Parents, especially new parents, are always going on about how beautiful their baby is, how happy they are, etc., etc. All of which can be annoying, and which means nothing, anyway: we know they'd say that sort of thing no matter what their children were actually like.
As a new parent, then, I'm a bit perplexed about how to respond to queries about our baby boy. If I say he's beautiful (which of course he is), how happy we are (which of course we are), etc., etc. (etc., etc.), then people will not only (appropriately) discount my claims, they'll also think I'm your typical, annoying parent blinded by the love of his (almost certainly mediocre) child, and why can't I just get over it and not blithely channel my parental biases in public, eh?
On the other hand, if I give responses that are more reserved ("He's very healthy and presents appropriate feeding and sleeping behaviors; on balance, we consider ourselves to be pretty lucky"), then the standard Gricean discounting means that people will think the boy must look like the Elephant Man or something. (Not that there's anything wrong with that...).
On balance, then, I think the most circumspect approach is simply to say that our boy may well be the greatest human being ever to have been born.
