bottles and smiles

Well, Thea must have sensed my border-line insanity, because yesterday she treated me to two wonderful things - One you can see above: The biggest, toothless grin a 3-week-old girl is not supposed to be able to give yet. Much like her crying, Thea doesn't just smile a little, she smiles a lot. Her whole face lights up in joy. It's amazing to see from someone who seems to do little more than sleep and scream, but she must be picking up a thing or two during those rare moments when she is doing neither.
The other thing she did was equally amazing - she took a bottle from Matt last night after I had gone to bed. Actually, she took two bottles. Actually, she takes all she can get. I'm not sure "full" registers with her. But after Liam's long process of finding the ideal nipple type, and several days of refusal to take a bottle when I went back to work at 2.5 months, this was a breeze. She latched on, sucked away, and consumed large quantities without the bat of an eyelash.
So today I got to go to the gym for an hour and a half while Matt and Liam held down the fort. Unfortunately, the only part of that plan that didn't work was the amount of milk I left. She drank every drop he had and got mighty annoyed when that ran out. So I came home to a similar screaming scene as last week's attempted jailbreak, but at least now she's sleeping like a log while the boys go into town for a mint steamer. I'm still glad I went, though. I can handle 90 percent of the screaming when I've been to the gym or gotten some exercise - without it, it's more like 60 percent, and that's not so good. Plus, I need to capitalize on this insane metabolism I've got right now. Dropped another pound in the past couple days putting me five pounds from my prepregnancy weight. I've got a feeling at this rate I'm going to end up in a good place as long as I sew my mouth shut when Thea stops breastfeeding.
I had a wonderful moment with the little girl this morning when we got up. The house was quiet, I had my coffee and it was still dark out (suprise suprise.) Thea and I just sat there oogling at each other. Her eyes just have this amazing sparkle to them. And more smiles. Makes my heart sing and makes me feel like I can handle whatever life throws at me. In the words of a good friend of mine, "Spring it on me, kid."