Aurora Katherine Silpala Aurora's Blog

For the first time, this morning we heard Aurora recite all the lyrics to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, including every word. She's been reciting lyrics to several songs for a couple weeks now, but this is the first time we could hear every individual word.

She's been turning board book pages for a number of months now. I think she was less than one year old when it began. Sometimes she still gets multiple pages at once, but others she will carefully separate just one page from the bunch and turn it. 

She's been doing this for a while now. She loves to really check things out when she get a hold of them.

Last weekend Aurora's cousin Alex gave her some fun toys which he didn't use anymore.
One is a plastic elephant with differently-shaped holes all around its body, and with little plastic pieces of the same shapes, sizes, and colors as the corresponding holes. She immediately took to this, and within days was easily sliding each piece into the correct hole, pulling them back out through the trunk and repeating.

The other toy is a combination. It's a bucket with a similar hole/shape matching scheme on its cover, but it also includes nine nested cups which can be either stored inside the large bucket right-side up, or stacked on top of the bucket upside-down—making a tower taller than Aurora herself when all properly stacked. She loves stacking the cups and then knocking them down. She hasn't quite mastered the ordering; often she'll put a small on in place before a larger one. We're not sure whether that's a lack of comprehension or just artistic license. Either way, she loves it.





Yesterday she also played a bit with the shapes and holes on top of the bucket. Unlike on the elephant, there's no color matching to rely on to pair these pieces up—she must make the choice by shape alone. This turned out to be quite a bit more challenging to her than when she could lean on colors. After a few rounds, though, she could reliably figure them all out without assistance from us. Big girl!

On her first birthday, Aurora surprised us both by successfully climbing an entire flight of steps, without practice or pause and of her own accord. Quite the surprise!

Aurora is one year old today. We had a quiet brunch celebration with just the three of us (Markus, Tricia and Aurora) at Crema Cafe (Aurora's favorite restaurant). She enjoyed a breakfast of Brioche French toast with caramelized bananas, eggs, yogurt, milk, and ice cream for dessert.

What's going on right now? Aurora's top front teeth are coming in (all at the same time) and she's had the two bottom front teeth for a few months already. She can climb the stairs (of course Mommy and Daddy are always there to make sure she's okay), and she can say, "mama," "da-dee," "ca" (which means cat), and lots of other consonants and vowel sounds. She shakes her head "no," and prefers to feed herself. She LOVES mangoes, and mango lassi (a yogurt and mango pulp drink). She's also discovered the joy of dancing and often stops to dance when she hears a catchy song or tune.

Feel free to browse our photo gallery to see some events of Aurora's first year.

Much Love,

Tricia (and Markus)

We're not actually sure when she started holding herself up in a seated position, but we know it was sometime around the day she got her helmet fitted. More to come later on that, for the curious.

Aurora enjoyed her first Christmas Eve in Eagan, MN with Great Aunt Gale, Great Uncle Taavi, Grandma and Grandpa Silpala, Aunt Siiri and Uncle Hung (Hung's cousin Lizzie), Cousins Paul (his girlfriend Krystal) and Alex, and of course Mommy and Daddy. Here are a few pictures from the days’ events.

Aurora began opening her eyes a little bit within minutes of birth. She hasn't had them open for many pictures yet, but when Markus or Tricia holds her they often pop open. They're a deep blue with tones of gray—though who knows what they'll be as she ages. When we lean our faces in close she seems to focus on our eyes, filling us with joy. She also notices and looks at large, bright things in the distance, such as the skylight above her bassinet. Markus is proud to note that he seems to have the "magic touch" ability to get her to open them on request, such as for doctor exams and, less frequently, photographs.