“Papa, Papa, Papa!”
Maybe I should have been used to the swell of pride and the sensation that my heart had grown too big for my chest. I wasn’t. Not even close.
I grinned at my handsome man holding our toddler’s hand. Dexter winked as I dropped to one knee and held my arms open wide. He let go and she ran, blond curls tumbling, her little legs hopping over the grass as she launched herself at my chest and clung like a monkey. My monkey.
I stood and held her in the air before tickling her belly. “Anni, Anni, Anni. Where have you been, my beautiful Annika?”
She squealed gleefully, pushing her hair from her eyes. “Donuts!”
“What kind of donuts? The yummy kind?”
Dex joined us, leaning in to kiss me as he wrapped an arm around our daughter. “The kind that required a change of clothes. It was a big mess. Right, kiddo?”
Anni giggled. “I clean mess.”
Dex made a funny face. “That’s what we call an alternate version of the story.”
Anni just smiled, innocent and mischievous at the same time. She had no idea what her father meant, and she had other things on her mind. She wiggled in my arms and pointed at the dandelions poking through the grass. “Flowers, Papa.”
I set her down and drew Dex to my side, kissing his temple as we watched Anni toddle through the dandelions, hollowing her pink cheeks to blow the fluffy bits and make wishes with her hazel eyes squeezed shut.
Anni was a beautiful child, but that was no surprise. She had Freya’s Scandinavian coloring and Dexter’s eyes and mouth…and his sweet nature.
Annika Margaret was born December fifth, a day past her due date. She made up for that twenty-four-hour delay by racing through life, curious and carefree. She’d been an easy infant, an easy baby. She’d slept and eaten well and had never been overly cranky.
Teething had been the hardest phase so far. Dex and I had taken turns walking her in the middle of the night, singing and soothing her. I remembered feeling like a zombie in those days. But they’d passed quickly. Soon enough, she’d moved on to regular foods, most of which had ended up in her hair, ears, and nose. And yes, it was fucking adorable.
Things to know about Anni:
She loved mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, applesauce, and ofcourse, donuts. She was a regular at Dexter’s Donuts—like a mini celebrity, strapped into a BabyBjörn while her dad greeted costumers. Now that Anni’d entered the terrible twos—which honestly, weren’t so bad—she liked her freedom. Running about the shop was more fun than being confined to a backpack.
Anni also liked giraffes, and no one knew why. There had to be a giraffe in a book we’d read to her, but neither Dex nor I could figure out which one. She also loved cats and dogs…especially Tate, Marly, and Max. Like many precocious toddlers, Anni was friendly and chatty, though most of her words were a little difficult to understand. She mashed Swedish and English together and well…that just meant she was a genius in the making.
Most of all, Anni loved her dads. She was the center of our world, physical proof of our beginning. And yet, Dex and I were our own entity.
We recognized early on that it was important to make time for ourselves, so there was room for us to grow as a couple. I’d like to think we were successful at that. Maybe it seemed strange, but Dexter was as sexy to me with spit-up on his shirt as he was naked and under me in bed. Every day, the feeling grew…and grew.
On Annika’s first birthday, Dex and I were married at the courthouse in Pinecrest. Freya and Reg were our witnesses…and Anni.
That was the day she officially became Annika Gustafsson. Dex’s idea. He liked the idea of us all sharing the same name. We were now the Gustafsson family. There’d been a huge party at the park to celebrate the following spring.
And a year later, we had more to celebrate, Freya was pregnant with our second child, a boy. We decided to find out what we were having this time. Dex had been a little irked to learn that Freya and I had known Anni was a girl from her first ultrasound.
“It was a guess!” I’d assured him. Though to be fair, the nurse had basically shown us where to look.
This time, we were involved in every aspect of our son’s life…from the start. His name would be a surprise, but we had six months to think about it and help Anni get used to the idea of being a big sister.
Freya was a successful artist based in Burlington where she lived with her partner, Alice. She had no plans to have children of her own. She wanted to concentrate on her career. And she was killing it, by the way. Selling pieces to galleries, and a line of pottery she sold exclusively to Mill Depot. Big-name corporations had come calling, too. She was thrilled.
To Anni, she was Aunt Freya. To Dex and me, she was…well, words could never express our gratitude. She was family and always would be.
As for the rest of our family: Margaret adored her granddaughter. She spoiled her rotten, sending gifts so often that Dex finally had to tell her to knock it off. She also visited quite a bit. And though she might not want to admit it, Wood Hollow had grown on her.
We’d also visited Sweden a couple of times to introduce her to my family. My mother had cried when she’d met the baby. She’d claimed Anni looked like my sister, her namesake…but not really. Our Annika was her own girl, not a replica, not a memory. She was pure sunshine, and I couldn’t have been more in love with her.
And her father.
“Are you almost done here?” Dex asked.
