That First Laugh

The other night as my wife and I were winding down the evening and getting ready for bed, I decided to put Jack in his pajamas and change his diaper.  One thing Jack always does when I change him and he's looking up at me is smile really big.  It's the cutest most earth shatteringly adorable display that you can imagine. My wife always gives me hell for getting him excited so late in the evening but I just can't help it.  I picked him up (sort of like the image to the left over there) and started singing, "I've got a naked baby, I've got a naked baby..." and bouncing him up and down.  It happened fast and to be honest we didn't even know it was the real deal at first, but he did it - he let out a laugh!  Jack has smiled and made sounds to accompany those sounds before but he has never full blown laughed.  It was the most amazing sound I think I have ever heard and my wife even shed a few tears.  Her chastising me for "riling him up" late at night evaporated as she joined in on the shenanigans and we got a few more laughs out of him before we eventually had to stop and put him to bed.

These are the types of moments that make any discomfort from altering a schedule around a new baby or changing a lifestyle worth it.  Seeing your baby smile or laugh at you is something you truly can't know how it will feel until you experience it yourself.  We've tried to get laughs out of him again but they are slow to come.  The smiles and crazy sounds are there but the full blown laugh is buried beneath the surface only visible to the most silly and crazy acts of randomness.  But alas, I now know that I have the power to reveal these giggles and it has become my mission to display them whenever possible - a mission I take very seriously.