I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I really love watching our girls together. Today they fell asleep at naptime with their arms literally wrapped around each other, and I just kept thinking about how if anyone else was “in” their personal space that way, they’d never be able to go to sleep. And how amazing it is that a ten-month-old can cuddle with a two-year-old and actually find it calming rather than distracting (E is apparently even more calming than Mommy), and that a two-year-old can contain herself to gentle pats and head rubs and no sudden movements that jolt her sister back awake. Sometimes they end up such a tangle of limbs (and so similarly-sized, at that!) that you can hardly tell where one begins and the other one ends.
We were at the mall yesterday, and E was getting tired, so I helped her into the umbrella stroller behind R. They’re getting a little bit too big to ride side-by-side anymore, but with the back tilted, I think they’ll fit this way until they’re really both too big for a stroller anyway. I wasn’t sure how it would work, but they both thought it was just the neatest thing ever, and cooed and talked and giggled at each other until we were back at the car. R kept leaning back and turning half-around against E in very cuddly fashion, which E of course thought was very sweet.
Yesterday morning, they were both walking around the house with toy phones, chattering away.
It is so incredibly neat to me that even though they’re seventeen months apart, they still manage to really connect and actually play together. They have quite a few “games”–maybe five–that they like to play, but they also play with toys together and E really tries to teach R how to do things, and R clearly tries to imitate her. E will put a baby down in a cradle; R will come along behind her and dump more babies in. They’re definitely on different levels, but they find so many common points to share.
I really didn’t expect this to happen until they were at least two and three, maybe even older.
