My daughter is awesome.

And even though every parent on the planet says that about their kid, I’m lucky enough to have one of those kids who inspires other people around her to say that too, even if they’ve only known her a few minutes.

She’s 19 months old now and just unbelievable. She’s always cheerful (unless I’m redirecting her from something potentially harmful that she wants to do anyway), always elated to meet and be around people, always exploring and interacting. It’s perhaps the best anti-depressant I’ve ever had.

A few days ago she picked up my camera and started taking pictures. The impressive part of this is now that she could mimic my actions but she was actually looking through the viewfinder, setting up a shot, and then taking it as opposed to just randomly hitting the button and pointing the camera at nothing in particular. She got down on her tummy to get a portrait of the cat and then, after taking a couple, she changed positions to get a different angle on him. She even took one of her stuffed animals and put him up on the couch to get a “portrait” of sorts. I was really cool to watch.

We were on vacation last week on a small island in SC and naturally, she loved spending everysinglemoment outside in the sun. She loved pointing at the seagulls and pelicans and screaming “Kak! Kak!” (this is her arbitrary word for any bird because she can’t yet differentiate between the individual types and thinks they’re all ducks) and picking up seashells - “shah-shoo”s - but what she loved most of all was being around dogs. She ran up to literally every dog we saw during the entire week regardless of size. She would always want to engage them individually so often she would come up and sit down in front of them to be on their eye-level. Sometimes it looked like she and the dog were in their own little world, actually. And there was one little dog who was a schnauzer-type mutt that the owner was carrying in her arms and was snarling and growling until the Bear came up and petted her nose. I was starting to wonder if she’s going to inherit Cesar Milan’s gig when he’s ready to retire.

She has a whole arsenal of words and she’s so so excited to be able to communicate with us. When she recognizes something that we have an established word for (”Ar! Ar!” - Dog “Fjooo” - Food “Ah-pay!” - Airplane) she is so so excited to run over and tell someone about it and it’s really cool to see her confidence in herself during those moments.

So, once again, if there was any doubt: Yes. I am one of those pathetically child-obsessed parents.