This Is Us

Chapter 1

AnnaBelle holds the pregnancy test in her hand, her heart beating faster as she stares at the blinking screen.

"Babe?" Her husband, Ian, calls out from the front door.

"Bathroom!"

His footsteps grow closer before the door is pushing in towards the bathroom. "Without me?" He teases, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind. "Seriously though, you couldn't have waited ten more minutes?"

Her green eyes dance as she looks over her shoulder with a smirk, "I really needed to pee."

"Could've held it a little longer," he tells her, tickling her waist for just a moment. "How much longer?"

She takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly through her nose. "Any second now."

  Just as soon as the words leave her lips, the screen changes popping up the word: PREGNANT.

  Ian jerks his wife around, crying in her ear about his pleasure of becoming a father. "Longest two years of my life," he tells her through cloudy eyes, kissing her fiercely before her own sob breaks forth. "We're going to be the most amazing parents, Belle. You and me. He's going to be so loved."

She giggles through her crying, "Already calling the baby a 'he?'" she asks.

"Of course. Have you met me? He's going to be the strongest boy. Will play defensive football just like his daddy. He'll want to come to sites with me and learn all about construction. I'll have him driving the truck in my lap with a foreman's hard hat."

Ian's excitement is contagious. AnnaBelle can't bite back her own smile at watching the pure emotional joy her husband exudes. She looks forward to falling even more in love with the man she's loved since freshman year of high school.

Everyone thought they were crazy as they graduated high school, an engagement ring sitting on her finger just to walk down a small aisle in her parent's backyard just two weeks later. Even though they'd been together since that first year of high school, everyone had their doubts, even their own families. But neither of them cared. They had eyes only for each other and wanted to spend every day with one another for the rest of their lives.

They'd spent the first year of their marriage trying to keep their own sanity and love intact as they went to school, paying for it themselves while working two jobs each. But one year into their wedded bliss, both began desiring to build a family, once again their friends and family finding them crazy to be moving so quickly through their lives.

Finally, today, two full years of doing nothing to prevent a pregnancy, has finally paid off as they rejoice in the idea of finally growing their family and making use of the extra room that has sat empty ever since they moved in to the tiny 800 sq foot home after graduation.

Walker Jameson Baxter made his grand debut two weeks early on AnnaBelle's twenty-second birthday, August 19. The blue eyed boy was born with the whitest blonde hair that anyone in the delivery room had ever seen.

"He looks just like Ian did when he was born," the matron of the Baxter family comments, holding him for the first time. "I'm sure he'll lose the white blonde and go darker before he's even in kindergarten, just like his daddy."

"I hope he keeps it forever," AnnaBelle says quietly, reaching for her son again unable to bear having him out of his arms for very long. Her mother-in-law, Karen passes him to her, adjusting the blanket tighter around him. "My sweet baby boy."

She new when she saw him for the first time that she was staring at her own heart. His sleepy sighs, and tiny cries were enough to make her heart ache in all the best ways. With Ian sitting next to her on the bed, she knew she felt more complete now than in her entire life.

A sense of security surrounding her as she looks up and spots her own family walking in the door. Everyone greeting one another before they come and steal the little boy out of her arms again, practically ignoring her, fawning over the bundle. She doesn't even care as her heart soars over the biggest blessing in her life.

"He looks nothing like you," her father, Donald, tells her as he peeks over his wife's shoulder.

"That's not a bad thing," Cindy, her mother jokes making the room laugh. "He is a boy after all."

AnnaBelle pays no attention to the teasing as it's just another day in the life of being the only girl surrounded by brothers and even brother in laws. She'd been her parent's surprise child, her own father having a vasectomy the day before her mother's bloodwork showed an unexpected pregnancy. There was ten years between herself and her youngest brother. Both brothers now having their own families and living in a different state along with her own parents.

"How are you going to do this mom thing now that the restaurant is getting ready to open?"

She slips her hand into her husbands, smiling at him as he gives her a tender squeeze. "Together," he answers, leaning over to kiss her on the forehead.

*Shh...I may have stolen a bit of time at work to write ;)

*Unedited.