Grinning

Let's talk for just a minute about my baby's sweet smiles. It will help me love her in the middle of the night when she won't go back to sleep.

I realize that all the books says that babies don't smile their first social smiles until they are about a month old, but this little Maggie is the smilingest baby I have ever seen (which phrase reminds me that Chloe's favorite phrase right now is "that's the ______ thing I ever saw!"). I kid you not, Maggie smiled at me the day after she was born. She has continued to smile regularly while sleeping, or with eyes open, but brain seemingly in REM mode, or at appropriate points in conversations.

"Do you just love keeping your mom and dad up at night?" Giant grin. My sister Katie can back me up on that one.

Just now she looked so peaceful in my arms and I asked, "Do you just love cuddling?" Another huge grin. And then she drifted off to sleep. She lay there, grinning, and I couldn't help but giggle at her. She responded to that by grinning wider and wider, until her mouth was all the way open and her eyes happily scrunched. Not only do I have a smiling prodigy on my hands, but she already understands English and the infectious nature of laughter.

But seriously, we did get our first truly social smiles this week, and even some of the fat scwunching, dimple inducing ones. I do just love them.

But I have to admit, they don't quite make up for the tears at night.