Oops. Uh-oh.

The other day, we brought Kalina to a dinner party with family. Big mistake. She absolutely loved it--she spent several hours, mostly awake, I think, just watching. She loved the faces, the talking, the bustle. She even added some of her own babble to the conversation. And the next day, instead of being respectably tired and withdrawn, she cooed and smiled like a pro as she soaked in every face she could possibly see.

In short, we think we have an extrovert on our hands. We don't know how it happened. It doesn't make any sense. And we have no idea what to do about it.

Both being staunch introverts ourselves (Matt more so than I), this is the last thing we expected. Can we nip it in the bud? Or will she, poor girl, spend her whole life craving interaction and trying to convert introverts? "Come on, it'll be fun!" she'll say to all the homebodies she knows, lurching them out of their quietly contented lives. We shudder.

And that's not all. Most babies this age are happy to stare at brightly colored toys, batting at them like kittens, or at least to suck on their hands a while. Not Kalina. She prefers faces and human interaction. To add insult to injury, after 10 1/2 long weeks of staring at her mommy, she's now thoroughly bored with me. Perfect strangers now get the heart-melting grins that once belonged solely to me.

She also loves to talk, having picked up an African tribal language that's comprised mainly of squeals and clicks. As she practices her enunciation with Matt and I, she encourages us to learn it, too, screaming when we get it wrong.

Fine, Child, I decided a couple days ago. If you want to be social, we'll go out. I'll just ignore those screams as I put you in the carseat. Hah! Take that!

I ended up carrying her most of the way through the stores, and then buying her a new toy. I sure showed her!

So how are we going to deal with an extrovert? As we're usually too boring for them, we don't know quite what to do with one.

We're hoping the cats will help. After all, can Kalina really know yet whether she's human or feline? We don't speak tribal African, and neither do the cats, so we can't tell her. She's about the size of a cat, often sitting at about their level, and she also sometimes sounds like one.
And fortunately, judging by the conversation she had with the ceiling fan this morning, she's not too picky about who she talks to.

Matt and are hoping we can at least be as exciting as the ceiling fan in the years to come. Wish us luck.