will carry her towards the front door and to her mama.

Emma hangs up her coat and drops her sports bag just in time to grab Lena and pull her up into a hug before her toddler crashes into her legs. "Hello, my beautiful Princess," she greets her daughter with a kiss to her cheek, "what have you been up to?" She queries when she notices the chocolate smudged all around her mouth and what she suspects is flour pretty much all over her.

"Me and mommy and Henwee made cookies for Santa!"

Emma smiles at how cute it is that Lena still can't pronounce 'r' just yet. "That sounds like a lot of fun and I'm sure Santa is going to love them!" She couldn't wait to sink her teeth into one of Regina's signature macadamia and chocolate chip cookies after their kids had gone to bed. "Have you been a good girl for your mommy?" She asks as she carries their daughter in her arms down the hallway and to the kitchen, knowing there was only ever going to be one answer.

"Yep. I always good mama," she answers in the affirmative as she always does, regardless of how she's actually behaved.

"I don't know about that," Regina interjects as they enter the kitchen, "someone thought it was a good idea to make flour angels on the floor," she smirks as she brushes up the last of the white dust.

Emma can't help but laugh as Lena sheepishly buries her face into her shoulders. Ever since Emma taught her how to make snow angels after the first snowfall of the season her little one had been obsessed with making them at every given opportunity, but she had never tried to make them inside the house before.

"Where's my little man?" Emma gushes as Henry squeals in delight from his highchair from the moment she had entered the room. She expertly unclips her security strap and picks him up from the highchair with one hand as she holds Lena securely with the other. When she has both her children held securely against her chest, she plants overexaggerated kisses all over the faces to both of their delights. They squirm and fidget and giggle as they try to dodge her kisses, Lena more successfully than her nine-month-old brother.

Regina leans against the kitchen island and watches the domestic bliss unfolds in front of her as it had many times before but she never got bored with it.

Emma notices Regina watching them from the corner of her eye. She stops what she's doing to whisper conspiratorially with her offspring, knowing full well that only Lena could understand what she was saying.

"What are you lot planning? Regina asks with a raised eyebrow.

Lena can't hide her giggles at their devious plan and Henry just laughs along with his sister.

Regina squints her eyes as the blonde and their two brunette children quickly approach her, and she would swear that all of them had matching devious grins. Within thirty seconds she's begging for mercy from all the tickles, pokes, prodding, and overenthusiastic slaps from her son who doesn't quite have full control over all of his limbs just yet.

"How dare you use my own children against me," Regina tries and fails to admonish her overgrown child, due to her own smile giving her away.

Emma smirks and bends down to put Lena on the floor, "go get your snowsuit and we'll go make snow angels in the garden."

"Yay!" Lena shouts as she runs towards her bedroom.

"I missed you today," Emma states lovingly as she leans in to kiss her wife and pulls her closer with her free arm. Henry wasn't one to be left out and so starts wriggling in her mama's arms until all the attention is on him and both women are smothering his chubby cheeks in kisses.

"In the three hours you were away in training?" It was a rhetorical question because she knows the answer. She always knows the answer because Emma tells her every time that they are apart.

"Yep. All…" She closes one eye and squints the other, a sure sign that she was concentrating hard, "one hundred and…" her voices trails off as she becomes more unsure of her answer, "sixty… NO… eighty minutes" she quickly corrects herself.

"Let's hope our children don't inherit your maths skills," Regina jokes.

"It's not like you married me for my maths skills anyway."

"Obviously not," she teases before kissing away Emma's fake pout.

"I'll get this one wrapped up," Regina says as she takes her baby boy from Emma, "you go check on the tiny terror."

Emma enters her daughter's bedroom to find Lena pouring her teddy bears some invisible tea. "What happened to making snow angels?"

"Oh yeah!" The toddler remembers as she jumps up from the floor and opens the drawer with her snowsuit in it. She grabs it and takes it over to Emma so she can help her get dressed. If Regina had been there Lena would have refused any help and got her snowsuit on all by herself, but she was a mama's girl and always sought out help from Emma, even when she didn't need it. Emma helps her into the cumbersome suit and once she's all zipped up and looking very much like a mini purple Michelin man she bounces at Emma's feet and holds her arms up, "ca-wee, mama."

"Since when don't your legs work?" She teases Lena as the toddler continues to try and reach up for her to be carried. "Maybe one day you won't have me wrapped around your little finger," Emma mumbles to herself as she picks up the little version of Regina. Lena wraps her arms around her mama's neck and gives her a wet kiss to her cheek, "no… not likely," Emma laughs to herself. Both of her children had her in the palm of their hands.

Just a few minutes later and all of them are in the garden, lying on their backs and making snow angels, well, except for Henry, whose limbs flail about in excitement, making more of a snowy roadkill kind of pattern.

