Smiler!

So here it is, the long-awaited photo of G smiling. We've been getting smiles off her for a few weeks already, but they've usually been too fleeting to catch on film. And besides, who wants to start scrabbling around for a camera when your daughter's smiling at you? If the smile follows minutes or even hours of crying, it's better to savour it than worry about trying to capture a Hallmark moment. However, she smiled so much during this week's trip to see my mum, uncle and aunt in Washington (that's this Washington, not that one) that we couldn't fail to get a few smiley pictures.

We drove up on Monday, just after she'd had another couple of injections. We'd been warned that she might not take the jabs too well, so we both went down to the surgery expecting to spend the whole journey north doling out Calpol and trying to soothe a grouchy G. But happily for both her and us, the injections didn't seem to bother her, and she slept more or less the whole way.

Her good mood continued during the two days we were in Washington. There was hardly any crying, and lots of smiling, gurgling and (possibly best of all) sleeping. I've heard lots of people say that they wished their babies could have stayed at a particular age forever, and never grown up. I always thought that sounded ridiculous, but G's been on such adorable form this week I now see what they mean. I still want her to grow up though. I need to be able to embarrass her with the contents of this blog.