"Now, where is that Amelia?" Amy asked nobody as she sat spread on the couch. "I can't seem to find her anywhere!"

A giggle erupted from not too far away, and Amy had to stifle a few chuckles herself as she continued to feign ignorance. "Well I hope she shows up soon, or else I won't be able to give her the special surprise I've been planning…"

A toddler leaped up from behind her mother's mountain of a belly, hands planted on the spot where her sibling grew beneath and a grin stretching from ear to ear. "Boo!"

Amy gasped dramatically, hand pressed to her chest. "Amelia, there you are! You scared me."

The little girl smiled smugly- looking more like her father than ever- as pudgy fingers poked at the rounded stomach before her. "I got you, Mommy."

"Yes you did, baby." A saddened look crossed Amy's face, knowing it wouldn't be long before Amelia wasn't her baby anymore. A new one would be coming along very soon while little Lia was getting bigger by the day, just shy of two and a half years old. Where had the time gone?

"My surprise?" Amy snapped out of her daze to look into her daughter's angelically hopeful face, and despite her melancholy a smile bloomed on her lips, at first one of tender affection that quickly turned mischievous.

"That's right, I did promise a surprise, didn't I?" She tapped her chin in thought. "Well, a deal's a deal…"

The mother jerked as far up as her pregnant body would allow to grab the small girl and pull her forward so she could blow a series of raspberries onto her cheek. Amelia squealed with laughter as she attempted to wiggle out from Amy's hold, but the biologist was having none of that as she hugged her baby to her chest.

Amelia looked around desperately in search of a savior, and her eyes landed on the man at the other end of the room, fixated on his computer. "Daddy! Help!"

"Mmhmm." Sheldon didn't even turn around, entirely focused on the paper he was working on. The man was, as he himself liked to put it, 'in the zone', and even his child's screeching pleas put barely more than a dent into his level of concentration.

Allowing her daughter a reprieve from the sudden assault of affection, Amy turned to her husband. "Care for a break, Sheldon?"

Apparently what it took was a double attack from both wife and daughter to snap the physicist from his trance enough to turn his head to the side (Amy filed away the discovery for future reference). "This article is due to be sent in to Physics Today in T-minus forty-eight hours and I have only proof-read it four times so far. I don't have time for a break."

"You sure about that, Sheldon?" Amy asked as she held Amelia steady on her own two feet on the couch beside her. "Because I think you could make some time for this little cutiepie, right Lia?"

"Yeah!" the toddler replied, a giggle muffled by her two little hands.

Amy could see Sheldon rolling his eyes at the pair, but she also didn't miss the sneaking smile he was failing to hide as he turned fully back around in his seat.

Just then the door burst open and a certain astrophysicist shot inside, phone in hand. "Guys, guys, guess what happened?"

"You forgot about the proper social protocol of knocking before entering another's home?" Sheldon asked, eyes never leaving his computer screen.

"Well how can I relax when my best friend and former love of my love just officially became parents?" Raj nearly screeched.

Amy sat up straight at the news. "Really? When?"

"Just now, look!" Raj rushed at his heavily pregnant friend, and Amy set her daughter onto the floor in favor of the Indian's cell phone.

Pictured were the Wolowitz duo-turned-trio, Howard in all his bowl cut glory and Bernadette smiling brightly as she held up an older, coffee-skinned infant, staring straight at the camera with a confused frown. The caption read as follows:

Greetings from New Delhi! It's eight in the morning here, and I'm proud to say we have liftoff on Operation Parenthood. Meet Hiranya Deborah Wolowitz; she's clearly happy to meet you.

"Oh, she's beautiful!" Amy gushed. "Her parents are so lucky."

"I am, aren't I?" Raj said with a sigh.

That line prompted even Sheldon to turn around and stare at him in bewilderment.

"What? I was the one who suggested they adopt as a compromise so Bernadette doesn't have to put her career on hold in any capacity, nor go through the woes and pains of childbirth…" Amy raised a calculated eyebrow at him, and Raj grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. Not to mention they decided to get a child from my home country. I am just as much the parent as they are!"

"I'm quite certain the state of California would disagree," Sheldon deadpanned.

"Come on dude, just let me have this one. Emily's not interested in kids and, much as I love her, the idea of my blood and gore loving, knife-enthusiast of a fiancé with a child terrifies me. This is the closest I'm going to get to fatherhood, and I intend to live as vicariously through my Indian foster daughter as I can before she gets sick of me and can't stand the sight of my face."

"Wouldn't be much different from all the other women you'd been involved with in the past," Sheldon said before turning back again to his work.

Amy chose to ignore her husband's unhelpful comments as she returned Raj's phone. "Well please send our congratulations along with your own."

"Will do." It was at that exact moment that Amelia toddled over to greet her Uncle Raj with a hug to the knees (she had been too engrossed in a 500-piece jigsaw of the Empire State Building to do so earlier), and the man smiled fondly at her as he tousled her hair. "You know, back when it was just the guys, I was convinced that no woman would ever spare us a second look. Now here we are, each with a beautiful lady at our sides, planning futures and starting families. Life is pretty crazy, huh?"

Sheldon had stopped typing, and Amy knew he was listening even though he would never admit to it. Raj failed to notice as he stooped to bop Amelia on the nose. "Well I'd better go. Still need to tell Leonard and Penny the news. 'Night." And with one last pat to Amy's shoulder, Raj was out the door.

The moment he left, Sheldon rose from his seat for the first time since he woke up and went to open the fridge and stare unseeingly at the contents. Knowing what he was up to, Amy hid a smirk as she leaned over to grab a magazine and wait. He took his sweet time, but as expected, Sheldon had eventually meandered over to his wife and maneuvered her legs around so he could sit in his spot, her feet in his lap.

"I thought you didn't have time for a break."

Sheldon shrugged evasively as his fingers deftly worked to massage the pains in her ankles away. "A, uh… spot just opened up for you."

Amy bit her lip knowingly. "Well, I thank you for taking the time out of your very busy schedule, Dr. Cooper."

The pace of Sheldon's hands began to relax, now only gently sweeping in soothing circles along the ridge of her foot. His head slowly turned to meet Amy's eyes, a small yet beautiful smile quirking his lips. "One more month," he breathed.

"Yes." Amy nodded with eyes shining as she placed a hand over her middle. "One month until we have our second little homo novus daughter."

Sheldon's gaze shifted briefly to Amelia as she put the last few pieces of her puzzle together before returning to Amy, face now practically beaming. He placed his own hand on top of hers, splaying his long fingers out so he could caress the spot where his child was. "Our daughter."