13 baby things I’m oddly obsessed with

13 Reasons Babies are Awesome

1. their breath. This one I seriously can’t figure out. It’s a perfume custom designed with postpartum hormones; an olfactory dog whistle for new mothers. Their mouths release a mix of warm formula and slobber, and yet, it’s also the name of a flower. I’m thinking there’s a connection there.

2. the cute crunch and crinkle of a diaper. – There’s a particular sound that a diaper makes when a baby, sans pants, rolls or scoots or startles, and I find it joyful.

3. the way they startle. – It has never been beneath me to scrunch a chip bag or prompt the dog to bark to see those endearing wide-eye jolts.

4. they bite your nose. – They just have no social decency at all, those babies.

5. laugh spurts. – Only a baby can lose their shit for 3 seconds and then go stone-faced, only to repeat the process when prompted by the exact same stimulus seconds later.

6. that moment they recognize you. It’s always on a delay, but once they zero in and realize it’s someone they love, and they get the biggest smile and bounce and hit. That is gold.

7. crib babble. – There’s this magical 10 minutes between when they first wake up and when they believe an unacceptable amount of time has passed, when they just coo and laugh at their fingernails and such.

8. their tongues. – They’re out all. the. time.

9. playing big kid. – Sometimes you snap a picture of them making an adult gesture purely by accident and it’s funny … and cute. Cute and funny.

 

10. bubbly. – Babies in bathtubs are a favorite because they’re nakey, which is so cute, but also, they splash and then startle themselves on the regular. The startle leads to another splash and the fun just goes round and round.

11. sleep smiles. – What do babies dream of, when they take a little baby snooze?

12. a short list of body parts, in no particular order: cheeks, slope of their nose, butt (specifically fanny crinkles), thighs, belly, feet and neck (trapped rancid milk and all).

13. the smell. – If the population is ever dwindling, they can distribute the bottles of baby smell they have locked in an underground bunker somewhere and boom! We’ll be back to crowded Playdomes faster than you can say “ovary ache”.