"I'm sure your parents would love to see Sofia, but it's up to you, Anya. Where would you like to go?" He knew they were overdue for a trip to Russia, especially now that they had a child, but he didn't want to make the decision for her. "We could go see your grandparents first and then go somewhere else," he suggested as he moved about the kitchen to gather what he would need to make breakfast.

There was a splat as Sofia's first mouthful went in and came straight back out again, dropping onto the tray as she blew bubbles in her father's direction. Anya rolled her eyes and tried again, refusing to be cowed this time. "Perhaps we could visit Moscow for a few days, and then move on to somewhere else?" she suggested, glancing up at Tony. "Somewhere in Italy, maybe?"

"Somewhere quiet, perhaps," he replied, though he might have to think about where. There were plenty of places to consider, and they had lots of time to decide. "Andrei and Katerina have been after us for a visit for some time," he remarked, as he set the griddle on the stove and turned to break a few eggs in a bowl.

She snorted with laughter, making the usual array of silly noises necessary to get a small child interested in eating mush. "If Papa had his way, he would have moved all of us - including all your family - to Moscow and made everyone honorary Komarovs," she teased her husband affectionately. "He and Mama deserve some time to spoil Sofia. And we deserve a little time to ourselves, don't you think?"

He chuckled at her question. "And here, I thought it was my idea," he said with a teasing grin, clucking his tongue as she tried to entice little Sofia with her bowl of mush. "Poor bambina. Soon you will be able to eat real food, piccola, but first you need some teeth!"

She might not have understood what her Papa was saying, but Sofia's response was so perfect, Anya howled with laughter. The eight-month-old looked up at Tony, and deliberately spread her lips in the biggest, cheesiest grin she could, showing off the two front teeth on her lower gum that had sprouted so unexpectedly a little over a month before. "Oh, malyshka, if only you knew how funny you are!" Anya crowed, tweaking the little girl's nose teasingly.

Tony chuckled along with Anya, though he though it unlikely their little girl had any real sense of comedic timing at such a young age. "And now for breakfast!" he declared, turning his attention to the making of French toast and letting Anya focus on the feeding of one small daughter.

Feeding Sofia was not the battle it could have been, but Anya was sure she had Tony to thank for that. He had somehow made the transition from purely bottle to organic mush exciting for their little girl, which meant that - barring the occasional tantrum - Sofia chowed down whatever they gave her these days. As she wiped the baby's mouth and handed over the sippy cup, Anya glanced up at Tony. "Where would you like to go today, lyubimaya?"

"I was going to ask you that, cara mia," he replied with a grin, as he laid two plates on the table holding thick slices of crusty bread dipped and fried in egg mixture, and covered in sugar and jam, with a side of fresh strawberries. "A walk in the park or perhaps you'd like to visit your friends at Maple Grove?" he asked. "Oh!" he exclaimed, an idea coming to mind. "I have an idea I think you might both like," he said, as he fixed them each a cup of coffee, just the way each liked it. "What would you think of a bike ride?" It was the perfect way to enjoy a cool, sunny day before the weather changed.

Anya's smile was as much impressed as it was affectionate. He always did seem to come up with the best ideas for family days. "I think that sounds like a lovely idea," she agreed warmly. "Clothes will be necessary, then, not just the first things to hand when I crawled out of bed this morning." She laughed, taking one of the strawberries from her plate to give it to Sofia, who was inspecting her sippy cup like a young, female Sherlock Holmes.

Tony chuckled again at the way their daughter was inspecting her cup. She was bound to tip it upside down and spill whatever it was her mother had filled it with sooner or later. "She is still suspicious of that cup, Anya," he remarked with a smirk. After all, it didn't look anything like a bottle, and it would take a little getting used to.

"I don't care, I am going to win this fight," his wife informed him stubbornly, but she did concede and swap the cup for the strawberry, earning herself a delighted coo from the baby girl. "One of these days, she is going to reach for the cup instead of a bottle, and it will be entirely because I have out-stubborned your daughter." She flashed her brightest smile at Tony, taking a bite of her French toast to punctuate the comment.

"I'm pretty sure she won't be graduating from high school with a bottle hanging out of her mouth," he pointed out with a grin as he cut into his French toast. He understood Anya's desire to wean their daughter from the bottle before she got too old, but like most fathers, he didn't really see the urgency in it. Thankfully, Anya was not breast-feeding or he might have felt differently.