Regina decides they have been outside in the snow long enough, after they have made a snowman version of their family and she can no longer feel her fingers inside her gloves. She gives Lena a stern look when the toddler tries to argue about staying out in the snow for a little while longer. There was no messing when that look was on Regina's face and Lena stomps towards the back door. Regina was more of a disciplinarian that Emma, which she didn't always like being. Sometimes she wanted to be the good guy but she remembers how it isn't just their kids that get away with murder when it comes to Emma, her wife was the same with her. She would do anything for all of them.

After an early dinner and a bath for Lena and Henry, Emma whips out the traditional Swan family matching Christmas onesies for them all, which this year includes a matching baby romper.

"When will these no longer be a tradition?" Regina half-heartedly moans as she sits on their bed with Lena in her lap as Emma wrestles Henry into his romper as she kneels at the bottom of the bed.

"Never," Emma replies, sounding aghast at such a suggestion, "and they're never growing up either."

"Okay, Peter Pan," Regina sarcastically replies with an eyeroll.

"Does that make you my Tinkerbell?" Emma asks with a wink.

"Your mama is silly, isn't she?" Regina asks Lena, who nods furiously and then giggles wildly as Emma reaches up to try and grab her feet.

"Did you just call me silly?"

"No… Mommy did," she protests through hysterical laughter when Emma catches a onesie covered foot and start tickling it. "Mommy did! Not me!" She continues to defend herself as she clings on tightly to Regina. "I gonna pee, Mama! I gonna pee!"

That stops Emma in her tracks, she knows from experience that it's no idle threat. "Okay, okay. Give me a kiss and then we can go watch a movie."

Lena clambers off Regina and gives Emma a sloppy kiss in her rush to watch her favourite Christmas move. "Muppets!" She screams as she runs out of the room.

Emma and Regina give joint groans. They've watched that movie every day for two weeks straight already, but Lena never seems to get bored of it. "That damn movie," Regina sighs.

"It's not so bad," Emma smiles, "especially because I get to watch it with my three-favourite people in the whole world." She rubs Henry's belly, her eyes full of adoration for the newest member of their family. She doesn't care what they watch or what they do, as long as she is with her family.

Unlike Lena, who had been a wonderful surprise, Henry had been planned, but no less of a wonderful surprise of course, but the surprise was that Regina had been the one to suggest trying for another baby. Emma picks up Henry, cradling him against her chest, and stands up, offering Regina her hand. Regina pushes herself up off the bed and takes the offered hand, which gives her fingers a gentle squeeze when they intertwine. Emma lets her step through the doorway first and with a low whistle she cheekily comments, "nice ass, Tinkerbell."

"Call me that again and this," she says as she points at her own body, "will be your NEVERland."

Emma snorts with laughter. "Okay, that was good."

Twenty minutes into the film and Regina is taking a sleeping Henry from Emma to put him to bed and give herself a five-minute break from the singing muppet rats on the TV screen.

For the rest of the movie Regina curls up against Emma's side, with a strong arm wrapped around her waist as Lena sits in Emma's lap and sings along to all the songs. It had just gone seven and Lena would usually be asleep by now but the excitement of Santa coming was keeping her awake far past her normal bedtime.

It was almost two hours later when she finally falls asleep after several bedtime stories and idle threats of Santa only coming to houses where the children are sleeping.

"Eurgh. This is going to take forever," Emma complains before she has even begun to wrap any of the dozens of presents scattered around them.

"It wouldn't take so long if you hadn't insisted on buying them so many presents," Regina retorts.

"And it would take even longer if you hadn't stopped me from getting them everything I wanted to get for them."

"Well, really, what was our nine-month-old baby going to do with a sit-on Batmobile?"

Emma blushes, knowing that particular suggestion and many of the other things she had wanted to buy were a bit silly. "I can't help myself."

"I know, darling, and I love you for it, but they have more than enough right here," she states as she opens her arms wide at all the unwrapped gifts. "Now, let's get started or we'll be here all night and I'm sure Lena will be waking us up extra early tomorrow."

"Merry Christmas!" Emma cheers when it turns midnight. She crawls over to Regina through the pieces of discarded wrapping paper and pieces of ribbon that litter their living room floor.

"Merry Christmas, darling," Regina manages to say just before Emma's lips press against her own. She knows she shouldn't because they still have the last couple of gifts to wrap but she can't help but encourage her wife to deepen the kiss as she falls backwards and pulls the blonde on top of her.

When Regina starts gently thrusting her hips up against Emma's crotch the blonde pulls back breathlessly. "We had better finish the last of wrapping so we can get upstairs before Santa's comes," she winks. She really wanted to carry on, but the condoms were upstairs so the quicker they finished wrapping the quicker they could get to them.

