I love you, too

This is how my baby gets to sleep most of the time: sucking his fingers. I’m so excited that he’s chosen these two fingers:

It’s a little “I love you” sign! My mom thought I was crazy but I love this. I mean, it’s my preverbal baby telling me he loves me. Kinda gets you right here.

How does a preverbal baby tell you he loves you? Lately I’ve noticed a few ways Hayden says “I love you” without actually saying it.

• He calms down (sometimes) when I stroke his head or back.
• He gazes raptly up at me (especially when he’s sooooo tired and it’s bedtime).
• He just learned that when he’s sitting on my lap, he can lean all the way to one side (leaning on one of my arms as I type) and turn his head to look up at me. And when he does, he flashes a huge grin. It’s as if he were saying, “Hey, wait a minute, who’s got me? Let me check. Oh! It’s MAMA! Hurray!”
• He buries his head in my shoulder or chest when he’s ready for sleep.
• He perks up when he hears my voice, especially if I’ve left him alone for a while. And by “perks up” I mean that he usually goes from laying on his tummy to holding his head up to look for me.
• The other day I went in to get him from his nap and before I even said anything he perked up because he knew I was there. Before he even saw me, he was grinning his gorgeous, toothless grin because he knew I was there.

When Hayden was younger, especially the first two months or so, it was tough because I never seemed to get any kind of feedback from him. It seemed he acted the same way with just about anyone. (Unless, of course, he was hungry, in which case he screamed loudest of all with me because he was growing impatient and knew I was supposed to be feeding him.)

When Hayden was just over two months, I complained to a friend with a then-two-week-old. “Oh, my baby definitely knows who I am,” she interrupted. “He’ll scream and scream for my husband, but he always calms right down when I have him.”

Oh. Right. Well, then. I guess I didn’t need any sympathy, anyway. But three months later, it’s (finally) becoming more and more obvious that I’m Baby’s favorite person. I might even go so far as to say that he loves me!