Today we read books

But first, a couple cute pictures from the past few days.

So, I don't know if I've mentioned this, but Amelia loves to make my life hard with the camera. Specifically with her smiles. I have been able to get some smiles while she's playing, but I think that's because she's too focused on the playing to notice the camera. When she is smiling right at one us, and I pull out the camera, she's immediately done! It's frustrating because I swear the smiles I see when she plays are very different from the adorable smiles we get when we are holding her or changing her and she's looking right at us. They are bigger, sweeter, and possibly even a little flirty, if that makes sense. Her mouth opens real big and she kind of tilts her head while still looking at us. Anyway, I really want to catch one of those sweet smiles and I've been having a hard time. 

The other day she was smiling and cooing it up on Tom's lap and sure enough every time I went over there with the camera, the smiles stopped. Fortunately, I had the idea to utilize the zoom feature on my camera and I went into stealth mode and caught a couple from the other couch where I was sitting. 

Maybe it's just me, but these look so different than playtime smiles and I'm glad I finally got a few. Hopefully I'll get more. She may as well get used to the camera being around, I'm never going to put it away.

This is the best one for sure!

Her tongue is usually involved in her happy faces. 

Not smiling, but I love it anyway.

 These are just a few random pictures from the following day. The 26th of September to be exact. Amelia is wearing her "Fall Brown" outfit. 

Again with the lip. This is how we know playtime is over. 

On to today! Amelia was in a great mood. All. Day. Long. Which is fun, but I have to admit it's also kind of exhausting. She's having really long stretches of being awake and needing to be entertained. And let's be honest, a two month old doesn't stay interested in any one thing for very long. So we go through a lot of activities. She's always been a very alert baby but lately it's like she can see even more or something because she's REALLY getting interested in what's around her. 

This picture pretty much sums up her mood today :)

She's actually appearing to like tummy time. Today she hung out with the giraffe. Okay, she does that every day. But I think today is the first time she's really seen him from this angle. 

She loves him!!

Studying the colors.

Then, it was onto my lap for some story time. I almost caught some smiles here. These are right before and right after the big smiles. The camera just isn't quick enough!

Finally I got out the books. We've read to her before but today she was really into it. Really, really into it. She had so many funny expressions while I read to her. I wish I could see what she's thinking when she looks like this. 

She looked a little shocked at first, but couldn't take her eyes off the page. 

She loved it and never looked away. Also, I find it amusing that from this angle her eyes look exactly like the eyes of all the animals in the book. 

Whoa.

Focused.

She was astounded by Sandra Boynton. Barnyard Dance is one that we read to her in the womb and I swear she recognizes the words and is studying the pictures that she can now see. Like it's a whole other dimension of something familiar. That's the way it seems anyway. 

The next book was one of those fabric books that have different textures and crinkly sounds and this book made her pretty happy. It's about dinosaurs. 

She started getting really into it, and actually reached out to the pages.

 Okay, I love this picture. It was supposed to be a smile but the timing was off and I got this face. Worth it. 

And this is just a reminder of how the day was. This was taken after a diaper change for goodness sakes. So yeah, she was in a really good mood today. I can't wait for more :)