cute babies

It's probably the only thing that can cheer up a tired, grumpy mom covered in spit-up and in desperate need of a shower. Babies often seem to instinctively know when a frazzled parent needs some comic relief and are happy to provide the toothless gums for it.

For some babies, it may take extra coaxing to be rewarded with an enthusiastic smile – others seem to be born more social. Whatever the case, many parents often find themselves exhibiting behaviors they never knew they possessed until their baby came along.

It's no secret that babies crave touch. Gently blowing raspberries on those tiny hands, feet and belly are the perfect way to make a baby smile. Before long, you'll realize how influential those raspberries were when your baby starts making the "razzing" sound on her own.

For some reason, like being on the receiving end of raspberries, most babies absolutely love it when a parent nibbles on their feet, fingers or neck. The love of nibbling often lasts well past infancy. Children as old as 2 even enjoy a good toe nibbling every now and then.

The areas stimulated by the sight of their own babies were those associated with the neurotransmitter dopamine. Specifically, the areas associated included the ventral tegmental area/substantia nigra regions, the striatum, and frontal lobe regions involved in emotion processing, cognition and motor/behavioral outputs.

"These are areas that have been activated in other experiments associated with drug addiction," said Strathearn. "It may be that seeing your own baby's smiling face is like a 'natural high' ".

The strength of the reaction depended on the baby's facial expression, he said.

"The strongest activation was with smiling faces," he said. There was less effect from pictures of their babies with sad or neutral expressions.

"We were expecting a different reaction with sad faces," he said. In fact, they found little difference in the reaction of the mothers' brains to their own babies' crying face compared to that of an unknown child.

Overall, the mothers responded much more strongly to their own infants' faces than to those of an unknown baby.

The baby's smile that gladdens a mother's heart also lights up the reward centers of her brain, said Baylor College of Medicine researchers in a report that recently appeared in the journal Pediatrics.

The finding could help scientists figure out the special mother-infant bond and how it sometimes go wrong, said Dr. Lane Strathearn, assistant professor of pediatrics at BCM and Texas Children's Hospital and a research associate in BCM's Human Neuroimaging Laboratory.

"The relationship between mothers and infants is critical for child development," said Strathearn. "For whatever reason, in some cases, that relationship doesn't develop normally. Neglect and abuse can result, with devastating effects on a child's development."

There is lots of evidence to show that babies are born with an innate desire to communicate with other humans and that they interact with us long before their first proper smile. From very early on they can imitate the facial gestures of their parents by, for example, moving their tongue and widening their eyes. They are, in fact, programmed to join in the 'social dance' by meeting your eyes in a mutual gaze and by taking turns with these facial gestures. As you probably already know, this behaviour is very effective in attracting and holding your attention!

A baby's first proper social smile generally occurs at about four to six weeks, though it may be seen earlier and dismissed as wind. Psychologist Steve Biddulph says that, as newborns, boys tend to make less eye contact and to smile less than female babies. This means we have to be extra sure to interact and chatter with them, so that they grow to be toddlers who can talk as well as their girl peers.

In a Canadian study of fathers, all said that an important factor in their relationship with their baby was when they were first smiled at and 'spoken to'. Your baby is sending signals all the time and without being aware of it, you will respond by echoing back his expressions and sounds, encouraging your confidence in each other.

An economic theory popularized by economist and writer Harry Dent, who concludes that the U.S. and other European markets will peak between 2008 and 2012. This is based on Dent's finding that a human's consumer spending habits peak by age 50; therefore, as the baby boomer generation reaches this age, the economy may be approaching a peak in consumer spending and in the markets.Because American soldiers returned from WWII earlier than European soldiers, the theory concludes that markets in the U.S. will peak around 2008, while European markets will peak around 2012.

Assuming that the theory's predictions are accurate, some expect this to have wide-ranging implications. In addition, when baby boomers retire, this could cause spikes in unemployment and decreases in the housing market as aging baby boomers spend less. Others believe that the influx of immigration will help stave off these effects in the United States.

Babylon was a city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers (55 mi) south of Baghdad. All that remains of the original ancient famed city of Babylon today is a mound, or tell, of broken mud-brick buildings and debris in the fertile Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in Iraq. Although it has been reconstructed, historical resources inform us that Babylon was at first a small town, that had sprung up by the beginning of the third millennium BCE (the dawn of the dynasties). The town flourished and attained prominence and political repute with the rise of the First Babylonian Dynasty. It was the "holy city" of Babylonia by approximately 2300 BCE, and the seat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire from 612 BCE. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The form Babylon is the Greek variant of Akkadian Babilu (bāb-ilû, meaning "Gateway of the god(s)", translating Sumerian Ka.dingir.ra). In the Hebrew Bible, the name appears as בבל (Babel), interpreted by Book of Genesis 11:9 to mean "confusion" (of languages), from the verb balbal, "to confuse".