One Year Old!

January 15, 2008

One year ago little Aurora was born. Emily and I agree that she is the perfect little girl. Maybe all parents say that, but temperamentally she is just an angel. The chance to watch her grow and change over this year will rank as one of my life's true blessings. She started out at just 6.1 pounds! Now she is somewhere in the twenties (we will find out where in the twenties at her one year checkup tomorrow). She is walking and has a wide range of words that she can understand..

But forget all those milestones. I want to write about the personality that we are seeing take shape. What are her characteristics?

1. attention to detail. She can sit around for a long time messing with the small parts of a toy. She will sit with a big person's book and work to turn the pages. If there is a button to be pushed she will find it. Technically I think I would summarize this as a high level of interest in fine motor skills coupled with an amazing patience. She rarely or never gets flustered, but will turn a toy over and over.. pushing here and there, turning this nob and then that one.

2. caution. She is an exploratory little girl, but she does not go charging over boundaries very easily. We have a pillow marking the end of her play room and she will crawl up to the pillow, but not cross the line. Instead she stops and looks back for us. Her walking has been right on time, but she is no daredevil and feels no apparent need to rush around. we have had remarkably few hard falls.

3. sense of fun. Emily likes to say that Aurora loves to make us laugh.. and that is true. She likes people chasing her and playing peek-a-boo. She also likes funny faces. It seems as if once a day she has a good laugh session. Remarkably she also likes to come up with games. She will even do fake-outs. When she realized that if she put a piece of lint in her mouth mommy came to take it away, she right away began to pretend to put lint in her mouth. She has a number of fake-outs: the fake sleep when trying to get away, the fake offer of food.. and others.

4. love of sleep and food. In the former she is clearly her daddy's girl. She goes out quickly and sleeps deeply. I by habit whisper when she is asleep but Emily points out how this is unnecessary with our girl. In the latter she is her mommy's girl, loving every vegetable she has ever laid eyes on (even cauliflower!). When I assume she wants blueberry baby food little Aurora reaches for the broccoli.

5. friendly. There have been some minor incidents of stranger anxiety, but mostly she responds positively to people.. even to lots of people. She is able to win people over with a smile. When someone new visits our home she will approach and act in a friendly manner.. going so far as to lay her head on the visitor's lap.

6. musical. I don't have any amazing stories about how she can sing or pluck a tune on a piano. But from her earliest days she could be soothed by listening to music and still when I know she needs to take a nap I will put on music and walk around with her. Her musical diet has consisted of the Beach Boys and Raffi.. although Mommy keeps Tori Amos going on the stereo as well.

7. nostalgic. This is a debatable trait.. because it might just be a stage that every baby goes through. But Aurora loves to see pictures and videos of herself. Part of why I am writing this post is so that someday she will be able to look back and see what she was like as a little girl. I have this feeling that she will always want to hear about what funny things she did.

We love you Aurora and think we have been blessed to have you in our family!