Say Cheese, Dammit

So, we've had our first baby milestone. Today, I smiled at my daughter Leah and she smiled back. A real honest-to-goodness smile -- mouth open, eyes squinted, with a little coo added for good measure -- not one of those odd, closed-mouthed, I-have-gas-or-am-trying-to-poo-or-have-a-facial-tic "smiles" that they have both been known to flash once in a while. For those readers that are parents, you know, it's one of those moments that make all the sleep deprivation and stress headaches worthwhile.

The problem with the "baby's first social smile" is that it lasts about 0.5 seconds and as soon as it's over, you want to see her second social smile, and dammit, you want to see it NOW. Basically, the smile is the parental equivalent of crack. (Uh, semi-pun not intended.) After the first smile, I spent the next ten minutes making faces, talking exaggerated baby talk, doing anything to make Leah duplicate her smile as she sat there with a confused look, wondering why daddy was suddenly acting like such a freak. And meanwhile, daddy was totally ignoring his other daughter, who could've been juggling knives at the time and he probably wouldn't have noticed.

And of course, the second instinct is to try to catch it all in a photograph so that you can relive the moment later. Unfortunately, every time I try to catch the babies doing something cute in a picture, they always seem to stop what they're doing right as the camera clicks. That's another thing that would be a nice invention -- a camera that takes a picture of what was happening two seconds ago.

I'd like to end this post with a picture of Leah smiling. Unfortunately, I don't have one. So here's a random picture of Leah yawning, probably taken a couple seconds after she was doing something much cuter.


And just to give equal time and make sure that Riley doesn't think I'm favoring Leah when she reads this blog in ten years, here's a picture of her being cute too: