146. Lilly's First Easter

Disclaimer: Nope, not mine.

I suck, I know. Blame nursing school! But I'm almost through my first year, so once summer break comes, the updates should be more frequent. Endless thanks for putting up with me!

It was a sunny Sunday morning in April, and Lilly's first Easter. She sat on the living room floor in her Peep pajamas, mapping out her path to all the not-so-hidden eggs scattered around her. A blue one caught her eye, and she quickly crawled over to it, holding it victoriously in the air after she picked it up.

"Wow, she means business. Good job, Lilly!" Meredith said proudly, she and Derek sitting on the floor beside her.

"Gigi, Ma!" Lilly showed her, an excited smile on her face.

"I know; you're so smart. You already found the first gigi!" Meredith said as she kissed Lilly's forehead.

"Gigi. Is that 'egg' in Lilly talk?" Derek asked.

Lilly handed him the plastic, blue egg. "Gigi, Dada," she clarified for him, before crawling off in search of another.

"Well, I guess that answers my question," Derek chuckled, setting the egg in Lilly's pink Easter basket. "She really is a genius. That Grey-Shepherd DNA is powerful stuff."

"Right?"

"And only a few months until we start trying for her prodigy sibling," he said.

Meredith put her hand on his cheek and kissed him. "I can't wait."

"Me either," Derek murmured against her lips.

Lilly plucked a green egg out of her diaper bin that was sitting across the room, glancing over at both of them "Gigi!" she announced again.

Her parents pulled away from the kiss, both of them clapping for her in encouragement. "You found another one! Can you put it in your basket?" Derek said, setting it between himself and Meredith.

They waited for her to crawl back over to them, but she had other plans. Instead of positioning herself on her hands and knees, she raised her bottom off the floor, and steadied herself on her tiny feet, the green egg still in her hand. Meredith and Derek watched as she stood all on her own, dumbfounded for a few moments before Meredith snapped into action.

"Holy crap, she's gonna walk," Meredith whispered, scrabbling for her phone on the coffee table.

"That's it, Lilly," Derek cheered her on softly, careful not to disturb her as she got a feel for the floor beneath her.

Meredith hit the record button on her phone just as Lilly moved her left foot forward, making sure she had good balance before moving her right. Once she found her pattern, she continued on toward Derek, picking up momentum with each little step.

"Oh my God, Lilly," Meredith said in awe, her eyes already blurring over with tears as she watched Lilly walk on her own for the first time.

"You can do it. Come to Daddy," Derek said encouragingly, holding his arms out toward her.

Lilly slowly conquered the six feet of space that stood between her and her parents, and when she made it over to Derek, the proud smile on her face was enough to melt both of their hearts.

"Lilly, you did it! You walked!" Meredith cheered, watching Derek as he pressed kisses all over Lilly's cheeks. "I can't believe she just did that."

"She wanted to surprise us, right?" Derek said.

Meredith hugged Lilly tight when Derek passed her over, and got in a sprinkling of her own kisses. "That was so good, Lilly. You made me cry," she said, smoothing her fingers through Lilly's hair. "Last Easter, I spent most of the day vegging out on the couch eating Peeps while you tap-danced in my belly. Probably from the sugar high we were both on. Now you're walking like a big girl."

"I can't wait to send that to my mom and sisters. They're still obsessing over the pictures we sent of Lilly with the Easter bunny. A video of her walking in the same week? We'll probably hear the squeals of joy all the way on the East coast," Derek joked, forwarding the video to his phone.

Lilly leaned over Meredith's lap and dropped her egg into her basket, then clapped for herself in delight. "Gigi, Ma," she said.

Meredith laughed. "Well, she's very impressive."

"You need to show Aunt Lexie and everyone when we see them today," Derek said. "They're still coming over, right?"

"Yeah. I talked to Lexie last night. She said my dad can't wait to see Lilly. He made a whole gift basket for her," Meredith said.

"Good. I'm sure he's looking forward to seeing you, too. It's been a while."

