2034

'Did you really expect me not to use that picture Ava?' Look at it! It's so cute.' Kurt laughed.

'You weren't so cute the next year.' Blaine added mockingly.

'Why? Why? What did I do?' Ava asked, slightly worried that this was going to turn out to be another embarrassing story.

2026

'I've never been happier that this building has an elevator.' Kurt said as he dragged the Christmas tree he had just bought in said elevator by its pot.

'People are going to hate us, honey. We'll be known as those-gays-from-the-top-floor-with-that-adorable-daughter-who-like-to-leave-a-trail-of needles-in-the-hall.' Blaine laughed, joining Kurt in the elevator.

Kurt pushed the button to their floor and the doors closed. 'Well, Blaine and Kurt sure is shorter.'

'That is a fact. I'm still amazed you got us a real tree this year.' Blaine said as they rode up.

'Kurt Hummel will surprise you.' Kurt said, sticking his nose in the air. 'Besides, now that we have a daughter, I thought that maybe we should do things a bit more traditionally.'

'Traditionally? I've got to write that down somewhere. December seventeenth, 2026: Kurt Hummel wants to be traditional.'

'Hey, don't laugh at me!' Kurt playfully punched Blaine's shoulder.

'Ouch, meanie!' Blaine rubbed his shoulder, just as comically. 'Besides, honey, we've been parents for four and a half year now.'

'Oh no, B, I seem to have forgotten.' Kurt jokingly slapped his hand in front of his mouth. They had reached their floor and Blaine pulled the tree out of the elevator as Kurt skipped passed him to get the door.

'You should have seen her face this morning, when I told her she could help decorate the tree this year. Glowing like a little angel. So I want to do it right.' Kurt explained. He leaned against the door, holding it open for Blaine.

'Thanks honey, and thank you for getting me out of school. Those kids go crazy between Thanksgiving and the holidays, really. Teenagers are maniacs.'

'You're welcome.' Kurt let the door fall shut. 'I make a very good husband in distress, don't I? You're going to have to come up with a story why I had to take Ava to the hospital though. The secretary didn't even ask me about that.'

'The things you do to get me to help you transport a Christmas tree.' Blaine placed the tree in the living room corner, a wide grin on his face. Kurt Hummel sure was something.

'Thank you, B.' Kurt kissed Blaine's cheek. He checked his watch: 'Let's go get our daughter. She'll be really surprised, the two of us picking her up.'

'Daddy, it smells funny.' Ava said, as she ran her hands over one of the twigs, gazing up at the tree. She was surprised how soft and prickly it felt at the same time. A bit like when her Baba didn't shave and gave her a goodnight kiss; it tickled.

'Well, that's just how spruces smell, sweetie.' Blaine replied. ' And Daddy's getting the decorations from the closet.'

They had been able to find a really spacious apartment with lots of storage. Which was a good thing if you lived with Kurt Hummel and all of his supplies. Or Blaine Anderson and his rather extensive home library. Or even Ava Hummel-Anderson, who had a collection of toys that seemed to procreate all by itself.

'You'll do, Baba.' Ava crawled into Blaine's lap where he was seated on the sofa and threw her arms around her father.

'Aww.' Kurt smiled at the sight of his husband and daughter cuddling on the couch as he walked in, an enormous box in hands.

'Don't awww her! Do you know what she just said, Kurt?' Blaine asked, playing with Ava's hair. 'That I'll do when you're not around. That I'll do!' Really? Really Ava?' He was obviously joking, but Ava was still too young to grasp that. She started pouting and wrapped her arms around him again. 'I love you, Baba. I do.'

'Love you more.' Blaine whispered into her ear, hugging her back. He only let go after a minute or so. Let's go help Daddy!'

Ava jumped off his lap and made her way to the box Kurt had put at the base of the tree.

'Don't worry, she's not going anywhere.' Kurt whispered into Blaine's ear as he came to stand next to him. 'I'm going to grab the second box. Can you convince her not to touch the glass ornaments please?'

'Ava?' Blaine asked, taking a step forward. 'We're going to sort through the decorations first. You can have the unbreakable ones. Daddy and I, we'll put up the Christmas balls-'

'And the star? Can I do that Baba, can I? Please, please, please, ple-'

'Yes, yes Ava, you can. Daddy and I will pick you up and then you can put it on there. But you can only put it up at the end. First we're going to put in the lights, that is if we can untangle them at least.' Blaine joked, but Ava didn't really pick up on that. 'Then the decorations, then the garlands and only then we can put up the star. We better get started, huh?'

'Here we are!' Kurt said, returning with an even larger box.

