THE SECOND NINETY DAYS
If the first ninety days were a slow adjustment period to parenthood where the main focus was keeping Charlotte fed, making sure she didn’t squirm out of my arms, and crossing your fingers at doctor’s appointments, then the next ninety days was a series of rapid bursts but beginning to relax a bit and actually start to enjoy parenthood. This was such a great period – past the initial worrying but before the teething and crawling. At this point I can tell our lives are going to be turned upside down once Charlotte begins to crawl so we’ve tried to enjoy months four, five, and six as much as we can.

The highlight of each day was watching Charlotte wake up, go through her stretching exercises, then opening her eyes, recognize she was looking at her father, and greeting me with a huge smile.
My parents would see Charlotte once a week and always comment on “how big she was getting” but seeing her every day it felt like she was the same size. It took looking back at earlier photos to confirm she was indeed getting bigger. That changed in the fourth month. There were mornings when I picked up Charlotte and she felt larger than she had when she went to bed the night before. She was clearly going through a few growth spurts. Feeding every four hours became “she’s hungry, feed her NOW!” – at least that’s what it she seemed to be crying to us.
Aside from traveling back to Philadelphia, we had been relatively hesitant to have Charlotte out in public until she received her four-month vaccinations. That changed with Charlotte’s baby shower, which I think was more of a “I’m a Grandmother NOW!” celebration for my mother. Nevertheless, it was quite the celebration and I’m glad all our family and friends could meet Charlotte. Timing and logistics meant it was a bit tricky to have Charlotte’s baby shower in the weeks before her birth. We needed the typical baby shower gifts (car seats, strollers, play yards, bouncers, bassinets) in California and there was simply not enough room in the car to be gifted these items in Pennsylvania then drive them, along with clothes and everything else out to California. The return trip involved taking items on a plane and a full car.
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We received a lot of great gifts from the Baby Shower / “I’m a Grandmother NOW!” party. My mom asked each guest to bring a book and now Charlotte has a library full of great children’s books. It’s interesting to see how many new classics there are since I was a kid. I expected to receive duplicates of books like Corduroy Bear but all the books we received seemed to be originally released in last few years. Reading to Charlotte has been a bit tricky. She’s still not a huge fan of sitting in my lap or the bouncer thus it’s tough to make it through a book when she’s wriggling all over the place. I am looking forward to when she can sit up on her own and we’ve started shopping for a chair that she can sit in and read her books.
Annie is extremely jealous of Charlotte. Our dog initially seemed to be indifferent, even scared, of Charlotte but now that she knows Charlotte isn’t going anywhere Annie goes out of her way to remind us that while Charlotte may be a baby, Annie is still the only fur baby in our lives. It’s been funny watching Annie’s jealousy in action. When Annie was a puppy, I picked her up and carried her like a baby. Around the one-year mark Annie outgrew this like she was now a rebellious teenager. Then she saw me carrying Charlotte over my shoulder and started pawing at me to be carried that way again. Annie makes it tricky to play with Charlotte. Annie seemed to have modified the old basketball defense adage of “Ball. You. Basket.” to “Me. Annie. Charlotte.” as she constantly felt the need to place herself between me and Charlotte. Doggy dates, which typically involve Annie and me going to a microbrewery, did little to convince Annie she had nothing to worry about. Once Annie receives her first treat from Charlotte and realizes there’s one more family member to cuddle with, I’m sure the jealousy will immediately vanish. Hopefully. 
The fifth month mark brought long anticipated excitement – Charlotte was enrolled in swimming classes! I had been checking the swim lesson calendar for the Goldfish Swim School in Fort Washington multiple times a day since Charlotte reached the four-month mark and finally a time that worked for our schedule became available. We wanted Charlotte to see other peoples, try a new experience, learn how to swim, and begin having fun outside the house. Charlotte took a very serious tone, although thankfully no tears, through her first few classes but with each class her confidence and enjoyment of being in the water grew. By the fourth lesson she was consistently kicking her legs around the pool and splashing. All with a smile on her face. The lessons lasted thirty minutes once a week and a parent is in the pool with the child for the entire class. Charlotte and I take laps around the pool sometimes with a floating barbell, sometimes with her on her back. We practice jumping into the water and go through the motions of climbing out of the pool on the wall.
The big milestone around the five-and-a-half-month mark is that we have introduced solid, mostly purees, foods to Charlotte. There’re various schools of thought around what and when to introduce solid foods to babies. The most impressionable reasoning for me was that a parent would know it’s time to feed when the baby can sit up in a high-chair and takes an interest in your food while you eat.  Charlotte had entered a phase where everything she touch immediately went in her mouth and she would stare us down at every meal, sometimes wincing and wining as though she wanted to be involved. For her first meal, I dipped her spoon in the puree, handed the spoon to her, which she took with force, and after poking around her face a little, she found her mouth and enjoyed the new taste. I had to grab the spoon back from her to put more puree on the tip but as soon as the puree was on the spoon, “whoomph”, she lunged and grabbed the spoon. In the first few meals I believe more puree wound up on her face, her eyebrows, her clothes, and her arms than in her mouth but her coordination improved with each meal. We also introduced teething crackers, which are a quasi-rice cake, that have an elongated oval shape that allow her to grab one end and shove the other end in her mouth.  The first non-baby specific food she tried was an avocado which proved to be a bit to slippery for her to handle. Charlotte has a strong grip and when she grabbed the avocado slice it shot right out of her fingers. 
The three-to-six-month mark may prove to be the “peak” infant period. I thought the first three months, while enjoyable, had a much more serious Charlotte who couldn’t always recognize people and her environment. There wasn’t much she could. I thought the first three months last forever. The next three months have been a sprint that I wish would slow down. Each morning I return from the gym and when I enter the bedroom Charlotte turns and smiles at me. She makes all the fun baby noises. She laughs. She giggles. We can have her sit up to read books and watch Disney movies. She likes sitting on my lap and thinks that by smashing letters on my keyboard that she’s helping with work. She’s starting to move around – backwards crawling. For the first five-and-a-half months she didn’t like rolling over. If we placed her on her back on her playmat, she stayed on her back and swatted the hanging dolls. If we placed her on her stomach for tummy time, she stayed on her stomach. Now when we place her on her back on the playmat, she seems to get bored with the swatting and rolls over after thirty seconds. She has learned out to crawl backwards meaning that once she rolls to her belly, she can scoot herself off her larger foam playmat in less than five minutes. Gone are the days where I could drop her on her tummy and work uninterrupted for twenty minutes and not worry about where she may wind up. On the couch, there’s now a risk she can roll off if I need to run to the bathroom. We no longer place her bouncy chair on the table or counter because she could bounce herself off. She will also occasionally put up a bit of a ruckus if she isn’t getting enough attention or is avoiding a nap. Anything that is within arm reach she is grabbing or knocking over. At a microbrewery I had my attention on loosening the car seat straps while Charlotte was in my lap and within less than five seconds, she had swung her arm and knocked over my beer. This is all a long way of saying that she is slowly becoming a bit to handle. We can begin to see that once she can crawl forward that this peaceful period will come to end. Which isn’t to say that we aren’t looking forward to the next stage but rather this stage was truly the golden period where you could enjoy Charlotte without worrying about her getting into mischief.