I picture my child as this sort of vast and impossible to comprehend vessel for gathering and understanding knowledge. Most of the time, you don’t notice that everything is new to her, and that everything is beginning to make connections with her. But sometimes, she’ll do things that take your breath away, and make you realize how incredible human beings are.

She’s been using words a lot lately, and I mean a whole lot. The last time we counted, there were at least 32 distinct and individual words that we knew she used regularly. That was nearly four months – since then, we’ve stopped counting, and know that even if we did count, she’d likely double the list by the time we were done writing it down.

But what took my breath away tonight is merely that she noticed the stars in the night sky. Her mom was holding her, and my daughter was curious. Leah pointed up and her mom said “stars”, and with that, she’s now curious about the universe beyond her ever growing world.

And finally, this girl is undeniably my daughter. Instead of the usual Finding Nemo, tonight we watched Transworld Skateboarding’s Sight Unseen video. Focusing on the video dominated her attention, and after a few handrails and lofty indy grabs, she uttered “Skateboard. Whoa. Cool. Weeeeee” and twirled about the room, obviously stoked about David Cardiel’s line.

Thinking about her age brings about a paradox of emotions: it’s amazing that she’s this aware of her world at only 17 months, and it’s amazing that just yesterday she had her first birthday.

Regarding the title, I often feel that rather than parents, we’re merely stewards of an angel. Since the day she was born her personality and her soul have been strong enough to overwhelm whatever exhaustion as parents we have, and as her body begins to grow into that personality it keeps us going strong.

And soon we’ll have two. We’re expecting a boy on May 24th or thereabouts, and can’t imagine how we’re going to survive. I’m sure we’ll manage.