"Mommmmmmmmmy," Clara whined, she trudged along beside Emily, acting like her feet were made of lead, judging by the way she dragged them. "It's hot... When are we gonna get to the pool? You promised!"

"Soon," Emily promised, "We just have to make one stop first."

Clara groaned dramatically, pout firmly affixed on her lips. (She'd been a never-ending source of attitude and sass ever since her sixth birthday, much to her mothers' chagrin.)

Under her breath, Lucy said to Emily, "For someone you didn't give birth to, she sure is a mini-Emily..."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Emily replied, but she smirked as she said it because, even though she loved Clara more than life itself, her attitude could be quite exhausting. Then, to Clara, she said, "We're going to stop and take some really nice family pictures first."

Clara groaned louder and longer.

Deliberately ignoring Clara's histrionics, Lucy asked Aurora, "Are you going to smile big for the camera, Rory?"

Aurora nodded vigorously. Of the two girls, she tended to take after Lucy, including being a natural in front of the camera. "Cheese, right, Mama?" she asked.

"That's right, Sunshine," Lucy agreed.

Watching the interaction between Lucy and her sister, the wheels were visibly turning in Clara's head. She'd never really been jealous of Aurora, but she also didn't like to see Aurora getting more attention. "I can smile bigger!" she proclaimed.

Aurora pouted. "Nooooooo," she insisted.

"Can too!"

"No!"

Emily just sighed, shook her head. Catching Lucy's gaze, all she could do was laugh, a little helplessly, because this was their life. A life they were adding a third kid to... "Here we are," she announced to the girls as they came to a stop outside the ice cream parlour.

"Ice c'eam?" Aurora gasped, eyes going wide.

Voice overlapping her sister's meeker one, Clara shouted, "Mint chocolate chip!"

"St'awbee?" Aurora asked.

Emily caught Lucy's gaze, winked in a silent show of the secret the two women were about to reveal to their daughters. "How about cotton candy instead?" she suggested to the girls. "As a special treat..." (Normally, they never would have allowed them such a vibrantly and difficult to remove staining flavour after the incident in which Derek had taken Clara to get 'tiger' flavoured ice cream and ruined her dress, but this was a special occasion...)

While Lucy manned the camera, Emily settled on the cow-shaped bench outside the ice cream store, between the two girls who were both far too busy focusing on their ice cream cones to pay her any attention.

"Hey, Buggy," Emily said, poking Clara in the ribs to make her giggle. "What colour is your ice cream?"

Clara looked from Emily to the camera and back. Suspiciously, she said, "Blue?"

At the same moment, Aurora echoed, "Boo!" Her cheeks and the tip of her nose were already smeared with ice cream.

"Right," Emily confirmed, resisting the urge to wipe Aurora's chin with a napkin for the sake of the photos. "And what does blue mean?"

Clara frowned in thought. "Umm...the sky?" she guessed. She clearly didn't quite trust her mothers' motives, entirely too similar to Emily for Emily's liking.

Emily laughed, smoothed down one of the girl's strawberry blonde pigtails. "Guess again."

"Blueberries?" A beat. Then, she burst into a fit of giggles. "Monkeys!"

Emily and Lucy shared a look that clearly said 'your daughter is so weird'. "Monkeys aren't blue!" Lucy said from behind the camera.

Then, in a little voice, Aurora said, "Boo for boy?"

"That's right, Sunshine," Emily said. She waited a moment for the information to sink in.

"Boy?" Aurora repeated, confused.

Clara burst into tears. "No!" she wailed. "No baby!"

"Why no baby?" she asked Clara.

Clara looked at her with a wobbling lip and tears spilling down her cheeks. "I want you to still loves me," she mumbled.

"We'll always love you, Buggy," Emily vowed. "We loved you the same when we had Rory, right?"

She shrugged.

"And don't you love being a big sissy?"

She shrugged again, but it was clear from the way she mashed her lips together that she was trying very hard not to agree that she did, in fact, like being a big sister.

"What about you, Sunshine?" Emily asked Aurora. "Do you want to be a big sister too? You'll have a baby brother to love."

Aurora thought on that for several moments, her ice cream dribbling down her hand as she did so. "Dec'n bruva?" she asked.

Emily smiled and nodded. "That's right, Declan is your big brother, but the baby in Mommy's tummy will be your little brother."

Aurora's expression became thoughtful and she patted Emily's belly with one sticky blue palm, leaving a perfect little handprint on her white t-shirt. "Baby?" she asked.

"That's right, there's a baby in there," she agreed.

"Okay," Aurora said, shrugging and returning to her ice cream.

That night, when Declan returned home from his classes, Clara and Aurora came sprinting over to him, each clamouring to be the first to tell him the news. So much so, in fact, that their attempts at shouting the news turned into indecipherable chaos.

Declan laughed, lifting one girl in each of his arms. "One at a time," he said patiently. "What's all the excitement about?"

"Bruva!" Aurora shouted.

"Mommy's having a baby!" Clara shouted at the same moment.

Declan caught Emily's gaze over the girls' heads, brow raised in question. Emily smiled, nodded in confirmation.

"You two are going to be big sisters?" Declan asked the girls. "That's so exciting!"

"Yeah," Clara agreed with a pout, "But it's a boy and boys are stinky!"

Laughing, then contorting his face in a mock pout, Declan said, "Hey! I'm a boy and I don't stink..."

Clara thought on that for a moment, then shrugged, apparently standing firm in her decision.

"Oh, you are going to get tickled for that!" Declan said, setting the girls on the floor and reaching to tickle Clara. Both girls took off running, squealing as they went.