SMILES!

HE SMILED AT ME!

The last few days I've been seeing more and more smiles. He's smiled at his bottle & at his pacifier. Towards the end of a feeding, he gets smiley. He's full and content and I, of course, am still trying to get him to eat more so I stroke his lips with the bottle nipple and he'll grin. I'm not sure if it tickles or what.

I wasn't sure any of those things counted as social smiles.

But this morning just as we started a feeding, he was antsy. Not fussy, just too busy looking around to be bothered to eat properly. So I put the bottle down and just looked at and talked to him a little while.

He was making happy baby sounds (not sure it counts as cooing just yet. More like happy squeaks) so I started copying them.
At one point he said "Wah." (sort of rhymes with law, but breathier) So I said "Wah. Wah." and he smiled.

I giggled "You smiled?! For Mommy?"

And of course, did it again. "Wah. Wah."

ANOTHER SMILE!
It wasn't a fluke!

He was looking me in the eyes and he was smiling.

I giggled and then started crying because I'm such a sap.

Then we did it 3 or 4 more times. Worked every time.

Pure Joy.

We finished the feeding and I tried again. It worked again.

Of course, then he nodded off for about 15 minutes and woke up puking (love that relux.) so there weren't so many smiles then.

I tried again a few minutes ago and mostly he just looked at me like he had no idea what was wrong with me.

But I don't care. I can live on the smiles from earlier for at least a decade.

--Trish