Oh my, he is smiling!

The little boy is smiling! Big cheeses. They are hard to capture on film, since it is hard to hold the camera and the baby at the same time, but it is absolutely precious and melts my heart! Here is a picture I took of a "happy face" (not quite a smile, but still very sweet):

Also, we have recently begun a system of doing exactly the same thing to lull him to sleep for each nap - we hold him against our stomach, pat his back and wait for his little eyes to close. And a couple minutes after they do we lay him down. The crying is almost non-existant (sometimes he protests a little when we first start, but he quickly settles into the routine). He usually wakes up when we put him down, but we re-insert the pacifier and he quickly goes back to sleep. Ahh, this is so nice!  (We'll see how long it lasts!)