my yellow hammer

We read from one of the baby websites that at week 34, babies’ temperament is indicative of what their personality might be like in the future. So far, Makayla seems pretty mellow and easy going. She likes to smile and hasn’t shown much signs of stranger anxiety (thanks to recent family reunions of over 100 relatives and weekly church visits). Sometimes she likes to stare and study faces of people who she’s not familiar with (or have forgotten she’s met before). Not sure if it’s too early to draw any conclusions about her personality from these observations.

We do notice that she has certain toy preferences which are a little surprising. Lately, we’ve tried to introduce Mak to some new interactive toys…colorful ones with lots of shapes, textures, some with rattle/sounds, and some with lights. But time after time, Mak seems to prefer toys that are simple with not much frills. Her favorite one would be the famous yellow hammer which can be found in almost every recent picture because Mak likes to hold it 24/7. She takes her bath with it and goes to bed with it…first thing in the morning, looks for yellow hammer! Basically, it’s a bright yellow plastic toy with a football shaped part as the hammer and a pear shaped ring as the handle.

One day, Abe and I were thinking…so why does she like that yellow thing so much? We came up with a few possible reasons and analysis of what these might mean:

• Hammer is light and easy to hold – It’s big enough for Mak to hold with one or two hands (Meaning: um, not sure)
• Hammer is multifunctional – it can be used as a teether toy, as a hammer to bang on things, or an instrument to make all sorts of sounds depending on what object it’s hitting on (Meaning: Mak is creative, maybe will go into drumming like daddy?)
• Hammer is yellow (Meaning: yellow may be her favorite color…she seems to gravitate towards other yellow things like the (adult size) exercise ball…or maybe cuz it’s just the biggest ‘toy’ in her room.)
• Hammer is simple – (Meaning: Mak finds pleasure in the simple things in life)
• The fact that Mak always goes back to this toy may indicate that she knows what she wants and doesn’t change her mind easily – maybe early signs of stubbornness? Or we can call it loyalty and dedication. =)
• Hammer was part of a FREE gift from doing a child development survey at our childbirth class (Meaning: Mak is frugal and likes to find a good deal!)

Okay, this is probably not the most scientific analysis of our daughter’s temperament/personality/qualities but it was fun imagining what kind of person she will become. I guess we’ll see!