This afternoon, I took Kaia to her very first theater performance: Flutter, a performance designed especially for kids ages 6 to 18 months of age, which follows the narrative of the changing seasons through experiential storytelling, innovative puppetry, innovative dance, and original music (that’s from the official description). I had been keeping my eye out for age-appropriate, low cost activities in the area that Kaia could do, and this definitely stood out as being one of the most interesting ones, so I signed her up over a month ago. And in the end, it was a great experience. Not only did she do exactly what the director had hoped, which was interact inside the circle they created and play with the props, dancers, and other kids, but Kaia really hammed it up in general: before the performance even started, she went around the inside of the circle, crawling to each family and saying hi and waving. She traded and fought over toys with certain kids. At least half a dozen parents came up to me after to express how cute and social my baby was.

If our ex-nanny hadn’t quit, I wouldn’t have taken Kaia to her first theater experience. So in more ways than one, the nanny’s sudden departure has actually benefited our family. I got to see Kaia be extremely social and interact in a fun theater environment, and it made me realize even more how much my baby is blossoming into a precocious, outgoing, intelligent tiny human.