Lasting Love

Family bonding time

"I can't get over how adorable she is." My mom tells Justin and I as she looks down at a sleeping Kay in her arms "She looks so much like you it brings back so many flashbacks."

I sit across from her in Justin's lap watching as my mom bonds with my daughter. She's almost 8 months old, but this is only the second time that they're together. I know that it doesn't mean much to Kayleigh since she has no idea what's happening, but the look on my mom's face is priceless. I grab my phone out of my pocket and take a picture of them not wanting to forget this moment.

Justin tightens his grip on me as I put my phone away. He hasn't taken his eyes off of them since the moment my mom picked up Kay. It's calming to watch them bond especially when everything is quiet and the only sound you can hear are Kay's giggles. I could stay like this for hours, but Kay has other plans. She must be hungry because she starts to cry out of no where and leans over towards me. I take her from my mom and start feeding her. Right away the room gets quiet again and we decide what we want to do for the rest of the day.

"She'll probably take a nap now that she ate, but maybe we can go out when she wakes up?" I move Kay over to her play pen so she can sleep and get out my phone to look at things to do "There's a picnic that we can go to. We've been there before and it's a lot of fun."

My mom looks at Justin for agreement then back at me "Let's do it."

I make the arrangements to meet with my brother and his family there so that we aren't alone. We all get changed and I pack a bag to put with Kay's stroller filled with stuff we might need, then we get in the car and drive to where we're meeting my brother. It's a short walk away from all the activities, so we park and get the stroller set while we're waiting for them to get here. Justin holds Kay's hands as she tries to walk a few steps in the grass "She's going to be dirty before we even make it there." He jokes as he picks her up off the ground where she fell. He shorts already have little grass stains on them, but she's having fun and that's what matters. I take a few pictures of them playing and then ask my mom to take one of the three of us. We stand next to each other and hold Kay in the middle of us.

Once they get here, we put Kay back in her stroller against her will and walk to the fun. We put a blanket down in front of our chairs for Kay to lay on and play with some of her toys and Eilish, who would normally be more interested in playing games and winning prizes decides to stay and play with Kay. Justin and I sit there watching them as all the other adults walk around finding food and some fun things to do. Kay is excited to have somebody other than Justin or I to play with and crawling around like crazy trying to keep up with Eilish who is walking around the toys. She even gets up at one point and takes a few steps, but ends up falling flat on her butt and crying. Justin goes over and picks her up and brushes her off and right away she stops crying and wants down again so she can play more. They continue to do this for what seems like hours before the other adults get back and we switch places.

It's just Justin and I so we find a somewhat secluded picnic table and he gets us some typical carnival food; fries, funnel cake and burgers. We pick at all the food both knowing that we'll never end up eating all of it, "This is so different coming here now that we have her." Justin states, stealing words out of my mouth "We probably won't be able to stay for the fireworks because they'll wake her."

I sigh knowing that's true. They set off incredible fireworks here that we love to watch, but we can't take the chance of them waking her if she falls asleep, "Well, they always show them on TV. It's not the same but we could still watch them from our room."

He reluctantly agrees and stands up taking my hand "Let's go for a walk." Confused, I stand up and we go for a walk through all the commotion of the games and rides. Most of the games have prizes that you can win that are stuffed animals and one of then catches my eye "You should try to win me that!" I excitedly point out the big tie dyed puppy "Kay and I can share it." Not being able to say no he walks over to the guy, pays him some crazy amount of money and gets handed a basket ball. He's not very good at sports, but he has to get 5 in a row to win the puppy we want and he somehow manages to do it. On his 3rd try. $15 and almost 20 minutes later he walks up to me with the puppy.

"Awe, it's so cute!" I thanks him and kiss him sweetly. He carried it for me and we walk back to where everybody is. Shannon, my sister in law is holding a very tired Kayleigh feeding her from the bottle we left here. She looks like she's about to fall asleep, but she won't do so until she's done eating. As soon as she sees Justin and I she reaches her arms out for me to get her. I take her from Shannon and sit on the ground next to my mom "So, how do you like it so far?"

"I love it." She smiles "It's so nice to be somewhere fun and have both my kids here at the same time."

I lay my head on her shoulder and we sit watching everyone around us "It's so great to have a family like this."