without a doubt, my absolute favorite part of the day is first thing in the morning after maxson has finished his first feeding. as soon as he's done eating, we both stretch our arms high over our heads, arch our backs and let out big yawns, he just continues to lay there by me on his side and immediately smiles and smiles at my face without me prompting it. it's the most magical thing. about 80% of the week, that first hour and a half of the morning is spent laying next to this baby in bed smiling and talking and playing until it's his next nap time. no matter how tired i am, his smiles wake me right up and remind me how lucky i am to be a mother that day. i just continue to look at him, trying to memorize all the details of his little face, his facial expressions, how he kicks his legs about, and flails his arms everywhere. we have the most elaborate conversations with each other in the morning that sound like baby cavemen talking back and forth to each other. over the course of a few minutes his sounds get more exclamatory and so i mimic him and then he does even more and it gets pretty loud in there! sometimes when he's smiling so much and so happy he'll kind of let out this little half chuckle, we've caught it on some of our videos, i just need to find it, it's crazy adorable (isn't everything a new baby does adorable? except when their feet are flailing so much when you change a dirty diaper and no matter how fast you try, their foot just barely brushes that yucky old diaper...) poor casey hasn't gotten to experience this magical hour very much with school starting every morning at 8 am, church at 9 am, and saturday morning stake basketball games. maybe he can play hooky one of these days :)
i don't think i've mentioned it on the blog, but max's favorite sound is the motor boat, you can often get a smile out of him with that weapon. the other day casey began making cough cough bodily function noises and maxson thought that was the funniest thing, such a boy :) we're constantly trying out new sounds to see what he'll suddenly love. another thing he always loves is when you slowly move toward his face making kissing noises and then proceed to kiss away the side of his face. he smiles when he begins hearing that noise and watches you come in closer and then as soon as you get to that baby face, he opens his mouth and tries to eat you. it's adorable.
on sunday i was holding him outwards on my hip and he started looking at the mirror on the wall that was less than a foot away from his face. i just barely put it up so this was the first time he's really gotten the chance to look in it. i stopped and started watching him and he finally found himself and began staring intently at his reflection, and then for a brief second he smiled at himself! it was beyond precious. he's thus far only done it that once but my heart wanted to burst open seeing him do that. i love watching the boy grow and learn...