Anya gave him what could only be called an old-fashioned look with a side order of impish mischief in her smile as she swallowed. "If she is going to be spending time in the Green Room, I want her to know where her drink is and how to get to it," she pointed out innocently. "Otherwise, Oscar is going to end up widdling all over that little play pen because he'll drink hers, too."

"Point taken," he replied, more to appease her than anything else. Like most mothers, she was the boss when it came to Sofia, and he wasn't about to compete with that. He reached over to walk his fingers across his daughter's tray and tickle her nose before returning to his breakfast.

To be fair, Anya didn't often put her foot down, but she was determined on this point. A new season meant fresh rehearsals, and they had Sofia to take into account now; they couldn't always leave her with Mama Rosita or one of Tony's sisters, after all. Her smile deepened as Sofia giggled at her father, still working on smooshing the strawberry into her mouth. "So will you let me cook you dinner tonight?" she asked him hopefully. "I promise, it will be edible. I am getting better at it."

He arched a brow at her question, wondering since when she needed to ask his permission, though it was common knowledge that he was the better cook. He'd been at it since a young age, after all, and Mama Rosita had been a good teacher. "Yes, of course, if you wish, though we could stop somewhere while we're out."

"But it is one of your days off, and while I am cooking, you can spend time with Sofia," she pointed out fondly, not even looking as she laid the sippy cup back on the high chair tray. Sofia transferred her attention to the cup, resuming her inspection as she smacked her lips. "Bath time, story time, bed time, all yours."

He chuckled again at the irony of that. "I work harder at home than I do at work," he teased, though that was obviously not entirely true. "You know, she hardly gets through story time. She usually falls asleep long before I get to the ending." But maybe that was the point, after all.

"I know," she admitted, swinging the gurgling shape of his daughter into her place in the carrier. "It still baffles me, though. Hold still, malyshka, or I will drop you on purpose." The baby girl looked her right in the eye and blew a raspberry at her mother, cackling with laughter as she then proceeded to shout the two words she was most proud of knowing. Dada ....and poo. Loudly. Repeatedly.

Tony couldn't help but burst into laughter at their daughter's mischief, wondering if she was doing it on purpose to thwart her mother. If this was any indication as to her personality, life in the De Luca household was certainly going to be interesting as she grew up. "Perhaps we should work on expanding her vocabulary," he suggested with a grin.

"Perhaps that would help her express to people how much she loves you better, da," Anya chuckled, strapping the raucous little miss in securely. She dropped a kiss onto Sofia's nose, glad she wasn't going to be cycling with an excrement obsessed baby attached to her bike, and turned to mount up herself. "But Mataya's reaction is always so wonderful to watch. She tries so hard not to laugh."

"Yeah, well, Daddy Poo doesn't say much for me, does it?" Tony replied with a snicker. Thankfully, most people who knew anything about small children knew they were likely to mimic anything they heard at random. "Tries and fails," Tony replied. "Wait until Oscar starts putting sentences together." Mataya - and possibly Max - were going to have to clean up their more colorful language in a hurry.

"Won't be long now," she agreed cheerfully, pushing off. "Rosita will have Mataya's hide if Oscar repeats some of the things she says about your mother in private to her face." The De Lucas loved their mother, but they did know her, as she knew them. Having a toddler tattle on you would not be a good way to stay in her good books.

"Shall we?" he asked, now that Sofia was strapped in and Anya was ready to go. It was a perfect day for a ride, and the park wasn't too far.

And, of course, once they got to the park, Anya had the opportunity to sit down on a bench and watch as Tony picked up speed and cycled in circles for the amusement of their daughter. There really was something incredibly endearing about watching a grown man cycling at speed in ever decreasing circles for the sole benefit of the baby girl on the back of his bike, who was waving her arms in the air and screaming his name in between giggles.

Tony never seemed to tire of entertaining his daughter or his wife, for that matter, but one could only ride in circles for so long. After a few minutes of this, he finally came to a stop, feet dropping to the ground to hold the bike steady so that Anya could unstrap their daughter once again. Riding a bike, after all, was nothing compared to dancing.

