Month 2 — The First Real Smile Changes Everything
You made it through the first month.
That alone deserves more credit than anyone will give you. The fog hasn’t fully lifted. You’re still exhausted, still figuring out the feeding schedule, still waking up in a panic to check whether they’re breathing. But something has shifted. The rhythm of your days has started to feel less like crisis management and more like actual life.
And then it happens.
You’re leaning over the changing table, or holding them after a feed, or just talking to them because you’ve been talking to them nonstop even though they’ve never once answered, and they smile at you. Not the twitchy, half-asleep grimace you’ve seen before. A real one. Eyes open, looking directly at your face, mouth curving up in a way that says: I see you. I know you. You’re my person.
It lasts maybe two seconds. And it absolutely levels you.
Month two is when the relationship starts to feel like a two-way street. Your baby is waking up to the world, and the world they’re most interested in is your face. Everything you film this month will carry a warmth that month one didn’t have yet, because now they’re looking back at you.
What’s happening this month
The first real social smile. This is the headline. Somewhere between five and eight weeks, your baby will smile in direct response to seeing your face or hearing your voice. Not a reflexive newborn grimace, not gas passing through their system, a genuine, social, communicative smile. Paediatricians consider it a major developmental milestone. Parents consider it the moment their heart permanently leaves their body.
Cooing sounds. Your baby’s first non-crying vocalizations arrive this month. Soft vowel sounds, “ooh,” “aah,” “goo,” that sound almost conversational. They’re experimenting with their voice for the first time, and if you talk back to them, they’ll often try to respond. These exchanges are the earliest form of human conversation, and they are worth witnessing.
Better head control during tummy time. Last month, tummy time may have been a few seconds of face-planted protest. This month, your baby will start lifting their head higher and holding it for longer. It’s still wobbly, still effortful, but the improvement from month one is visible and dramatic.
Tracking objects with their eyes. Move a toy slowly across their field of vision and watch their eyes follow it. Their visual range is still limited, about 20 to 35 centimetres, but within that range, they’re starting to track movement with real intention.
Recognizing familiar faces. Your baby is beginning to distinguish your face from a stranger’s face. You’ll notice it in the way they respond differently to you than to someone they haven’t seen before. They may stare longer at unfamiliar people, or become unsettled when held by someone new. They know who their people are.
Longer alert periods. The sleep-eat-cry cycle of month one starts to include stretches of genuine wakefulness. Your baby will have periods, sometimes thirty minutes, sometimes longer, where they’re calm, alert, and interested in the world around them. These windows are your best filming opportunities.
Film this before it’s gone
1. The first real smile
This is the single most important piece of footage you will capture this month. And the problem is, you don’t get to schedule it.
The first social smile arrives without warning. You’ll be doing something ordinary, changing a nappy, singing a song you’ve sung forty times, making a ridiculous face because nobody else is watching, and suddenly, there it is. If your phone isn’t within arm’s reach, you’ll miss it. So keep your phone close during face-to-face time this month. Every time.
You probably won’t catch the very first one. That’s fine. Once the smiling starts, it tends to keep coming, and the second and third and tenth smile are just as worth filming. What you’re capturing isn’t just a facial expression. It’s proof that your baby knows you. That’s the footage that will make you cry in five years.
Tara Henderson caught her baby’s early smiles during casual, at-home moments, no setup, no perfect lighting, just a mother and a baby having a conversation that happens to be on camera. That’s exactly the approach to aim for.
2. Cooing conversations
Talk to your baby. Wait. They’ll “talk” back. Film the whole exchange.
This is one of the best things about month two. Your baby starts making sounds that aren’t crying, little vowel sounds, soft coos, experimental noises that sound almost like they’re trying to form words. And if you respond to them, pause, and wait, they’ll often try again. You’re watching a human being learn how communication works, in real time, in your living room.
Prop your phone up so it captures both of you, or have someone film from the side. The back-and-forth rhythm of these exchanges, your voice, their coo, your response, their attempt, is the footage that sounds like nothing and means everything.
The Ingham Family filmed these early cooing conversations with several of their children, and the comments are always full of parents saying the same thing: “I forgot mine used to do that.” Because you will forget. The sounds change so quickly.
3. Tummy time progress
If you filmed tummy time last month, film it again now. Put the clips side by side later. The difference will stun you.
In month one, tummy time was a few seconds of face-down frustration. By month two, your baby is pushing up, lifting their head, looking around with genuine curiosity. It’s still hard work, you can see the effort in their face and their shaky neck muscles, but the progress is unmistakable.
Film from the floor, at their eye level. Get down on your stomach across from them so they have something to look at (your face is their favourite thing in the world right now). The footage of them straining to lift their head and lock eyes with you is the kind of determined, beautiful struggle that defines early development.
Colleen Ballinger documented tummy time milestones with honest commentary about how each month looked different, the wobbles, the protests, and the small victories that only a parent notices.
4. Their morning face
When your baby wakes up, sees you, and lights up, that is one of the purest moments in human experience. Film it from above, looking down into the bassinet or crib.
Month two is when this starts to become truly responsive. They open their eyes, focus on your face, and their whole expression changes. Sometimes it’s a smile. Sometimes it’s a look of intense concentration, like they’re trying to memorize you. Sometimes they kick their legs in excitement because the person they were waiting for has arrived.
You’ll need your phone ready before you lean over them. The reaction happens in the first few seconds, and it’s over quickly. But if you catch it once, you’ll have footage that captures exactly what it felt like to be the centre of someone’s brand-new world.
