one word

When Elizabeth was very small, I used to say to Rich that if I had to pick one word to describe her, it would be delighted. She was just delighted to be here, she took great delight in her surroundings, and her days were quite delightful.

I've been searching for a similar one word descriptor for Andrew. When he was quite small, my friends with children similar ages would talk about how the baby would follow the older sibling with his/her eyes and smile at the older sibling. For nearly everyone, that adoration of the older sibling started quite young. Not so for the little guy. Elizabeth would appear and Andrew would show one emotion: alarm.

We're over that stage, thank goodness. He mostly enjoys when she picks him up and hauls him around. He is furious when she takes things from him, and it's only a matter of time before he learns to hit back.

But one word for him. It's somewhere in the realm of interested-curious-calculating. When he looks around, I think his thought process mostly is: what is that, can I eat that, can I climb on that, once I climb on that what can I do then. But he's also pretty darned delighted.