We have a smile!

Michael smiled for the first time this morning! He had been crying for a feed and I put him down on the bed to reach for my breastfeeding pillow and he immediately stopped crying and started looking around for some entertainment. Being a good mummy, I immediately obliged. After I pulled some particularly hilarious faces, he smiled at me. It certainly does make the sleepless nights and perforated ear-drums worthwhile. I called to Phil and we managed to get Michael to smile a few more times before he remembered that he was still waiting for some breakfast. I'll try to capture this smile on camera and post a picture.


The afternoon wasn't quite so fabulous as we went shopping at Vroom & Dreesmann in Amstelveen. It is a large department store with a great selection of baby clothes. I spent a happy half hour blowing my salary on little items of blue cloth whilst Phil was on another floor buying trousers. Whilst I was queuing at the checkout - disaster - Michael had a meltdown. The store was overly warm and he decided that he had had more than enough. I got a lot of pitying looks from other shoppers which was quite irritating - note to self - do not make eye contact with other shoppers when Michael has turned purple and is screaming the world down...







Things I love about Michael:

1. When he is having a cry and ends it with a sad little "Oooooooooh".
2. When he sticks his bottom lip out to get extra sympathy. Two female doctors fell for this hook, line and sinker yesterday.
3. His baby smell.
4. When he looks right at me and smiles.
5. The cute little monkey faces he pulls when feeding.

Things that drive me to hurl myself out of the window:

1. Michael instinctively knows when I've just started eating a meal or when I'm watching a programme I really want to see. He makes a point of howling extra loud at those times. I will never know what Gordon Ramsey threatened to do with that pumpkin on "Hell's Kitchen" yesterday.
2. The lack of sleep.
3. Did I mention the lack of sleep?

Phil has just reminded me of something funny that happened last night. It was about 3am and he had taken Michael into the nursery to change his nappy. I was watching TV in the bedroom next door. A couple of minutes after he left the room I started hearing exclamations of horror - "Oh no!" "No, stop!" and other such comments. Then I heard laughter that sounded tinged with hysteria. I decided to investigate and found Phil holding Michael suspended in mid air over the changing station. Michael was enthusiastically pooping all over a nappy on the changing station below. Phil wasn't able to put him down without covering him in poop and didn't have a free hand to get a clean nappy. Mummy to the rescue! Poor Michael was howling but Phil and I found the whole thing very funny and fell about laughing. We had to assure Michael afterwards that we weren't laughing at him.