First Smiles

When my mom was around my house helping out and showing me the ropes, it took a while for me to realize this essential truth: doing baby chores is spending time with an infant. Sorry, mom. Once I was up and around, I wanted to take over everything for the baby. I felt bad asking mom to help with this and do that. I felt like it was burdening her after all she did to help us prepare for the baby. That and I wanted to practice while I still had supervision in case I needed back up and couldn't handle it. She felt, and she told me so, that she was useless and not helpful any more. She felt like I was pushing her aside. That wasn't my intent at all. Only during the last few days of her stay did I realize she WANTED me to let her do the baby chores. So those last few days I let her. I gave her as much as I could and handed the baby over as often as possible.

So, when I got to the family reunion and everyone wanted to hold DJ, I let them. I relinquished. And when Mama (B's mom) wanted to take him in the mornings to help out, I was ecstatic. Baby time for her, sleep time for me. Good deal.

And then something amazing happened yesterday. Now DJ has been grinning when he falls asleep for a while. B and I attributed it to happy dreams, pleasant sleeping, or just something random. But this morning, Mama L (Mama's mama. Ha!) said he smiled at her. Just out of no where he smiled at her. And she was certain it wasn't gas. I believed her. He'd been heading in that direction for a while.

Later that afternoon, we were hanging at a cousin's house, and I handed DJ over right after he'd eaten. And he smiled at our cousin again. She was so excited.

Then, this morning after eating he was just looking up at me and smiled. It was so great. He's so pretty when he smiles. All gums shining and eyes bright. His eyes are really starting to look brown now. I was hoping they'd stay kind of grey looking, but no go. Oh well. His eyes are going to turn out like mine. Which is fine with me, I have purty eyes. I'm so proud of him.