"What? Sorry, I'm trying to listen. She's just blowing my mind at the moment," Meredith replied, both of them watching as Lilly walked over to a pink egg sitting on her teddy bear's lap.

"Mine, too," Derek smiled.

"Good job, baby girl! Can you put it in the basket?" Meredith asked her.

Lilly set her sights on the basket, then toddled toward it with confidence, as though she'd been walking her whole life. She dropped the egg in the basket before making a beeline for the kitchen off to the left, and Meredith and Derek quickly scrambled to their feet to follow her.

"Man, those little feet move fast. What is she doing?" Derek chuckled.

"Maybe it's her way of telling us she wants breakfast," Meredith joked as they finally caught up with her in the other room.

Lilly turned around, looked up at the two of them, and reached her arms out. "Mmm, nana?" she requested.

"Told you. She's a girl who knows what she wants," Meredith said proudly.

"See, now aren't you glad we baby-proofed the house way in advance?" Derek asked.

Meredith giggled, kneeling down to pick Lilly up. "Well, I don't think it needed to be done when I was six months pregnant, but yeah, I am."

...

Lilly had only been walking for four hours, and already, she was running wobbly marathon laps around the living room. Meredith side stepped a stuffed bunny toy on the floor as she chased after her daughter. "Come here, Lillybug. Mommy needs to put a new diaper on you," she said, managing to scoop her up before she could get too far.

"You got your mischievous side from Daddy," Meredith smiled. She lifted Lilly's legs and cleaned her before slipping a fresh diaper under her bottom. "I'll be quick, I promise."

"Dada," Lilly echoed.

"Yeah. You know, Dada doesn't have his dad around, and I know that makes him sad. He always talks about how much he would've loved you and me. So the way I see it, my dad's back in my life for a reason. And you know what, peanut? I think you're that reason," Meredith said, tickling Lilly's belly with her finger after fastening the new diaper around her waist.

She reached behind her to take Lilly's dress off the couch, but when she turned back around, Lilly had already darted off, clad only in her diaper. "Lilly, you need to put your dress on," Meredith laughed, the purple sundress in her hand.

There was a knock at the front door, and Lilly quickly followed after the dog into the foyer. When Meredith finally caught up with both of them, she saw Lexie staring on the other side of the glass door, mouth agape.

Meredith pushed the door open and motioned for them to enter. "Hi, come on in," she greeted.

"She walks now? Since when?" Lexie asked in surprise as she stepped over the threshold.

"Oh. Yeah, since this morning. And she's already outrunning me, which is why she's standing here in a diaper," Meredith explained, picking Lilly up and sitting her on her hip. "Lilly, can you wave hi?"

Lilly gave the group of people standing in front of her a small wave, then buried her face in Meredith's shoulder, unsure of all the new faces besides Lexie's. "She's a little shy at first. In five minutes, she'll be her chatty self, showing you all her toys. Right, peanut?"

"She got so big," Molly said, shaking Lilly's tiny hand.

"Hey, everybody. Just in time for lunch," Derek said. "Hi, Laur. Did the Easter bunny leave you lots of candy?"

"Yup! Lots and lots!" Laura exclaimed.

"Lots, huh? Think you have room for more? Because I think he left some candy here for you, too," Derek said, gesturing to the pink gift basket they'd put together for her.

Laura's eyes lit up when she saw it, already looking eager to dig in. "Mommy, can I eat some now?" she asked Molly.

"How about we eat lunch first?" Molly suggested.

"Everything is set up on the patio outback. We figured we'd take advantage of the sun," Meredith said.

"Sounds nice," Thatcher agreed, handing Derek a small basket full of gifts wrapped in cellophane. "This is for Lilly. She can open it later."

"That was really sweet. Thank you," Meredith replied as they walked past the living room toward the kitchen. "I'll be right out. I just want to put her dress on and do her hair."

"Can I help?" Laura asked, nearly five with blonde pigtails and wearing a blue dress.

Meredith smiled at her niece. "Sure you can. Could you get me some purple hair bows from her bin over there?"

"Yeah," Laura said eagerly as she ran over to the bin and knelt down in front of it. "How many?"