5. The evening witching hour
Between roughly five and eight in the evening, your baby may cry inconsolably for no apparent reason. This is called the witching hour, and it is real, it is common, and it is not your fault.
Film it. Not because it’s beautiful (it isn’t) but because it’s true. This is what month two actually looks like at 6pm on a Wednesday, and every parent going through it deserves to know they’re not alone.
Keep the clip short. You don’t need twenty minutes of crying. A minute or two of the reality, the pacing, the bouncing, the white noise machine, your exhausted face over their shoulder, is enough. This is the footage you’ll show them when they’re sixteen and complaining that you never let them do anything. You earned this.
Channel Mum featured real families during the witching hour in their unfiltered series, and the response was overwhelming. Parents don’t just want to see the smiling moments. They want to see the hard ones too, because the hard ones make them feel less broken.
6. Bath time expressions
By month two, your baby is developing a clear opinion about bath time. Some babies sink into the warm water like they’ve been waiting for this their whole short life. Others scream as though you’ve betrayed them at a fundamental level. Both reactions are excellent footage.
Film their face as they go into the water. That first-contact expression, bliss or outrage with no middle ground, is priceless. Film their hands. Film the way their body either relaxes or stiffens. If they’ve started to enjoy it, film the rare calm that settles over their face in the warm water. If they hate it, film the fury. Both are equally worth keeping.
Tara Henderson’s bath time footage with her babies captures this range beautifully, the kicking, the splashing, the wide eyes, the occasional scream that echoes off the bathroom tiles.
7. Grabbing at things
Your baby’s hands are starting to have intentions. They’re not grasping yet (that comes later) but they’re reaching. Batting at dangling toys, swiping at your face, closing their fingers around anything that touches their palm.
Hang a toy above them or hold a rattle in front of their chest and wait. Watch their arms move toward it. The coordination is rough and the aim is terrible, but the effort is there, and it’s the beginning of something enormous. Every skill they’ll ever learn with their hands starts with these clumsy, beautiful swipes.
Film their hands in close-up. Those tiny fingers stretching toward something they want, that’s a milestone most parents don’t think to capture, and it passes quickly.
The Ingham Family documented these early reaching moments in their milestone updates, showing how quickly the random arm movements of month one become purposeful by month two.
8. How they fit in your arms
Film yourself holding your baby. Film from above, looking down. Show their whole body in the frame, cradled against your chest or stretched along your forearm.
They are growing faster than you can perceive in real time. You won’t notice the daily changes because you see them every day. But when you compare this footage to month one, or better yet, to the hospital, you’ll see it immediately. They’re longer. Their face is filling out. They take up more space in your arms.
This is the kind of footage that has no practical purpose and infinite emotional value. It’s not a milestone. It’s just a record of how small they were, held by someone who loved them, on an ordinary afternoon in their second month of life.
Colleen Ballinger filmed these overhead holding shots regularly and mentioned in later videos how grateful she was to have them, because the size difference between months is something your memory simply cannot hold onto accurately.
One video idea for this month: the first smile compilation
Set up your phone during face-to-face time and leave it running. Do this every day for a week or two. Talk to your baby, make faces, sing to them, and let the camera capture whatever happens.
You’ll get a lot of footage where nothing happens. Delete it or don’t, it doesn’t matter. What you’re looking for are the almost-smiles, the half-smiles, and then, eventually, the full, unmistakable, real smile.
Edit them together in chronological order. Start with the early footage where they’re looking at you but not quite responding, then show the progression, the mouth twitching, the eyes brightening, the lips starting to curl, until you reach the genuine article. The result is a short film about a human being learning to express joy for the first time. It takes about ten minutes to edit on your phone, and it will be one of the most-watched videos in your family’s collection.
If you want to take it further, add a simple title card at the beginning (“Waiting for your first smile”) and a date stamp on the final clip. That’s all the production value it needs.
Don’t worry about
Your baby not smiling yet. The social smile typically appears between five and twelve weeks. Some babies take longer. If your baby is healthy, alert, and making eye contact, the smile is coming. Comparing your baby’s timeline to the one in a video you saw online is a recipe for unnecessary anxiety. They’ll get there.
The amount they’re crying. Month two often includes peak fussiness. Research suggests that crying tends to peak around six to eight weeks and then gradually decreases. If your baby seems to be crying more than last month, that’s not a regression. It’s a well-documented pattern, and you’re likely right in the middle of it. It passes.
Not getting enough footage. You’re surviving. If all you capture this month is one ten-second clip of a smile, you’ve documented the single most important moment of the month. Everything else is a bonus.
The quality of your footage. Shaky, poorly lit, narrated in a whisper because the baby just fell asleep, that’s not bad footage. That’s real footage. The aesthetic perfection of a YouTube video is irrelevant to the emotional value of what you’re capturing for your family.
Whether they’re “behind.” Milestone ranges are wide for a reason. Your baby is not a checklist. If you have genuine developmental concerns, talk to your paediatrician, not a search engine, not a comment section, not a parenting forum at 3am. Your doctor knows your baby. The internet does not.
The bottom line
Month two is when your baby starts showing up as a person. They smile. They coo. They track your face across the room. They have opinions about bath water. They light up when they see you in the morning and fall apart every evening for no reason at all.
All of it is worth filming, and none of it lasts long. The cooing will turn into babbling. The wobbly head lifts will become confident neck control. The tiny body that fits perfectly in the crook of your arm will outgrow that position in weeks.
Keep your phone charged and within reach. Capture what you can, forgive yourself for what you miss, and know that every second of footage you take this month contains something your future self will be grateful to see again.
The first real smile is the headline. But the whole month is the story.
