smile!

J has really started hitting us hard with the smiles this week. He has been smiling in the morning for a while, but now he smiles after almost every nap, and he can hardly control himself when one of us is changing his diaper. I'm not sure if it's because he's gaining more control over his face or if it's due to the increased sleep he's been getting. Either way, I'd much rather have him smiling than screaming in my face.

He has also gotten much better at eye-contact. He spends a lot less time staring into space and a lot more time focused on our faces. He seems to be endlessly fascinated by our eyebrows. (And who wouldn't be? -- he's probably wondering what eyebrow fate will befall him.)

Eye contact seems to lead directly to smiles, which makes me believe he isn't so much smiling, as imitating. Sometimes the smiles are accompanied by a little guhhh sound, or foot-thumping, and I think those are the real happiness smiles. The rest probably lie somewhere between gas and contentedness.

Today these two developments collided in a nearly catastrophic way when I held him up to the bathroom mirror: unbreakable eye contact and an increasingly smiley subject... I think he may have popped another dimple in the process.