Peeper is two and three-quarters years old, but she is more emotionally mature than many adults I know. (Sorry, guys!)
Take, for example, the other day when I spilled something in the kitchen while Peeper was eating breakfast. I must have made some grumpy grunt, because she asked what was wrong. “I’m just frustrated,” I replied.
She slid off her booster seat and walked over to me. She wrapped her arms around my legs and planted a yogurt-covered kiss on my knee.
“It’s ok that you’re frustrated, Mommy,” she said. “Now do you feel better?”
How could I not? 
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This post is really late, but work/life/everything has been a bit much. Life ebbs and flows, and we’ve been at high tide for a while now.
Not being stuck in one place has revolutionized her life (and ours, obvi!). She is even more engaged now that she can spy something that interests her and get to it. 
She also moves by whale tale splash, a special move she’s waiting to patent. While on her back, she lifts her entire body up to her shoulders and slams it back down on the ground. She swivels around like this and, by all measures, looks very proud of herself.
She’s pretty much obsessed with Big Sister. Peeper can do no wrong. Even when she is hitting Kiwi in the face with a pom pom or grabbing toys away, Kiwi stares and giggles.
The other morning Kiwi woke up from a nap and I startled when I looked at her.
Kiwi is rolling over both ways, trying to sit up on her own and laughing up a storm. She has become remarkably intentional in her explorations of the world. She reaches out her hand to bat at a toy or the Christmas tree, and she turns over or contorts her body to get a better look at what Big Sister Peeper is doing.
The two girls are interacting more. One day while Peeper was sitting on the potty, she yelled “ha!” for some reason. Kiwi giggled, so Peeper did it again—and again—and again, eliciting bigger belly laughs each time. And the other morning, Peeper saw me tickling Kiwi by nibbling her cheeks, tummy and armpits, so she copied me. “Nom nom nom!” she said as she gummed her little sister’s side.
At the same time, I haven’t wished for time to stop or even slow down. The last five months have been among the most challenging of my life. Kiwi is napping much better and starting to sleep more at night, but the ongoing lack of rest has been brutal on me. And my transition to mom of two has been less than graceful. So I smile when I look back on newborn pictures of Kiwi, but I don’t want to transport myself back to those days.
