Babe: 3 and a half
Babeling: 4 months tomorrow 

I know, I know.

There is blogging in the Land of Mother of Two, you just have to wade through miles of muddy swamps to get to it.

I was going to tell you all about the babeling being 3 months but suddenly she’s 4. Anyway, after the first three months of what’s known as the last trimester of the pregnancy - just pure bodily needs - she’s suddenly turned into a proper baby. She’s a pet. She’s all eyes and soft skin and hair and huge, gormless, open-mouthed smiles. She smiles with her whole body. Every time I make eye contact with her she throws up her hands in a little solo Mexican wave. A friend of mine takes her baby to be experimented on by psychologists. They cover the baby’s scalp with wires then show her a video of a face, first looking away then looking directly at the camera. I don’t know why they need the wires because when the look is direct, the baby’s face virtually splits in half grinning and she throws herself around with joy.

I don’t know what babies find so exciting about human faces but it does make you feel rather special - even if she is completely undiscriminating about which human face. In fact, forget faces – she lavished her first smile on a cushion cover. I don’t care – I’m smitten. Sometimes she pulls away mid-feed and just gazes at me. I can feel my brain chemistry rearranging itself.

She’s definitely a completely different person to her sister – for a start, I have never heard any baby making the noises she does. She does incredibly articulate shrieks covering a whole range of opinions. My favourite noises are the slightly unhappy ones. There are whole melancholic soliloquies on whatever subject it is she’s unhappy about, and you can’t help agreeing with her. At her age, the babe just did Happy and LOUD. 

She’s small. She smiles. She sleeps a lot. Can it get better than this?