"Mommy, where are we going?" Clara asked, looking up at Emily with inquisitive eyes. Her hand was wrapped in Emily's and she was swinging their arms back and forth energetically.

It was just the two of them that afternoon, with Lucy having stayed at home with Aurora who was stubbornly refusing to eat her lunch of tuna casserole and therefore revoking her privilege to go to the mall with them.

"We have to do some shopping," Emily replied, "For Baby Brother."

Clara's eyes lit up. "Toys?" she asked brightly.

Laughing, Emily corrected, "Clothes. All the hand-me-downs from you and Aurora are sparkly and pink and girly, so we'll need some new things for him to wear."

"Maybe he wants to wear me and Rory's clothes..." she fired back saucily.

"Well, then he'll have plenty to choose from, now won't he?" Emily said. "But until we know for sure what he wants, how about we find some new clothes for him?"

Clara gave a long-suffering sigh, but nodded her agreement anyway.


"Which outfit should we dress Brother in first?" Emily asked as she settled (a little awkwardly, around her growing belly) into a seat at the foot court. As Clara scampered into the seat opposite her, Emily urged, "Be careful with your milkshake, Buggy, you're going to get it all over your dress..."

Ignoring her gentle reprimand, Clara loudly declared, "Tigger!" (It was little surprise Tigger was her favourite Winnie the Pooh character, given both of their penchants for energetic bouncing.) She was referring to the orange and black-striped onesie they'd selected from the Disney store, complete with matching eared hat...Emily had wanted to get the Pooh Bear one, but Clara had insisted and Emily had eventually given in.

With a fond smile, Emily said, "Maybe for his first Halloween, we can dress him up as Tigger." Seeing Clara's eyes light up, she added, "He'll be much too little to go Trick-or-Treating with you, but we can still put him in a costume."

"But I can go Trick-or-Treating still?" she asked, bottom lip already wobbling in anticipation of a negative answer. (She'd spent the better part of the year already talking about how she wanted to be Miraculous Ladybug...)

"Of course. You might have to go with Henry and Michael, but I promise you'll get to go," she said.

Clara sipped her milkshake in silence for a moment, her little face screwed up in thought. Then, in a small voice, she said, "I'll miss you."

A frown crossing her lips, Emily asked, "Why are you going to miss me, Buggy?"

She shrugged. "'Cause when Brother comes, we can't have fun anymore."

"Why not?" she asked, confused and more than a little concerned.

"You'll be too busy," she mumbled. "Like when Rory comed."

Emily sighed. Clara wasn't exactly wrong, but she hated the idea of her children thinking she would be too busy to have fun with them. "Just because I'll be busy taking care of Brother, doesn't mean I'll love you any less," she gently reminded.

"I know," she insisted. "But you'll be boring." She shrugged almost nonchalantly, as if the matter were simply out of their hands. She returned to sipping her milkshake, with perhaps a little less of her signature bubbly energy.

Offering her daughter a soft smile, Emily stroked a few stray hairs behind Clara's ear. "Tell you what..." she said, "How about you and I have a Mommy-daughter date once a month?"

Clara pursed her lips in thought, seeming almost wary as if this were a trap somehow. "Just us?"

She nodded. "Just you and me. We'll spend a whole day doing something fun – like having a picnic in the park or going to the museum." She tapped Clara's nose. "Because you're very very special to me and I never ever want you to forget that. Even when I'm busy taking care of Brother, you'll still be my special baby girl."

Clara wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Mommy," she whined, "I'm not a baby!"

"I know you're a big girl," she insisted, "But you'll always be my baby, even when you're all grown up and have your own babies."

With a dramatic sigh, Clara said, "Well, you'll always be my Mommy, even when you're old and crinkled."

"Crinkled?" Emily repeated with a little laugh.

She nodded firmly. "You know, like your fingers get in the bath?"

"Wrinkled," she corrected with a fond smile. Silently, she was just a little glad that Aurora had stayed at home because she missed these moments where it was just her and Clara...

Clara sipped her milkshake for a few moments. "When is Brother gonna get here?" she asked.

"He'll come sometime around my birthday," Emily said, "Before Halloween, remember? And you're going to be a big help, just like you were with Rory, right?"

"'Cause I'm a big girl, right?"

Emily nodded. "You're such a big girl. And you can be an even bigger help now that you're big – you can feed him bottles when he's ready for them and get him dressed and read him bedtime stories."

"But no diapers!"

She laughed heartily. "No, we won't make you change any diapers yet." A thought occurred to her then. "But you could do something really special for him..."

Clara visibly perked up. "What?"

"Would you like to make him a special painting for his bedroom wall?" she asked. "You're such a good artist and I know he'd love to have a picture to look at while he's falling asleep." (For Clara's last birthday, Garcia had given her a little art set and for whatever reason, it had instantly become Clara's favourite thing in the entire world, baffling both of her mothers who had little to no artistic talent to their names.)

Eyes lit up with excitement, she nodded eagerly. "Can I, Mommy?"

"Of course, Buggy. How about we go to the craft store on the way home and you can pick out some new paint?"

Clara flung herself into Emily's arms to give her a milkshake-sticky hug.