Admittedly the last two gifts weren't wrapped as neatly as the others, so they put them at the back of the Christmas tree, they had more urgent matters to attend to right now. They gathered all the scraps of wrapping paper and ribbon off the floor and put it all in a binbag, making sure there were no traces of evidence left behind.

The final task before they can go to bed is to make it look like Santa has been. Emma goes over to the tray that holds a cookie and a glass of milk for Santa, as well as a carrot for Rudolph, that Lena had helped them set up before she had gone to bed. She bites off the tip of the carrot and then spits it into her hand.

Regina looks at her as if to say, 'why are you spitting it out'?

"Who eats carrots before bed?" Emma answers the silent question before shoving an entire cookie in her mouth.

"You're only meant to take a bite from the cookie," Regina replies, "you haven't even left any crumbs."

"Sowwy," Emma shamelessly replies, as particles of mashed up cookie fly from her mouth.

"And there we have the crumbs," Regina sighs, but not without amusement.

Emma washes down the rest of the cookie with the glass of milk and they quickly but quietly make their way upstairs. After checking in on Lena and finding her sound asleep they move to their own bedroom and check on Henry in his cot before getting ready for bed.

"I love that Lena understands and gets excited for Christmas. I can't wait until Henry can too," she says to Regina as they finish up in the bathroom.

"Christmas definitely feels even nicer this year with all of Lena's excitement… and speaking of things that feel nice," the brunette purrs as she cups Emma's crotch through her boxers. Emma opens her mouth to speak but Regina quickly shuts her down. "Any comments about emptying sacks and this ends right here."

Emma smiles knowingly at getting caught before she had even said anything. Instead of arguing she picks Regina up, who wraps her legs around her waist, and walks her through to their bedroom, their mouths pressed together the entire time. They had become masters at making love quietly since Lena had entered their lives and once again, they put it into practice as Henry sleeps peacefully in his cot a few feet away.

It isn't particularly sexy or graceful as they help to strip each other out of their Christmas onesies, not that Emma's dick seems to be aware of that. After bringing Regina to dizzying heights with her mouth and fingers the blonde desperately reaches into her bedside cabinet for a condom.

xxxxxxxxxx

"Mama, mommy, it's Chwistmas!" Lena declares as she runs into their bedroom at the ungodly hour of… 05:17, Emma notes as she looks at her phone with one eye half open. She had really hoped that Lena would have slept in considering how late she had gotten to sleep. No such luck.

"Come here, Princess," Emma encourages as she holds up the cover on her side of the bed for Lena to climb in. "We have to be quiet though, Henry's still sleeping."

"Sowwy, mama," she whispers as she climbs in next to the blonde with a bit of help.

"Come here, baby," Regina says in her husky morning voice.

"Mommy!" Lena shouts, forgetting about her brother for a moment as she clambers over Emma and settles in between the two of them.

This time Henry wakes up with a cry and Emma jumps out of bed to pick him up. "Come here my little man. You just don't want to be left out, do you?" She coos she kisses his cheek and holds him tightly before getting back into bed. His unhappy cries don't die down so Regina takes him.

"Mommy's little man needs a feed." She pulls her vest top up and he quickly latches on. He had not taken to the breast as quickly as Lena had and it had been a battle to get him to breastfeed right at the beginning but with plenty of patience, he had finally taken to it. "Good boy," she praises as he suckles.

Lena gently pats his leg. "Good boy, Henwee," she repeats her mommy's sentiment.

Emma watches on with a huge smile. These are the moments she loves the best. Every moment in her life is wonderful but these moments, just her and her family all snuggled up together, they really are the best.

"Did Santa come?" Lena finally asks, getting impatient as Henry continues to feed.

"We will go and check as soon as Henry has finished," Regina promises their fidgeting toddler.

"What do you think Santa brought me?" Emma asks Lena to try and give her something to concentrate on.

After a moment of deep thought the little brunette says, "nothing mama because you is naughty." She then bursts into a fit of giggles.

Regina yawns through her smile at their little girl's cheeky side. Emma had a cheeky side, but she thought this side of her daughter definitely had something to do with the amount of time she spent with her auntie Kat.

"Nothing? Nothing?" Emma asks with mock hurt as she tickles the laughing toddler. "Well, I guess you had better share your presents with me then."

"Okay, mama, you can have one of mine," she easily agrees.

Emma stops tickling her and pulls her into a big bear hug. She was so thankful for Regina's influence in making her such a good kid. She knows if all the parenting were left to her Lena would be spoilt and not as good and sweet as she is. "You're such a good girl."

"That's why Santa gives me presents," she states proudly.

Once Henry has been fed and Emma has burped him so that Regina could use the bathroom, they all make their way downstairs to see what Santa had left. Regina pulls out her phone so she can capture every second of this as they follow the excitable toddler into the lounge.

"He's been! He's been!" She exclaims as she runs over to the tree, or more precisely, over to all the presents under the tree.

