I'M SO SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG TO UPDATE. IF ANY OF YOU HAVE READ 'FOR THE FIRST TIME', YOU MAY REMEMBER FROM THE A/N THAT I COULDN'T WRITE ANYTHING ELSE UNTIL I GOT IT OUT OF MY HEAD. WITH THIS ONE, I'M HAVING A BIT OF WRITER'S BLOCK, SO FEEL FREE TO SENT ME IDEAS VIA REVIEWS OR MESSAGING. THANK YOU FOR READING!

*SIX MONTHS*

"Mom!" Henry yelled. "Mom!"

"What?" A panicky Emma ran into the room, followed by Graham and her parents.

"She smiled!" Henry declared, pointing at his baby sister, who was propped up against the couch, shaking her rattle happily.

"Jesus, Kid, you just about gave me a heart attack." The blonde muttered, letting out a sigh of relief. Graham, though, seemed used to Henry's antics (namely, yelling for his parents when Giavanna was just fine, but scaring all of them), and simply crouched down in front of his daughter and said,

"Smile for Daddy, Gia! Smile!" In an attempt to get her to do so, he smiled wide, hoping she'd mimic him. To his utter delight, she did. "Good job, Gia!" He reached forward and tickled her stomach. She giggled. Snow looked up at James and the two shared a look of adoration. Henry scooched over to his bowl of Cheerios. There were a few on the floor from when he kicked the bowl over with his foot while trying to show Giavanna how to crawl.

"How's the crawling going, Kid?"

"I don't think she gets it." Henry replied in a defeated tone. "I don't get what I'm doing wrong."

"It's not you, Sweetie." Snow said, the term of endearment slipping out before she realized what she was saying. Her usual defense was that she was 'a natural grandparent'. "Babies don't usually start crawling until seven months at the earliest. Remember, too, that she was a good two months early so technically, she's ahead of the game." She then proceeded to bend down and pluck the baby from the ground. "Right Giavanna?"

"As nice and annoying sweet as this moment is, she won't grow unless she eats. Sorry, but I need her." Reluctantly, Snow handed Giavanna over.

"Can I give her a Cheerio?" Henry asked, trailing after his mother and sister with his bowl in hand.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Did we hit the 'why' phase again?"

"Mom." Henry whined.

"She said 'no', Henry." Graham said. "Your sister's not old enough yet."

"You can give her her bottle if you want, though." Emma said as she expertly prepared the bottle with one hand. "Hey, Gia, stop pulling my hair." Unfortunately for her, with that hand occupied and her left holding the baby, she had no hands to pry her blonde locks from Giavanna's fingers.

"I got it." Graham came to the rescue and put the rattle in the baby's hands. It was working for the time being as she became engrossed in the noisy toy.

"Thanks." Emma breathed. "Remind me to put my hair up next time."

"Mm, it's gotten really long." He nuzzled her neck.

"Henry, come get the bottle." She said as she pulled it out of the microwave in an attempt to ignore her husband. Henry gladly took the bottle and his sister. "Hold her with two hands," she reminded him, "until you get on the couch."

"I know." He called back over his shoulder. Graham continued playing with Emma's hair, trailing his fingers from where it met her shoulder to the ends, which rested just above her lower back.

"Stop it." She hissed, swatting his hands.

"Somebody's in a mood today." Graham backed up, putting his hands in the air in surrender.

"I'm not in a mood!" She declared as she stomped into the living room to supervise Henry despite the fact that he'd fed her dozens of times already.

"Are we having Giavanna number two?"

"God, no." Graham shared a look with James, the two clearly amused. "What?" She folded her arms.

"Nothing, you're just adorable when you're mad. In a scary kind of way, cause it's definitely scary, too." Seeing the only thing he was doing was making her madder, he smiled charmingly. It seemed to work for James most of the time.

"Shut up." She ducked her head to hide the smile forming on her face behind her long mane. Giavanna, apparently having drunken enough of her formula, pushed the bottle away from her mouth with two tiny hands. When her older brother tried to get her to drink more, she yelled out some unintelligible baby sound.

"I think she's full." Graham said, getting up to relieve Henry of baby duty.

"But I wanna play with her." The teenager protested.

"Maybe she needs a nap, Kid. I know I do." Emma suggested.

"She's only been up for two hours, Emma." Snow said. "And it's time for lunch. Think you can stay up long enough?"

"Ugh, you're pushing food again." The blonde sighed in exasperation, throwing herself into the cushions.

"You've lost weight." Snow pointed out.

"I've been busy with a sixteen year old and a six month old."

"That's not an excuse." The brunette chided, her maternal instincts

"Actually, I'm almost seventeen." Henry piped up, looking from Giavanna to his mother momentarily.

"You still got two months. By the way, somebody's birthday's coming up." Emma sent a waggling eyebrow Snow's way.