"Should we do pigtails like yours?" Meredith asked, slipping Lilly's purple sundress over her head.

"Yeah!" Laura took two purple bows from the bin of hair supplies, then sat down in front of the baby. "Hi, Lilly."

Lilly stared at the girl in front of her with a curious expression, but decided to test the waters. "A bay," she said, patting her plush baby doll that sat beside her on the floor.

"Is she your baby?" Laura asked, suddenly seeming far beyond her kindergarten age when she talked to Lilly.

"Baybay," Lilly said, squishing the doll in her arms before giving her to Laura.

Meredith watched the interaction as she scooped half of Lilly's hair into a pigtail. "Her baby doll is her favorite. She must really like you if she's sharing her."

"I have a doll like this at my house, only mine poops," Laura giggled.

"Lilly does plenty of that," Meredith said as she fastened the other pigtail. "You're always welcomed to help me change those diapers."

"Really?"

Meredith laughed at her excitement, nodding. "Really," she echoed. "Okay, all finished. Ready to go outside?"

"Uh huh," Laura said, extending her hand. Lilly grabbed on, and Laura helped her stand up. "Want to walk with me?"

Lilly glanced back at Meredith to make sure she was coming, too, and Meredith smiled at her. "I'm right behind you, peanut," she assured her. Once Lilly found her balance, she began walking toward the kitchen with her cousin, and the image of the two of them hand in hand made Meredith's breath catch in her throat.

Her daughter wasn't the same baby they'd brought home from the hospital ten months ago. Now she walked and talked, and soon enough, she would be blowing out the candles on her first birthday cake. As proud as she was of her little girl, Meredith wished more than anything she could make her stay little for longer.

Derek was in the kitchen setting up the sandwich platter, and he smiled when the three of them walked in. "Hi, ladies. Going outback?"

"Uh huh," Laura nodded.

Lilly looked up at him and waved as she passed by. "Hi," she greeted.

"Hi, Princess," Derek waved back.

Meredith reached for a napkin on the counter and wiped her eyes, watching as the two girls joined the others out on the back patio. "Remember when she was too little for her swing, so we put stuffed animals around her? And we had to roll the sleeves on all of her clothes because she was so tiny?"

"Yeah. I do," Derek said softly. "Hey, are you crying?"

Meredith narrowed her eyes at him. "Shut up."

"Mer, she's ten months old. She still needs us, even if she's a big, bad walker now."

"I know. I think just seeing her walk off without me really hit me," Meredith shrugged.

Derek wrapped an arm around her shoulder and kissed her temple. "Know what that means?"

"What?"

"It means that she'll be just like you one day. A strong, confident, independent woman. It's a good thing," Derek assured her.

Meredith's lips curled into a small smile. "Thank you," she said. "Ready?"

"Yeah."

Much to Meredith's relief, lunch was going surprisingly smoothly. She never knew what to expect when she and her father were in the same vicinity, but so far, the awkwardness was kept at bay, much in part due to Derek's ability to keep conversations going, seamlessly transitioning from one topic to the next. Meredith's mind began to drift as she thought of the many ways she would thank him for that later on tonight when the sound of Lilly wailing snapped her back to the present.

Both she and Derek practically jumped out of their chairs when they glanced over and saw her crying on the grass, Laura next to her, trying to calm her down.

"What happened?" Meredith asked in a panic, kneeling down on the grass beside her daughter.

Streams of tears ran down Lilly's reddened cheeks, and she reached her arms toward Meredith. "Mama!" she sobbed.

"I think she tripped over her sandal," Laura said.

Derek wiped the grass strains off Lilly's hands and knees, while Meredith wiped the tears off her cheeks. "Walking for a total of six hours, and this is the first time you fell. I'd say that's pretty good, Princess," he chuckled.

"You're okay, Lillybug. You just scared yourself, that's all," Meredith soothed her, Lilly's tiny hands clinging to her shirt as she continued to cry. "I know, baby girl. How about we go have some Mommy-Lilly time inside?"