The unwrapping seems to go on forever until eventually the last gift has been opened. Lena sits on the floor and examines all of her gifts, unsure of which one to play with first, finally deciding on what was probably the cheapest of all the gifts, a teddy Olaf from her favourite Disney film.

Emma makes some coffee as Regina sits on the couch and bops Henry on the face with his own smaller Olaf teddy, making him smile his one tooth smile.

After the coffee, when they both feel a bit more awake, Emma tidies up and takes Lena to get dressed as Regina starts on breakfast. After the early morning and two little bellies full of food, Lena falls asleep on the couch and they lay a sleeping Henry in his Moses basket.

"I love my present," Emma beams as she looks at the bracelet on her wrist. Emma wasn't the jewellery type, but Regina was sure Emma would like what she had found her. It was simple but meaningful. A handmade cord bracelet that was interwoven with metal charms that had the name of each country that had been to together. "They are all beautiful memories," she states as she fingers each charm.

"I'm glad you like it. I love my gift too." Emma had bought her a new dress that she had seen Regina eyeing up on a previous shopping trip. Regina had set a budget of what they were allowed to spend on each other because she was well aware that Emma had to be reined in when it came to buying presents. Even so, Emma had gone a bit over budget with the dress she had bought for her but the smile that graced her wife's features when she had opened it was worth the reprimand she got afterwards for going over budget, when Regina remembered how much the dress cost (which was the reason she hadn't bought it at the time, despite Emma's insistence at the time).

"I can't wait to see you in it," Emma winks., "it was really a present for me," she adds with a wriggle of her eyebrows.

"Insatiable," Regina teases before kissing her wife sweetly.

"What time are Kat and Ruby coming for dinner?"

"They will be here at one and then we eat at three."

"So, we have plenty of time?" Emma states salaciously before going in for another kiss, only to be pushed back.

"We most certainly do not. I have to start preparing dinner."

"But it's only just gone eight."

"Exactly. I don't have much time left." She gets up and she's pretty sure she hears Emma grumble something about 'stupid Christmas', but she pays her no attention. She has far too much to do today to give into her own needs. Thankfully she had been more than satisfied several times just a few hours ago.

As promised, Kat and Ruby arrive at one, along with their dog Rosie the papillon, who Lena completely adores. Kat had decided on the name Rosie because of how much she loved it when Lena tried to pronounce words with an 'r' in them.

"Wosie, Wosie, Wosie!" She merrily greets her canine best friend as she rushes into the house as soon as Kat opens the front door.

"Yay! You brought the rat," Emma sardonically says as she reaches down to pet the little fur ball, who quickly gallops passed her to go and find Lena. She liked the dog, but she still hadn't forgiven her for pooping in her favourite shoes a few months back.

"We don't talk about your kids like that," Kat not too unfriendly states, with a kiss to Emma's cheek.

"My children don't poop in your expensive footwear," Emma reminds her.

"No, but I've lost count of the times they've thrown up on me."

"She has a point, Emma," Ruby butts in.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever."

After a round of hugs Emma offers them both a drink and Kat follows her through to the kitchen so she can see Regina and Ruby goes to the lounge to watch the dog and the toddler.

"Aunty Wuby!"

"Hello munchkin," she says before picking her up and twirling her around.

"And this is why she throws up on you," Emma states as she places Ruby's beer down on the coffee table.

"Your mama talks such nonsense, doesn't she?" Ruby says to Lena as she places her back down on the floor and squishes her cheeks. "You get squishier every day."

Lena just laughs and plops onto her butt as Rosie clambers all over her.

Kat coos over Henry as he sleeps in his Moses basket in the kitchen. "My god, he gets cuter every day. I could just bite his little face."

"No biting my children, please."

"I make no promises," the blonde laughs. She then takes a swig of the champagne Emma had poured for her. She hugs Regina from behind as the brunette peels vegetables for lunch. "Merry Christmas by the way."

"Merry Christmas," Regina replies as she stops peeling for a second to enjoy her friends embrace.

"I'll be right back, I just need a hug from my favourite niece."

A few minutes later, when she's finished prepping everything that they need for lunch, Regina picks up the Moses basket and they join everyone in the lounge. The room is filled with laughter and chatting, and she sighs happily as she places Henry down and slips onto the couch and into Emma's waiting arms. They are always waiting for her.

"Hey beautiful," Emma whispers with a big smile and a kiss to her temple.

Bliss. That is the only word Regina could think of to describe how she feels. She was in Emma's arms, chatting with their friends as Henry sleeps peacefully and Lena and Rosie play on the floor. Everyone she loves under one roof. Pure bliss. Every Christmas since she had met Emma had been incredible but somehow, they just kept getting better and better. Maybe tonight was the night they made their third child, after all, the more the merrier.