"I don't like to talk about my birthday." Snow said, sadness and anger lacing her voice as she pushed herself off the couch. Emma's worried gaze met James' equally concerned one, but his also told her to let it go and he'd deal with it. With a tremendous amount of effort, Emma kept her mouth shut. About that topic, at least. Instead, she said,

"Want me to make lunch."

"No!" Everyone yelled in unison.

"Geez, I was just asking." Emma rose from the couch with her hands up in surrender before plucking her daughter from Henry's arms.

"Hey!" He exclaimed.

"You wanna teach her to crawl?"

"Well, yeah, but–"

"She isn't gonna magically start crawling." Emma lowered herself to the carpet and put Giavanna in her lap in a sitting position. "She needs some tummy time before she'll be strong enough to support herself, even just staying on all fours without moving."

"Are you sure you didn't raise me until I was one or something?" Henry laughed, sitting cross legged on the floor a few feet across from Emma.

"I'm sure." The blonde replied, ignoring a pang of guilt and hurt that always popped up every time someone mentioned baby Henry. While James went to the kitchen to talk his wife down before she threw a mini temper tantrum, Graham sat next to Emma. "It's called Google." She explained. "First, we just need to get her used to being on the floor on her stomach." As she spoke, Emma gently laid Giavanna on the play mat on her belly, being careful not to trap any of her arms or legs.

"Now what?" Henry asked.

"Wait." Emma whispered. Her breath truly was taken away by the fact that both of the two little human beings (well, Henry was a big human being, but he was still a few inches shorter than her, so in her mind, he constituted as little) came from her. That two screaming babies could become the amazingly intelligent people they were or were becoming. In Henry, she saw a lot of the man she unfortunately had to say was half the reason he was alive. The hair and the face structure were all Baelfire, right down to the curiosity Henry had always possessed. He had her eyes, though. Of that, she was sure. Then it got more complicated. Henry was a good person who always tried to do the right thing, even when it was hard to make good decisions. Some would say that while Henry's personality was developing, Regina had been the antithesis of that. Even still, Emma didn't think she'd ever be sure as to whether Henry's stubbornness came from her or Regina because really, the two women were far more similar that either would've liked to admit.

Giavanna was another story. While she was still too young to really tell, it was easy to see she was more of a mommy's girl in the sense that Graham would swear that despite her having his brown curls, she was all Emma. She even had the 'White-Swan Eyes', as Henry had called them, meshing Snow's and Emma's last names to make the name of the color eyes he and his sister shared. The blonde noticed the similarities between her and her daughter, too, though she was less comfortable voicing her observations. Her confidence had soared since discovering her family, but the idea of someone wanting to be like her –that it was a good thing to be like her– was still something she was uncomfortable with. But she could see the similarities, like when Giavanna kept trying to grasp the rattle nearly two months ago when James and Snow were babysitting her, and the baby wouldn't stop trying until she actually could. Or when someone would take away the toy she was playing with for bath time or to eat, all four of her family members swore they saw her glare at them, usually comparing it with Emma's.

Suddenly aware of Graham's and Henry's gazes, Emma shook herself out of her thoughts.

"What are we waiting for?" Henry's tone made it clear that it wasn't the first time he'd asked the question.

"To see what she does."

"Well, she's staring at me." Henry said. "And we're staring at her, so I think she thinks she's in a fish bowl."

"Babies always stare at people's faces. You're just the one that's across from her, that's all." Graham explained.

"It's kinda creepy." He said. "Stop staring at me, Giavanna." He whined. After a few moments of him staring at her, he realized that she wasn't actually staring at him. "You want your little ball, don't you?" He turned around and reached for the small green and yellow foam ball that she loved to roll around. Suddenly, Henry's eyes lit up. "I have an idea!" He announced. He scooted backward a foot and put the ball directly in front of him. "Come on, Gia! Come get your ball!" He encouraged in a high-pitched voice. Slowly but surely, Giavanna managed to get on all fours with a little help from Graham. Even more slowly, she put one arm out in front of her, then one leg, then the other arm and other leg, and took a crawl-step forward.

"She's crawling…" Emma whispered, then yelled to no one in particular, "She's crawling!" Snow and James ran out from the kitchen. The wetness along the brunette's lash line went unnoticed by everyone except for her husband. The tears she had been shedding for her mother turned into tears of joy for her daughter.

Finally, she felt at peace with the past. She might not have been able to teach Emma how to crawl or get to tuck her into bed every night, but seeing how happy she was with two beautiful children of her own, that was enough for Snow to move on. She used to accept that while she was grateful –so extremely grateful– that she had her daughter with her now, she also had a right to mourn what they had all lost.

But she'd done enough mourning. She'd had enough of living in the past and the what-could-have-been's. She was ready to live in the moment and start a new chapter for them all.