"Gonna nurse her?" Derek asked, unbuckling Lilly's culprit sandals and taking them off.

"Yeah, that should help calm her down. Do you mind just keeping everyone entertained for a while? I'll be back," Meredith said as they stood up.

"Yeah, go ahead. We're fine out here," Derek nodded.

Meredith stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. "I'll thank you later," she murmured into his ear.

"Looking forward to that," Derek grinned.

Once the commotion settled, he sat back down in his chair on the patio across from Thatcher's, while Molly and Lexie went to go play with Laura, who needed people to run around with until Lilly returned.

"She's such a sweet kid," Derek said, he and Thatcher watching as Laura did cartwheels on the grass.

Thatcher smiled at his granddaughter. "Yeah, she is. Eric got deployed two months ago, so it's been hard on her not having him around," he said, the smile on his face dissolving into a frown. "Her class just had a father-daughter dance a couple weeks ago. I'm just glad I was able to fill in for him and go with her. I couldn't help but think about Meredith, though. She was around the same age Laura is now when..."

When I left her and never looked back, were the words he couldn't bring himself to say out loud.

"Yeah," Derek said. The sad reality of everything Meredith missed out on as a child broke his heart every time he was reminded of it. And he knew as much as Meredith shrugged it off, it hurt her, too.

"She had no backups to take her to a school dance. She had no one. But in the hour I've been here and watched her as a parent, I've seen her show more love and affection to Lilly than she ever got from Ellis," Thatcher said. "I know I probably have no right to be, because she became the person she is all on her own; but she still makes me so proud."

Derek looked at his father-in-law in sympathy. "You can be proud of her," he said, smiling at the flowery decals on Lilly's pink, strappy sandals on his lap. "I'm proud of her, too. Every day."

...

After a quiet hour spent nursing, Meredith carried a much happier Lilly downstairs, where Laura was opening the Easter basket they'd gotten her. Derek glanced over when he heard them approaching. "Hey, Princess," he greeted.

Meredith set Lilly on her feet, and the baby toddled over to him as quickly as she could. "Dada!" she shouted, breaking out into a fit of laughter when Derek scooped her into his arm and tickled her belly.

"There's my favorite sound."

"Full belly and good as new," Meredith said as she joined them on the couch.

"More Peeps, Mommy!" Laura cheered, pulling them from her basket.

"Peeps are Meredith's favorite. She must've eaten a thousand when she was pregnant," Derek chuckled, earning him a nudge in his side courtesy of Meredith's elbow. "Ouch. What? It's the truth. I had to special order them in January."

Lexie laughed as she opened the pack of Peeps for her niece. "I remember that. Whenever I flipped through a chart and found blue sugar on the pages, I knew it was one of Mer's patients."

"Want one, Aunt Meredith?" Laura offered.

"Thank you, sweetie," Meredith said, ignoring the commentary of her husband and sister as she plucked a blue bunny Peep from the stash. She bit the ears off and moaned at the sugary taste on her tongue. "Mmm. I hope you got me some of these," she told Derek.

"Well, I was gonna surprise you, but yes I did," Derek said, with full knowledge that if they didn't have company, she'd be thanking him in sexual favors. But until such time, he had to distract himself from the images going through his head. "Want to open your basket from grandpa, Lilly?"

Lilly tilted her head up toward him. "Me gigi?"

"Let's see. There might be some gigis in here," Derek said as he took the basket off the table and set it on the couch cushion next to him.

"What does gigi mean?" Molly asked.

"Egg in Lilly language. We're getting pretty fluent," Derek joked, taking the pink cellophane off the basket. "Wow, look at all this stuff, Lillybug."

Meredith smiled at her father when she saw how much time and effort he put into decorating it, and that meant more to her than all the little toys and treasures it contained. "You didn't have to do all this."

"Baybay!" Lilly squealed, pointing to something inside the basket.

Derek spotted what Lilly was looking at and picked it up, the smile on his face growing when he saw what it was. "You know who this is, Lilly? This is Mama when she was a baby."

"Mama?" Lilly asked.

