Familyness

Counting our Blessings

"Good morning." Brad walks into our room carrying a tray filled with breakfast food "Ari and Luke are at school, and she," He points to Bri who is "sleeping" next to me "is staying with us today."

I smile and take the tray from him handing Bri and piece of the bacon to keep her quiet "Thank you, babe." It's been 3 weeks since we started trying for another baby, and it's made us closer than normal.

"More!" Bri leans over me to try to get the bacon "peas?"

"Here, baby." I laugh handing her some more. She happily takes it as crawls across me to sit on Brad's lap where she manages to get some more food out of him.

"What do you wanna do today, princess?" He asks her. Her eyes light up and she looks excitedly from me to him "payound!!"

"Okay, honey." I smile at her as I look at Brad "We can do that, but you need to change out of your pajamas first." She makes a face at me, but eventually gets out of bed and runs to her room.

"How are you feeling?" Brad asks me as he starts to get dressed "Anything?"

"Well, I feel like eating everything in the house all the time except for the morning." I laugh as I walk over to kiss him "I'll know more next week if I'm late."

"Moooooommy!!!" Bri yells from her room. I quickly finished getting dressed and walk over to her room where I see her standing in only her diaper with her other clothes laying around her. She also has a new diaper in her hand waiting for me.

"What happened in here?" I ask her laughing. She just shrugs and hands me the shirt she picked out to wear. It's pink with the number 2 on it because she wore it on her 2nd birthday. I get that on her and change her diaper before finding pants for her and carrying her downstairs to meet Brad.

"I guess if we walk there then we can walk to the school to pick up Ari and Luke. They'll like that." Brad suggests as he puts Bri in her stroller. I agree and we start to walk to the playground.

Bri yells out random things to us as we walk to the playground. She's so cute getting excited over every little thing that she sees.

We get to the playground and she manages to unbuckle herself and jumps out of her stroller running right up to the equipment. Brad and I follow her over to play with her as she runs around on everything.

"We race!" She grabs Brad's hand and pulls him over towards the double slides. He follows her up to the top and sits next to her while I stand at the bottom ready to take pictures of them.

"1...2...3..." Brad helps Bri count before they both rush down the slide. Bri wins, of course and runs right up to me asking me to race her.

I run up after her and sit next to her on the slide waiting for her to signal for us to go. The little cheater let's go without warning and flies down the slide before I'm even halfway down.

"I win again!" She yells as she runs up to where I'm sitting at the bottom of the slide. I congratulate her and Brad tells us that it's time to start walking so we can pick up Ari and Luke.

"We're walking home?" Ari asked unamused once she notices that we walked "You guys have like 10 cars and you chose to walk?"

"Your sister wanted to go to the playground so we thought we'd pick you guys up and go for ice cream," I notice her start to get excited "We thought you guys would like that."

"I like it!" Luke adds quickly "I always like ice cream."

"We know, buddy." Brad laughs as we start walking. Ari and Luke talk to Bri about random things until we get there, and even sit with her at the table while we're getting the ice cream so that she is entertained. Every time I turn back to look at them her position at the table changes.

"What do you want?" Brad asks me as we're waiting. I take some time to look at the menu and the toppings before I decide.

"I think the vanilla with gummy bears and extra peanut butter sounds good."

"Okay," He scrunches up his face "I guess we're not sharing." I laugh at him and go back to join the kids at the table. The three of them are now crowded around Ari's phone taking funny pictures.

"Mom, come here!" Ari motions for me to join in on the picture. We take one of us making funny faces, then one where we look mostly normal. Ari then kicks us out of the pictures so that she can take millions of selfies to post online.

We sit to eat our ice cream, but are interrupted when a family sits at the table next to us with a crying baby. The mom tries to soothe the baby, but isn't getting very far. Bri is very amused by this and keeps talking to the baby making us, and the parents laugh. Eventually, the mom let's Bri hold the baby, who starts to calm down a little. Bri rocks the baby back and forth gently like we did for her when she was a baby.

"That's so cute," Ari comments "I miss babies."

"Yeah, I do too." Luke adds. They both look over at Brad and I. We haven't told them that we're trying because we don't really want them to know that, but it makes me feel better that they want a baby if we can have one and won't be upset.

"Your mom and I miss having them too."