Smiles, smiles and smiles

Some of you (yes, you know who you are!) have asked about Timmy smiling... Well although he has been smiling for a while now, this week he started smiling A LOT more. He smiles many times in one go and also has many different smiles. There's what we call a crooked smile (observe at pic 1), a straight smile (pic 2) and a completely open cute-toothless mouth smile (pic 3). Although smiling does mean that he's happy, his mood can change very quickly. Yesterday I was holding him in front of me right after a feed and he was giving me one smile after another, and then suddenly started bawling without any apparent reason. We also started having what I'd like to call conversations. Basically he started making a lot more sounds this week... like cooing noises. So the other day we were looking at each other and he'd smile and say "Cooo", and I'll reply with another "Coo"... and that went on back and forth a couple of times. Needless to say we were both very pleased with each other. No idea what we said though... may be smth like:

Tim: "Mum - your milk is tasty"
me: "You really think so?"
Tim: "Yep Mum, definitely"
me: "Aww - you're such a sweet little baby boy" ;PPPP

Yesterday wasn't a good day for him though. It was very warm - about 30 degrees and he couldn't fall asleep the whole day. One trouble that he's having a lot is falling asleep on his own, because he keeps hitting his face with his hands, waking himself up. So we normally wrap him Russian style in order to stop him from moving his arms. Babies are supposed to like it anyway, because it makes them feel like how they did in the womb. Usually that helps, but because of the heat it was very warm to wrap him very tightly, and hence we had to play a game to try and help him sleep by wrapping him a little, but trying to make sure that he doesn't overheat.

Another problem is that he's refusing to take a dummy (so far Jack managed to convince him to take it precisely 3 times out of about 250), which means that he only falls asleep if we rock him, or if he gets a boob. Today is also very hot and humid, but he seems to be doing much better. That's him snoozing in his cradle below.

One thing we've been trying to introduce is a nightly bath, which is a start of his "going to bed" ritual. He's been enjoying water a lot, so it's been actually working fairly well. We give him a bath sometime between 8pm and 9pm, and then I feed him lots, which then a) puts him to sleep very well, and b) makes him sleep for at least 4 hours at the first stretch, which is great.

And this week also marks a moment for Timmy discovering that his hands indeed belong to him. He started munching on them - mainly having a preference for the right one. It's pretty funny - when he munches on his hand (or anything else), he makes the funniest little vicious noise... "nom nom nom". Bleah - I feel that is enough babbling about baby cuteness for one post!

Some random pics follow... the rattles that he's wearing below are from Sam D - thank you!!! :)