smiles

up until this week, beatrix's smiles (which, as you know if you follow either this blog or a little wave, have received extensive photographic documentation) have come at one of three times: at the onset of sleep, during or immediately after nursing, or after a poop. they were heartbreakingly adorable, but were not in any sense of the word social. they were expressions of her own, self-contained feelings of pleasure. just in the past few days, bebe has begun smiling at other people. this is a most welcome development as it does what we thought was impossible: makes her even cuter and more lovable. there is, however, one facet of this new social smiling with which her mother takes issue.

bebe has two parents. one of them spends every waking moment with her, attending to her every need: holding her, comforting her, changing her wet diapers, providing age-appropriate stimulation and entertainment (e.g., time on her play mat or simple repetitive songs), and producing for her the perfect food in the perfect amount from said parent's very own body. the other parent, without loving bebe any less, and due only to the fact that bebe needs a roof over her head, spends most of the day at work. while he does a phenomenal job of comforting her in the evenings, and of changing diapers (apart from that one time the other night when he forgot to put a waterproof cover on over the cloth diaper), the fact is that at this point in bebe's life -- and this fact is inescapable for us, given the realities of co-parenting when one is the breastfeeder -- he does much less caretaking.

now, who do you think gets all the smiles? i'll give you one guess.






(to be totally honest, she did smile at me twice yesterday. and it was amazing and melted my heart. but still, daddy gets the lion's share of those bright-eyed, crinkly miracles. it's so unfair.)