'Daddy, daddy, look!' Ava said, skipping towards him, a decoration in each hand. 'Teddies!'

'Yes, but they're not for cuddling. We're going to put them in the tree. Well, you are going to put them in!' Kurt said to Ava, who was still waving the little stuffed polar bears in front of his face, which she could reach now that he had bent down to talk to her.

'And these, you can put these in as well.' Blaine added, pulling a couple of glittery white wooden snowflakes out of the box in front of him, setting them aside on the floor next to him.

'Let's go sit with Baba.' Kurt said to his little girl, taking her hand. They joined Blaine on the floor, each of the adults going through a box, pulling out decorations that would go with the 'icy' theme Kurt had in mind for this year. Ava played with whatever her parents put on the adequately named 'Ava-pile': plastic icicles, different sizes wooden snowflakes, white plush snowballs and of course, the polar bear family.

'Is that everything?' Blaine asked, looking at the lights and decorations now surrounding his family.

'Yup, let's get started!' Kurt answered as he jumped to his feet, obviously eager to get at it. He had already decorated the rest of the house with candles, decorations and wreaths and with the tree up, their house would really be ready for the holidays.

'Ava, why don't you put that on the other side, on Baba's side.' Kurt suggested, pointing towards the lower part of the tree on Blaine's side because Ava was about to hang a snowball right under another one. Both he and his husband were standing on a stool, each decorating a side of the higher part of the tree. Kurt would jump off his once in a while, to look at the tree from afar and move a couple of ornaments, as well as putting some of their decorations in Ava's part and vice versa, because 'continuity matters, B.'

'Sweetie, do you want some juice?' Blaine stepped down from his stool.

'Milk!' Ava looked up at her Baba.

'I'll get you some milk if you ask nicely.'

'Can I get some milk please Baba?' Ava even batted her eyelashes at him.

'Sure you can, I'll go get your cup.' Blaine said, walking towards the kitchen. Ava had already crawled onto the sofa, knowing far too well that she wasn't allowed to walk around with her drink.

Kurt moved a couple more ornaments, only turning his back towards his daughter for a couple of seconds.

'Blaine!'

'What?' Blaine called back from the kitchen.

'Get in here now! Will you?' The panic in Kurt's voice worried Blaine so he put down the milk carton fridge at once and almost ran into their living room.

'Baba! Look!' Ava pointed to her nose, smiling broadly, the beaded garland they used instead of tinsel in her hands.

This would not have been the alarming sight it was, if one of the ends of the string wasn't stuck up her nose. Blaine forced a small smile, not wanting to alarm his daughter.

'Have you tried pulling it out?' He whispered into Kurt's ear.

'No. No! I can't do that, what if it starts bleeding? I think we need to go to the hospital.' Kurt whispered back, remarkably calm now although he never took his eyes of their little girl.

'Okay, how do we do that without scaring her?'

'We take the lady and run.'

Ava had started crying when Kurt tried to put on her jacket and she realized that the garland wouldn't come out. So now Kurt and Blaine found themselves in the back of a cab, trying to convince their daughter not to pull the garland while drying her tears.

'Ssh, ssh.' Kurt rubbed Ava's back. 'The doctor's going to get it out.'

'It'll be gone before you know it. And Daddy and I, we're not mad at you.' Blaine added.

Kurt shot him a look behind Ava's back at that comment, cause he was pretty mad, but mostly at himself.

'Oh my god, you've got to be kidding me.' Kurt let his head fall against his hand.

'What?' Blaine was pretty confused, as Ava had pretty much calmed down now.

'The song. It's old , but you'll remember it. Listen.' Kurt pointed towards the cab's radio.

Here here here

The best time of the year

Take off my stocking's we're

I'm spreading Christmas cheer

And if you want us to we will, you

Oh oh a Christmas, my Christmas tree is delicious

Oh oh a Christmas, my Christmas tree is delicious

'I think Christmas trees are going to haunt us, Ava. But hey, at least now I don't have to make up a story, huh?' Ava didn't understand a single thing her silly Baba was saying.

'Do you still want this?' The nurse asked, having just carefully pulled the garland out of Ava's nose and holding it up as if it were some kind of war trophy.

Blaine had held his little girl's hand, quietly singing to distract her from the nurse. The nurse, clad in a distasteful shade of pink, had asked Kurt to hold Ava's head still, explaining that pulling the beads out wasn't that dangerous as long as Ava didn't jerk her head away from her. He pretended to stroke her hair, not wanting his girl to freak out. Ava hadn't been able to see the nurse, or the tweezers she had been holding. Her eyes had stayed fixated on her Baba, which was probably for the better. She had behaved excellently. She didn't spill a single tear, even though the terror in her eyes almost broke her fathers' hearts.