Meredith studied the picture in Derek's hand, one of her on her first Easter at eight months old. She sat on the porch swing at the old house, wearing a yellow dress and a pair of pink bunny ears over her wavy, blonde hair. "I never saw this picture before," she said.

"I found it when I was reorganizing the den. The frame I put it in has two slots. I thought you could put a picture of Lilly on her first Easter on the other side," Thatcher said.

"Baybay Ma," Lilly giggled, hugging the picture to herself.

"This is adorable. Thank you," Meredith said. "We can put it on the shelf in your room with your other pictures, Lilly."

"Wow, you and Lilly really look alike in this," Molly complimented.

Meredith laughed, looking back and forth between Lilly and the picture in the frame. "Trust me, I'm holding onto this. Sometimes, I swear my genes battled Derek's and forfeited my half of Lilly's DNA. This is proof that she's actually half me."

...

Derek scooped a sleeping Lilly from the bathtub, careful not to wake her up. He quickly passed her over to Meredith, who wrapped her in a towel to keep her warm.

"Usually she loves splashing in the water until it's barely warm anymore. She wore herself out today," Derek said, dumping the water from the tub into the sink.

Meredith rocked back and forth on her heels out of habit, Lilly's wet hair soaking through her shirt. "I know. Between the house and the yard, she probably ran five miles."

"Those little feet worked hard today," Derek chuckled as he and Meredith walked into their bedroom to put Lilly in her pajamas.

"The same ones that used to kick me from the inside every day and night, and you would have to tell her stories about fly fishing to get her to sleep," Meredith said, laying Lilly down on their bed and unwrapping her from the bath towel. "I love these chubby, little feet. Everything about her, actually."

Derek smiled at his daughter, who scrunched her nose in her sleep. "Hmm, me too," he said, sitting on one side of the bed while Meredith sat on the other. "So your dad and I were talking today."

Meredith held up Lilly's legs to slide a diaper under her bottom. "About?" she asked curiously.

"You. He's so proud of you, Meredith. You're sweet; you're patient. You practically knocked the chair over trying to get to Lilly after she fell."

"So did you," Meredith reminded him.

"You know what I mean," Derek said, rubbing Lilly's skin with her lavender baby lotion while Meredith combed her wet curls. "You're the best mom Lilly could've ever hoped to have. And no one taught you how. You just are."

Meredith looked up at him and smiled slightly. "He said all that?"

"Yeah. He knows he wasn't around to be your dad, but he wants to be there as Lilly's grandpa. He wants to be involved. We're actually going golfing on Sunday over at Greenlake," Derek said as he shimmied Lilly's legs into her Elmo pajama pants.

"Really?" she asked.

Derek nodded. "Yeah."

"Just you and my dad?"

"Yeah. Maybe Mark, if he wants to come along," Derek said. "Is that okay?"

"Yeah. You've been wanting to plan something with him for a while now. It's good," Meredith promised, the two of them weaving Lilly's arms into her shirt. "I don't have to go, do I?"

"As much as I would love that, no," Derek laughed before smirking at her. "I know there's only one athletic activity you enjoy."

"That's correct. So as soon as Lilly's tucked away in her crib, you and I are having Easter sex," Meredith said, covering Lilly's ears for the latter part of her sentence.

"Easter sex," Derek echoed. "That sounds wrong on so many levels."

"Oh, plus, you're getting sexual favors for the entire cabinet of Peeps you got me," Meredith said. She picked Lilly up off the bed and kissed her forehead. "I'm so glad you're asleep and have no idea what we're talking about."

"Me, too," Derek agreed, gently taking Lilly from Meredith. "How about I go put her to bed, and when I get back, you're N-A-K-E-D and ready to go?"

"Deal," Meredith said. "Goodnight, Lillybug. Love you."

Derek pressed kisses to Lilly's cheek as he walked her down the hall toward her nursery. "This was the best Easter ever. Do you know why?" he whispered. "Because of you. Although, I have to give the Peeps some credit, too."

...

(P.S... my birthday is on Sunday. Reviews make awesome presents! ;)