Dante @ 72 hours - His First Smile

Dante is approximately 72 hours old.  Bridget and I just awoke from our first full hour of sleep in more than 48 of those hours.  Dante just finished feeding and we have just witnessed his first smile.  We noticed him trying to smile a few times over the past day, but he couldn't or just didn't know to hold his face muscles long enough to maintain the smile.  Up till now, we've only seen the corners of his mouth raise up just a tiny little bit for a fraction of a second.  Tonight he had just pulled off a breast after a few minutes of feeding and gave us a legitimate smile.  It's our first positive facial signal from our happy boy.  I almost cried, I was so proud.  I will likely fill up half my smart phones memory card trying to capture his second and third smile, but ultimately we hope that his smiles will become common place.

Prior to the feeding smile, I was amazed at how much he's using his legs to kick now.  He woke us up with soft cooing noised and was eagerly making his 'feed me face'.  I was holding Dante while Bridget was preparing to nurse and I noticed the strength in his legs was much more forceful than earlier.

I decided to write down these little observations much like diary entires because some of the common advice that I've frequently received from our experienced parent friends, is to treasure them when they're small because they will grow up so fast.  I hope that these blog posts will allow us to look back and remember when our little man was so very small young.   As a bonus, by putting this in a blog, family and friends can easily read about these experiences as the wish.

Lastly, because this was typed up in the wee hours of the night between feedings, please excuse me if some sentences make zero sense.