Status report: Month 2

Today Chloë is two months old. We went for her two-month checkup today, to get examined and vaccinated (she may never trust me again). She's twelve pounds, two ounces, 22.75 inches long, 39.5 cm head circumference. Everything is fiftieth percentile or higher, so she deserves the name she got called by the pediatrician: Chubs. I can officially stop being paranoid about her weight now. In fact, the pediatrician, when he heard that feedings will run to sixty minutes if I let Chloë determine them, suggested backing off on feedings a little and limiting them to forty minutes or less, which is quite all right by me.

Chloë's second month has been full of smiles. She smiles when she sees me sometimes, or when I smile at her. She coos and makes odd noises, enough that we have "conversations" sometimes:

Chloë: Eeee.
Jenny: Really?
Chloë: Ohh.
Jenny: I'm not totally convinced. Could you be more specific?
Chloë: Waaaa.
Jenny: Now I understand.


She's discovered the baby in the mirror, and loves to lie in her swing and look up at her, sometimes grinning, sometimes just intently watching. She looks around at things all the time now; we think this is partly why she likes car rides and walks.

Her hair sticks up in the back like a bird's crest. Her eyelashes are dark and long now, and her eyebrows delicate but definitely visible. She can support her own weight, and can support her head most of the time. We've started being able to use the two baby carriers we have (a sling and a backpack-style carrier) because of this, and are looking forward to using them more in the future. She's getting awfully heavy in that carrier.


The drool has come, in vast quantities, enough that I'm sure at least one feeding a day goes directly to replacing all that saliva. She's also started sucking her fist a lot more, and is finally taking a pacifier for more than two sucks before ejecting it. Nursing has improved; we're finally nursing full-time, except for a bottle at night because she's ravenous just before bed. There is no actual bedtime yet, but we're working on it--the pediatrician told me that now is the time to work on good sleeping habits that will last the rest of her life, no pressure. (He also told me that babies tend to sleep really well after their shots--probably exhausted from all that crying. She certainly fell asleep quickly and thoroughly once we were out of there and she'd satisfied herself that I was aware she was unhappy.)

This month she met her Aunt Bev, Uncle Philip, and cousin Gabriel, and went to the zoo and Lake Erie for the first time. She also stayed with her Omi and her Aunt Michelle while Eric and I went out on a date, and she's been to her first coffeeshop gaming night and gem show and restaurant. She's kept us up later than we wanted almost every night, though there were also two nights she went to sleep quite happily in her bassinet (sadly, they haven't been repeated). Now that she's not as jaundiced, she's not sleeping nearly as much as she was, and not as much as the books say she should. But she's healthy, and growing, and ours.