'Baba! Daddy, it's out!' Ava cheered, patting her own stomach excitedly, as there was no more garland hanging there, and then pointing at the nurse.

'And it's going to stay out Ava Helena Hummel-Anderson!' Blaine said, a stern look on his face as he picked her up from the table.

'Yes, I'd like to take it back home.' Kurt finally answered the nurse. Both she and Blaine shot him a look that screamed 'are you kidding me?'.

'What? It's going to make for great stories, B.' Kurt cocked his eyebrow and his husband started laughing, because Kurt Hummel's eyebrow should have books dedicated to it. Kurt Hummel's Eyebrows: Different Positions and Their Corresponding Meanings. Maybe he'd write it one day.

'She's got quite the name, huh?' The nurse asked, nodding towards Ava as she put the garland in a cardboard emesis basin for easy transportation, very much against Kurt's liking. Those things were awful.

'She's quite the lady.' He smiled, taking the emesis basin from her.

'My colleagues at the front desk still have some paper work for you to fill out and then you're free to go.' The nurse said, already waving goodbye to Ava.

2034

'My colleagues really liked that story.' Carole said, passing Finn the tray of mashed potatoes. 'But you should hear the stories the ER nurses tell. The things they see! You were no exception, honey. And your dads handled it very well. Far too often parents think they know what to do. And of course you don't, cause it's your kid and you're panicking. And they end up making it worse. When Finn was six, he fell, face first onto the concrete.'

'Yep, sounds like something Finn would do.' Kurt smirked, his brother was the biggest klutz around. His dancing was cringe worthy.

'At least I didn't slip when Puck soaped the floor when we had that substitute in glee.' Finn countered.

'Boys, really. After all these years?' Carole jokingly asked. Ava imagined this was what dinner must have been like when both her Dad and Uncle Finn still lived here.

'But mom, you should have seen it. It was so dumb.' Finn clearly didn't remember that Kurt probably had a lot more blackmailing material when it came to their youth than he had.

'Yeah, soaping the floor is like the oldest trick in the book.' Blaine added. He had always been extra careful when entering a classroom when he was a sub, before he got a full contract at Dalton School. His current workplace had made for a lot of jokes with his Warbler friends.

'Hey!' Rachel didn't know who she was most mad at, her own husband or Kurt's. 'Slipping is not dumb. You -' she pointed between Finn and Blaine 'should be happy me and Kurt survived!'

Ava and her cousins burst out in laughter, this was the aunt and mom they knew.

'So, but –' Carole continued her story, which was probably the best way to get her family to stop taking a jab at each other for a couple of minutes. 'He fell, and there was blood all over his face. Really, like horror movie amounts of blood.'

'Cool!' Eli said, cause how many grandmothers said 'horror movie amounts'?

'Eli, that's your father we're talking about!' He got reprimanded by his mother.

'Guys, really. Carole is trying to tell a story here.' Burt interrupted and when he man speaks, people tend to listen. Everybody around the table fell silent and turned their heads towards Carole.

'Thanks honey! So yes, blood everywhere. And I am a nurse. I've got a degree! I know that when a lip or head wound bleeds that it often looks worse than it is. But I panicked. I started screaming in that parking lot, it was horrendous, and then this man offered to take us to the hospital cause I obviously couldn't drive myself. Finn here ended up needing two stitches. Two! That's nothing. You can't even see them, his hair covers the scar. But my friend in the ER, she has the best holiday story, far worse than your accident there, Ava. They had a girl come in, she must have been 3 and she had swallowed a Christmas ball! Can you believe that? A Christmas ball.'

'How did she do that?' Kurt asked, eyes big in shock and worry for the little girl.

'Well, it was a small one, luckily. And a plastic one. Apparently her teenage stepbrother had been pulling faces in the reflection of the balls, and she just grabbed one and put it in her mouth. You'd be surprised by what little kids put in their mouths-'

'We know.' Blaine interrupted Carole. 'We had one.' He nodded his head towards Ava.

'Everything, they put everything in their mouths.' Rachel added, looking between her two kids. She had hated it, because she had desperately tried to keep all of her kids' toys absolutely spotless. Anti bacterial wipes had been her best friends for a couple of years.

'How did they get it out?' Finn asked, for once keeping track of the storyline.

'She had to poop it out actually.' Carole nodded. 'And it didn't damage anything on its way down. That's what we at the hospital call a Christmas miracle.'

'Thank heavens you didn't do that to us, Ava! You're enough of a Christmas miracle by yourself.' Blaine joked.