It all started when Eliana was born. Here I was thinking it would go months before they could really play together, because, well, Eliana was a newborn for goodness sakes, not much interaction in terms of kids playing together as far as my concept of it went, but boy was I wrong.
Leona basically interacts with her where she's at in terms of activity and development, following Eliana's lead. A few prone examples.
- Newborn and onward for a while: make a place for her to lay down beside Eliana on the floor, with a pillow for herself, and arrange the blanket on both of them, then sing and talk with her some.
[look at those cheeks!]
- After Eliana learned to roll over: lay down beside Eliana (on her stomach too), propped up on her arms, and hit the ground with her...along side her I mean of course, like Eliana loves to do.
- Now that Eliana can sit (sidenote - we don't sit her up often, want to leave that for when she can get into sitting position by herself): Sit beside her and mimic her actions:
[you've all seen this one before, I know, but it is worth a re-post]
And they will smile and laugh to each other for long periods of time.
Eliana really loves Leona too, of course (who wouldn't?). I think tonight is a prime example of the effect they have on each other. Eliana is currently a crawler (!). She took her first real crawling step today, after having been pulling and pushing herself forward for a while. Oh, and she just started saying mamamama and did a couple bababa's too. And has a fun 'spitting'esque technique where she sucks on her lower lip a bit in between, popping off for the 'spit'. Exciting.
Every time she's working on something new, she wakes up a lot at night. And tonight she was having a hard time to calm down and fall asleep. Bascially she nurses to sleep each time she sleeps and back to sleep each time she wakes up. It doesn't take long on most occasions. But today, she nursed and then was still wide awake, pulling herself up to the head and side of the bed to try and find something to play with.
Leona was super tired but not falling asleep either, and turned on the baby-call's moon-light and lullabies, and Eliana immediately crawled up onto my chest, caught eye of Leona and totally lit up. Leona often asks to sleep with Eliana (we all sleep together, but I am between the two of them), but then she doesn't fall asleep as she's too into being with Eliana so I don't let her if Eliana's already really sleepy. Today, however, I figured why not, seeing as neither of them were going to be sleeping for a while. Let them play a bit.
So I moved Eliana over, and after just about 30 seconds of laying on her back playing with her feet, she relaxed down into the bed, and after rolling towards Leona and then towards me a few times, fell peacefully asleep. I need to repeat that, in all caps, with an exclamation mark: FELL PEACEFULLY ASLEEP! Leona took a little longer, maybe five minutes or so, and then she was also sleeping, all snuggled up to Eliana.
It is now an hour and a bit later, and Eliana hasn't woken once yet. Both of them are big movers...Leona will often turn horizontal and her foot will end up in Eliana's face - and Eliana will subsequently wake up less than happy, or Eliana will wake up and fall asleep after moving a bit, and end up kind of stuck, perhaps horizontal as well, towards Leona or the pillow, and get frustrated and wake up.
Anyhow, I thought that their movement during sleep would wake the other up, but so far not the case at all, they are still peacefully snuggled together.
Sisters. Big sisters, little sisters, best sisters.
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