"Stop it!" Lucy giggled, rolling around on her bed.

"No you stop it!" Ruthie insisted, her laugh higher pitched than her sister's.

"No you both stop it" Annie insisted, but she was laughing.

Lucy grabbed her sister by her armpits and swung her over her head and into her arms. "You're an airplane! Vroooom!" she screamed, flying her to the end of the bed. Annie watched in awe. Lucy had always shown that she'd loved her sister, but never really played with her. It was great to see her interact more with her. True, the rough housing wasn't particularly good for the baby, but Luce was being careful and Annie was watching them.

"Alright you too" Annie insisted, "come on Luce, time to put away laundry.

"I am putting away laundry" she told her, grabbing the pile at the end of her bed and stuffing it into the open drawer. "See?"

"Ah, so the three piles I've done and the one you have are equal? I don't think so missy." She plopped down another pile.

"I can help!" Ruthie screamed, grabbing a pile that was about half her size and heading over, slightly unbalanced to Mary's dresser.

"This is a Lucy job Ruth" Annie told her, taking the pile and replacing it on the bed.

"What if you finish the laundry and Ruthie helps me make lunch?" Lucy asked, placing another pile in its drawer, "we're nearly done anyways."

"But…yeah okay" she forfeited, it would be nice to have lunch ready immediately after she finished anyways. The girls made their way down stairs laughing and joking.

"Why do you stay home?" Ruthie asked as she messily spread peanutbutter onto her bread.

"Mom wanted me to learn some household skills" she answered, this was the response she'd been told to use.

"But Mary never stayed home." She insisted, now smashing jelly onto the slice.

"Well, let's just say I'm different then Mary." She answered, finishing Ruthie's sandwich before it became a mountain of jelly.

"Is it because of the baby?" she asked. How did she know? No one had told Ruthie. Simon, who'd recently had FLE, had figured it out, but Ruthie was six, how did she find out?

"What?"

"The baby, the one you're going to have." She was acting as if this was no big deal, "Oh come on, everyone's talking about it, I barley had to eavesdrop."

"Yeah," she sighed, placing the sandwhiches onto plates and bringing them to the table, "It's because of the baby."

"So when's the baby going to be here?"

"Five months" she answered proudly. Her stomach was defiantly sticking out from her, but didn't yet hinder too much movement.

"That's a long time to wait. Why can't you have it now?"

"If I had the baby now, it wouldn't be ready to come out. It would probably die."

"But it looks so big"

"What are you two talking about?" Annie asked as she appeared at the bottom of the stairs, and headed to get silverware.

"The baby." Ruthie told her. Annie shot Lucy a look that said, 'you told her?!'. "I figured it out myself."

"Well, Ruthie, this baby is kind of…a secret. We don't really want people to know until daddy tells them in his sermon tomorrow, okay?"

"I can keep a secret" she said, smiling as she locked her mouth with an imaginary key. "Promise."