Out of Her Shell

In the past couple weeks Kate has experienced what can best be called a personality emergence. Our former baby, the one who’d cause Mark to sometimes say, “Would it kill her to smile a little more?,” has suddenly become a people person.

Kate and I were at Berkeley Bowl again last week (though thankfully she was spared a near concussion this time). She was practically jumping out of her pants to interact with people. She leaned out of the Ergo pack to smile and clap her hands at other shoppers. She craned her neck at children passing by in shopping carts, and went to great lengths babbling and flapping her arms to woo the strangers in line behind us.

She also practiced her newest move, in which she raises one arm out, and holds her hand open, palm to the sky, in a sort of papal-blessing type way. She just sort of aims this at people. I take it to be a gesture of good will.

This is the baby who weeks ago staunchly refused to eek out a tiny grin for old women who did cartwheels in the aisles to get some reaction from her. This is the former Winner of All Staring Contests, who could deflect smiles with a stern unblinking gaze, for what seemed like hours.

Well, for now at least, those days seem to be gone. Maybe this is my daughter after all!