Happy Baby

Although Aaron has his fussy moments (or days), overall, he's remarkably good-natured. He started smiling at us nearly two weeks ago and we get smiles on a daily basis, now. This photo doesn't do his smiles justice, but it was the best I could capture on camera.

He may not be the happiest baby on the block, but he is very good at entertaining himself. He can go for long stretches in his bouncy seat just looking around and listening to himself make noises. He especially loves to look at his mirror our friend Ernie gave him which we have sitting where he can see it from his bouncy seat. He can stare at it for 10 or 15 minutes at a time. The way we have it, he can't see himself, so I'm not sure if he is staring at the reflection of the room in the mirror, or the colorful decorations around its border.

And speaking of noises, he is starting to make new ones. Yesterday he said "ga" for the first time. This may seem like a small thing, but up until now, his primary forms of communication have been grunting, crying and wailing. He has also recently been heard to coo. On the road to verbal communication, these feel like major milestones.

Thom and I have always enjoyed throwing dinner parties with our friends and I wasn't sure how it would go once we had kids. But Friday night, we had 5 friends over for a potluck dinner (it should have been 3 couples, but Aaryn's fiance was stuck back east for work). When Lon and Melissa showed up, Aaron was awake and entertaining himself in his bouncy seat. When he started to get fussy, I fed him, which was when the rest of our guests arrived. After his evening feeding, he is generally ready for bed, but we let a few of our friends hold him before putting him down. We knew it was a gamble because if he got over-tired before we put him down, there would have been crying and screaming and it would have taken a long time to get him calmed down again. But Thom managed to whisk him away before he reached that point and he went to bed without too much fuss.

I'm sure when he is older he it won't be so easy, but it is nice to know that as much as our lives have changed with the new addition to our family, we can still enjoy some of the activities from our old life.