Two Months: Awake and SmilingIt was a busy month for Susannah: she did a lot of traveling around with Mom and Dad, put on a few pounds and a few inches, began to wake up...and started smiling. She is, as we suspected after her first few placid weeks, a very gentle and smiley baby rather than busy and curious like her big sister. One of the most endearing traits she's been developing over the past few weeks is that when she is awake and alert, all you have to do is look her in the eyes and speak gently to her and she starts smiling and talking back to you. She has a soft, beautiful little voice - she even tends to cry politely. Unless I strap her in to her carseat and walk away for a minute, at which point she cries so hard she turns red and loses her breath.
Her big sister Abigail has grown very fond of her and now wants to hold her all the time. If we're leaving to go somewhere, Abigail takes a concerned tally to make sure, "Mama...Daddy...Baby" are all in the car too. Susannah takes Abigail's clumsy efforts to play with her in stride and I'll often catch them with Abigail doing something like trying to pry Susannah's fingers open so she can hold a toy while Susannah stares adoring at Abigail and smiles and smiles. |
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Perhaps one of the sweetest things I see the two of them do is hold hands while they're nursing. Susannah seems to reach for Abigail now, as she is getting more control of her hands and practices every day looking at them and trying to reach for things. And Abigail is getting gentler and doesn't squeeze her hand so hard if Susannah reaches out to her.
Susannah very much likes to be around us and will be content for quite a while sitting in her bouncy chair as long as she can see me moving around and working in the kitchen. She gets pretty upset if I walk out of her sight and stay away too long, but she will sit and kick her feet to bounce the chair and just watch what I'm doing for a good half hour or more. I can often get a whole dinner made while she sits and watches...and I don't even have to bounce her with one foot. She's at that stage where she is just starting to be able to hold her head up but is pretty wobbly, so she likes to be held so she can look over my shoulder but sometimes she gets tired and her head drops and she bonks her nose and cries.
She still has a lot of gas issues and I can't eat dairy, beans, or vegetables like zucchini. I can actually eat a little of the vegetables, but the dairy is still a problem and I expect it will be for another month or two. Hopefully after that she'll be on a more even keel. Right now we're still very grateful for gripewater and gas drops because she can be crying in pain and if I give her a little dropper of gas drops she calms right down and will be placidly sitting on my lap sucking her pacifier ten minutes later. She has become pretty attached to her pacifier, I think because she can't do much else and she gets bored just sitting, but if I try to nurse her she wriggles a lot and makes unhappy noises because her stomach is actually full but she still wants to suck on something. Abigail now thinks the solution to Susannah crying is the pacifier, so sometimes I have to intervene when Susannah is crying and I see Abigail trotting over with the pacifier stuck on her finger because I know if I don't, Abigail will try to cram that pacifier in whether Susannah wants it or not. "Here, Baby, stop crying!"
In an odd turn of events, Susannah is much closer to sleeping through the night than Abigail is - Abigail still gets up two or three times and Susannah often just wakes once around 4 am between her bedtime of 11:00 and her morning nursing around 7:30 or 8. After morning nursing she often goes back to sleep until around 10 or 11, so she's pretty much sleeping twelve hours with two nursings. Not bad for a two-month-old!
Susannah very much likes to be around us and will be content for quite a while sitting in her bouncy chair as long as she can see me moving around and working in the kitchen. She gets pretty upset if I walk out of her sight and stay away too long, but she will sit and kick her feet to bounce the chair and just watch what I'm doing for a good half hour or more. I can often get a whole dinner made while she sits and watches...and I don't even have to bounce her with one foot. She's at that stage where she is just starting to be able to hold her head up but is pretty wobbly, so she likes to be held so she can look over my shoulder but sometimes she gets tired and her head drops and she bonks her nose and cries.
She still has a lot of gas issues and I can't eat dairy, beans, or vegetables like zucchini. I can actually eat a little of the vegetables, but the dairy is still a problem and I expect it will be for another month or two. Hopefully after that she'll be on a more even keel. Right now we're still very grateful for gripewater and gas drops because she can be crying in pain and if I give her a little dropper of gas drops she calms right down and will be placidly sitting on my lap sucking her pacifier ten minutes later. She has become pretty attached to her pacifier, I think because she can't do much else and she gets bored just sitting, but if I try to nurse her she wriggles a lot and makes unhappy noises because her stomach is actually full but she still wants to suck on something. Abigail now thinks the solution to Susannah crying is the pacifier, so sometimes I have to intervene when Susannah is crying and I see Abigail trotting over with the pacifier stuck on her finger because I know if I don't, Abigail will try to cram that pacifier in whether Susannah wants it or not. "Here, Baby, stop crying!"
In an odd turn of events, Susannah is much closer to sleeping through the night than Abigail is - Abigail still gets up two or three times and Susannah often just wakes once around 4 am between her bedtime of 11:00 and her morning nursing around 7:30 or 8. After morning nursing she often goes back to sleep until around 10 or 11, so she's pretty much sleeping twelve hours with two nursings. Not bad for a two-month-old!