Toddler makes three, baby makes four!

I've been feeling a wee bit guilty that Margot's early weeks are not as well represented on this blog as Peter's. That and the fact that the name of the blog is still "baby makes three..." but these things shall be rectified in time.

Having a second child is very interesting. When she is upset, we know it is one of five things: burp, hungry, sleepy, gas or Peter has just harassed her in some way. I can even identify some of her cries: the burp one is very high-pitched. The tired one is sort of a wailing moan. Some of this facility with her comes from the fact that she is just a calmer baby - she rarely gets inconsolable. And some of it is that, like most things in life, taking care of a baby is much easier if it's not the first time you've ever done it!

But there's still a big learning curve because she's such a different baby. For example, she's been hating the carrier recently. I couldn't figure out why - don't they all love the thing? Peter did. We went and tried on a few different ones and got one she seems to tolerate a little better (and it's super cute, must admit.) And I'm still not sure how to get her clock earlier - I'm sure P was going to bed by 7 or 8 by this age, but she's often up until 10 or midnight... it's really the only time of day where she's awake a long stretch.

What is Margot up to at two months?

Well, she sleeps quite a good stretch. She often gets five hours at night, which is nice. I don't clockwatch, so I can't say for sure, but I think a couple of times she has even gotten close to six. Her fussy period in the evening is abating quite a bit, and was never really as bad as Peter's used to be. I think that six-week-everything-gets-easier milestone happened around eight weeks for us. Maybe it's because she actually hasn't been that hard to begin with, maybe it's because was a little early, and it's also definitely because we had incredible sickness (hers, Julian's, Peter's) around six weeks, so that took some time to recover from.

She doesn't bat things yet. She does seem sort of able to get on her side from time to time, although usually only on soft surfaces, like when I put her on the bed to change her. She can hold our fingers. I did get her to grasp a toy, but it was clearly involuntary and seemed to enrage her a bit. She doesn't have much interest in toys yet, although she will occasionally track one.

She is learning to suck her hands and thumbs and can really get smacking on them. I wonder if she will be a thumbsucker.

I'm terrified to write the next part in case I jinx myself. I also it will make people really jealous, but when you're envying me, remember I had a child who slept no more than 1.5 hours stretches and never napped more than 40 minutes until he was 11 months. So here it is: she can be put down in her crib drowsy, and she will fall asleep. On her own. Sometimes she will wake up (I see it on the video monitor) look around, and after 10 minutes or so, go back to sleep again. She won't really do this at night when she is more tired, but for her first few naps, she's really good at it. And she doesn't need to be on me - she sleeps in her crib.

Part of this may be that I swaddle her tightly and play a white noise machine loudly. If you had a listening device in our home, you'd probably wonder why it's rained so much this summer, but it's just the machine. With Peter I gave up swaddling early and resisted the noise machine as a "prop" that I didn't want him dependent on. Well, you know how that worked out. This time I'll take all the props I can get... if they work, why not?

She gives us great smiles. The best is when you smile at her, and she stares her big brown eyes (well, really they are mostly slate, but they are starting to go brown around the iris) for a few seconds and then smiles back, all sort of shy but really thrilled that you smiled at her.

She is starting to coo. I'm not one of those people who's really good at talking constantly to my baby - you know how some people can? They just chatter to them all the time. But I try to have a real "chat" with her once or twice a day, aside from just the "I know you don't like that sweetheart" or "Time for a change little one" comments. And she will coo right back at me when I do. She also makes funny noises in her sleep. One of her little sounds is almost like a dog barking.

One weird thing about #2, is that, having had #1, I know all the exciting things to look forward to: the first laugh, sitting up, having a favourite toy, reaching out for us for the first time, nuzzling her head in my neck rather than just bobbing it like a little bird. So I'm reminding myself to treasure the moments now, even though I'm impatient to know her even more! One thing about this little girl though, is that right from the moment she was born, she has felt very familiar to me... she has fit into our life like a missing jigsaw puzzle piece and I can't believe it's only been 9 and 1/2 weeks that she's been here.

Oh and just for posterity, at 9 weeks she weighed 11 lb (up from 7, so around an ounce a day, which is quite impressive) and was 58.5 cm long (up from 51).