a sound she hadn't heard before

forty-three.

"Mommy, Mommy!" Taylor wakes up to a little girl barging through the door of her bedroom. Her and Joe both sit up, rubbing sleep out of their eyes as Ayla climbs onto the bed and starts to jump up and down with excitement. "Come on, we have to go downstairs and see if Santa came!"

"Ayla, sweetie, what time is it?" Taylor mutters.

"It's 6:00," she informs her mother. "Time for presents. Come on, come on!"

Taylor sighs. She turns to Joe. "Sorry," she mouths. Joe only laughs. He remembers that Patrick used to do the same thing when he was little. There is twelve years between the two, so Joe was a teenager at that time, and had absolutely no interest in waking up before the crack of dawn to see what Santa put under the Christmas tree. One year, Joe awoke in the morning to find that his entire family had opened all of their presents without him because he was sleeping for too long and Patrick had refused to wait a single second longer to see what was in the big box with his name on it.

"Mooommmmyyy," Ayla whines, "hurry up."

"Okay, okay," Taylor sighs. "We're up now, so we might as well." She lifts Ayla off of the bed before getting up from under the covers herself. Taylor throws her slippers onto her feet and pulls her hair up into a ponytail. Joe also puts his slippers on before the three of them walk down the stairs to see the Christmas tree, all lit up and glowing in the dark of the living room.

Joe has to admit, it all looks really beautiful. Taylor did a really good job with everything. Some of the presents are in a shiny silver wrapping paper- those are the ones from friends and family. Others are in a glittery red paper- those are the ones from Santa. Seeing Ayla's face light up upon seeing the scene in front of her is the cherry on top of everything. Suddenly, neither Taylor nor Joe are upset about being woken up so early.

Taylor is overcome with a wave of emotions. Somehow, everything feels so perfect. She's here on Christmas morning, in the peace and quiet of the early hours of the morning, with her sweet, beautiful little girl and the man that she has fallen so deeply in love with in such a short time. The man who has turned her whole world upside down. The man who has taken her daughter under his wing as if she is his own. The man who never fails to make her smile.

As if he is reading her mind, Joe turns to Taylor and places a quick kiss on her lips. "Merry Christmas, my love."

"Merry Christmas," she smiles back at him, before turning to her daughter. "Should we open our stockings first, Miss Ayla?"

"Yeah!" she exclaims, running to the fireplace and carefully pulling hers off of its hook.

"Will you get mine and Joe's too?"

"Yes Momma." Taylor and Joe sit down on the sofa and Ayla brings them their stockings before sitting on the floor with hers. "Can I open mine first?"

"Of course you can."

Ayla eagerly begins to pull little trinkets and toys of out of her stocking. She's not hard to please- Taylor can afford anything that the little girl could ever dream up, but she kept it simple for the stocking, and Ayla doesn't mind that one bit. She couldn't be more excited about the baby kitten Calico Critters, card game, Play-Doh, and candy that she finds in there. While she will get some more elaborate gifts later, Taylor smiles to herself, knowing that her little girl would be happy if this was everything. She tries really hard to instill a sense of gratitude for everything that she has in Ayla, and also give her a relatively regular childhood. She still has to do age-appropriate chores and she's expected to take good care of all of her things, a lesson that she learned the hard way when she was four and Taylor wouldn't replace her iPad that she broke until her fifth birthday, three months later.