Nope, it's not just gas

To think that only days ago I was excited about the fact that Alyssa was finally starting to get the hang of this being awake thing. Yes, we were lucky if she kept her eyes open for more than twenty minutes at a time. And yes, the only difference between her awake time and her sleep time was the fact that her eyes were open. I liked to pretend it was more than that though… I liked to imagine that she was actually choosing to give up her precious sleep time to hang out with us.

So the other morning I was changing her diaper and yammering on and on about who knows what, and she looked up at me with an expression very similar to the one you see above.

Yep, she smiled. And smiled. And then she smiled some more.

It felt like time froze for just a moment while I locked eyes with her and just reveled in that smile. Honestly, I've been enjoying Alyssa's company immensely all along, but she's been such a serious little thing. No matter what kind of goofy thing we'd do to amuse the kid, she'd just stare at us with a stern expression, then eventually yawn and go to sleep. I'm pretty sure we're at least mildly entertaining every now and then but she's been a really tough audience. So I can't even explain how thrilling those first smiles were. It was nice to have some acknowledgment that she's enjoying herself at least a bit.

I'm pretty sure it will be quite a while before Alyssa masters the ability to roll her eyes or she would have done it a second later when I started bouncing up and down and screaming like an idiot, "She's smiling, she's smiling!!! Amanda look… Alyssa's smiling!"

Since then, she has repeated the performance a few times. She just beamed and beamed at her big sister for what seemed like an eternity and she's blessed her dad with a few grins too. But trust me, she's no pushover. She refuses to smile on command.

Clearly she's going to make us work for it, but that's okay. It's definitely worth the effort. Just look at the picture above and I think you'll agree.