It's allright

It's funny how a baby depends on you to gauge their emotional responses to some things. There are, of course, a few things that they are sure about like loud noises and hunger, you leaving, them falling. But sometimes, something will happen, and the baby will look right at you to see if you are upset or smiling.
Like when Elmo, (now my daughter's good friend) was going into one of his convulsions and threatened to fall off the bed, I screamed a little, all in good fun and my daughter looked at me with a twisted, worried expression but as soon as I smiled at her, she was ok.
Other times, when her dad and I are horsing around and I yell at him to stop pulling at my toe or something, she looks over at me to see if I am really in distress. If I smile, she smiles too. But for a birthday I had recently, someone shoved my face into my cake. I laughed but not right away. I screamed.
Ms. Foo got scared and would not stop whimpering until I looked at her and smiled, nodding my head, saying, "It's ok, it's ok".
Once, I was baby sitting for a little boy under a year old and we got on an elevator. A strange guy started talking to him. Before this, every person who wanted to talk to him was usually a friend or family member and I always smiled at him encouragingly and nodded my head. This time, he looked right at me and I, without thinking, just shrugged. The baby immediately started crying. I'm sure that if I had smiled like I always had before, he would not have gotten scared.

This works too when I'm telling her not to do something like shoving my sandal in her mouth. I see her pick it up and it goes straight to her mouth.
"NO!" I say, very sternly and when she looks at me I knit my eyebrows and turn my mouth down.
Then she gives me the sweetest, cutest, funniest smile she has. I keep my face scrunched up. Probably more so than before just to keep from laughing.
Then her smile wears off. She puts the shoe to one side.
I break into a smile and nod my head. She smiles and picks up the shoe.
Back to the frown.
She puts it down, I smile.
And guess what, she doesn't put the shoe in her mouth any more! Well, not nearly as much as she used to.
Maybe she doesn't understand words to well yet, but she definitely knows the difference between an ok situation and a not so ok one, and all from the expression on my face!