Laughing, Anya moved to rescue both of them from the bike, lifting Sofia out to plant the baby girl on the blanket she'd dropped on the ground for that very purpose. "And was that fun, malyshka?" she teased the little girl, laughing as Sofia dropped onto her back to look up at the clouds, waving her hands at the shapes only she could see. Grinning, Anya looked up at Tony. "Did Papa have fun too?"

"I always have fun when I'm with my girls," Tony replied, leaning in to brush a kiss against his wife's lips, before taking her hand and tugging her onto the blanket. "What is so funny, Sofia?" he asked, lifting his head upwards to watch the clouds skidding across the sky.

Dropping down onto the blanket with a thump, Anya settled onto her back beside Sofia, watching as the little hands pointed to the clouds. "Oh ....oh, look! It's a dragon!" And unlike most places, it really was an actual dragon, idling its way through the clouds high above them.

"Only on Rhy'Din," Tony remarked with a chuckle as his wife spied a dragon soaring through the clouds overhead. The blanket was a little small for his tall frame, but he managed to find enough space to lay down on his back with his wife, their daughter between them, and gaze lazily up at the sky, like he did so often back home in New York. "Are you happy here, Anya" In Rhy'Din?"

She turned her head toward him with a quizzical smile. "Why do you ask, Tony?" she queried softly. "Is there something concerning you about staying here?"

"No," he replied, though of course there was always some danger or other inherent in living in Rhy'Din. Admittedly, there was a certain amount of danger everywhere, and New York was no different, as evidenced by Elena's troubles there. New York wasn't home anymore; Rhy'Din was, but sometimes he grew a little homesick for Earth, nonetheless. "I'm happy here, Anya. I'm happy with you and Sofia and the ballet. But there are some things I miss about Earth. It will be nice to go back there for a while."

Reassured, she looked back to the sky, playing with the little fingers that were pointing at the clouds still. "There is freedom here that we would not have found on Earth," she said softly. "I think we have a life here that we could not replicate anywhere else. I am happy here, with you, and with Sofia, and our family, and our ballet. I miss my parents, my brothers, sometimes, but we can always visit them. We can always go back to visit, there is nothing to stop us. But Rhy'Din is home now, and I am glad of that."

While the sky was certainly interesting to look at, especially in Rhy'Din, there was something of far more interest and far closer to his heart right there beside him, and he turned to face his wife and daughter, propped on an elbow, his face resting against a hand, a soft smile on his face. "Everything I need is right here, cara mia. You, Sofia, the ballet ....You are all I need and all I want, and I am the luckiest man in all the universe to have you by my side."

"There is nowhere I would rather be, lyubimaya," she told him, turning her head to meet his smile with her own as Sofia pulled her mother's thumb into her mouth to gnaw on it wetly. "I told you in New York ....where you lead, I will follow. Always. I walked away once, and I came back because life is not life without you."

His smile softened, both at his wife's words and at the sight of their daughter trying to gnaw on her mother's thumb. He reached across her to touch Anya's cheek tenderly. What more could he say to that than had already been said" "Ti amo," he told her softly in Italian. I love you. What more was there to say than that?

She smiled, tilting her cheek into his hand. "Ti amo, mi amore," was her own soft reply, preferring the words in his Italian to her own Russian. "For always." Sentimental, perhaps, but she had never been ashamed of her tendency toward sentiment where he was concerned, proud of the way her heart skipped a beat when he looked at her just so. Tony had offered her a new life just once, and she would forever be glad she had accepted that offer. For without it, she would not be here; a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend, in a mystical land where dreams truly did come true. And all her greatest blessings were right there with her, smiling and gurgling within arms' reach.

As for Tony, though he might miss some things about Earth, Rhy'Din had become home, but not because of the theater or because his family was here. No, it was because of Anya and Sofia. It was because he had taken a chance once upon a time to see if there was any love left to rekindle between them. He had taken a chance, and that chance had paid off. He had followed his heart in finding Anya again, and her heart had repaid him in kind, and for that, he would be forever grateful.

America might be the land of dreams, but Rhy'Din had delivered to them a reality that neither one would set aside now. It was home. ((Just a day in the lives of Tony and Anya and Baby Sofia. As always, many thanks to my partner for the fun!))