Baby number 2 is three months old. It seems far longer than that, like she’s always been around, hanging out in one of my arms while I do everything else one-handed.

Things I’m enjoying at 3 months:

1. The one tiny laugh we’ve heard, a throaty “haHA” accompanied by a wide gummy grin. She’s quite a jolly little thing, usually happy to smile, but we’ve only coaxed one laugh out of her so far.
2. Admiring her chubby little tummy and legs, and the vigorous way she thrashes about in the bath. I have to curve my fingers around her head so she doesn’t rocket herself skull-first into the side of the bath.
3. The way she sleeps far better than her brother did at the same age. I am doing exactly the same things I did with him – swaddling, feeding on demand, feeding to sleep – and the way she sleeps is completely different. She will even wake up as I put her down in the cot, and then DRIFT BACK TO SLEEP ON HER OWN. Previously I had thought everyone who said babies did that was lying. It seems that the way babies sleep is just the way they sleep, and there’s not a whole lot you can do to change it.

Things I’m not enjoying at 3 months

1. The fact that I have another child who only has decent naps while in a baby carrier. I can’t say that I’m too devastated about this given how comparatively well she’s sleeping at night (I feed her two, sometimes three times during the night), and I’m optimistically presuming that she’ll grow out of this habit, unlike her brother.
2. think there were more things I wasn’t enjoying a month ago, when she was spending much more time in unexplained tears while I jiggled her and put in the baby carrier and walked up and down pointing the Baby Shusher at her (a virulently orange electronic thing that “ssssshhhh”s loudly at your sobbing child. It’s actually surprisingly effective, which is nice given that I spent $50 on it). She abruptly changed at 12 weeks, suddenly becoming more settled. It was a pleasant surprise, and I am very much enjoying dropping her brother off at kindergarten without her howling hysterically in my arms.