When I took Teresa to the doctor last week for her four-month checkup, he pronounced her perfect. In perfect health, I suppose he meant, and she seems to be. But I wouldn’t really argue with the idea that she’s perfect in any way, because that’s how she seems to me. Teresa is an easy baby to love. She doesn’t cry too much, hasn’t been colicky, even sleeps through the night most of the time. She loves to cuddle up and be held, and to pull at the toys hanging from her baby gym. She laughs — most often at her brother and sister — and splashes in the water in her bathtub. When you ask “Where’s Duncan Keith?” she flashes a toothless grin. And when she talks, she’s really funny. No, of course she doesn’t really talk. But Tony, her dad, often speaks for her, using a special voice and matching his comments to the expression on her face. Speaking through her dad, she’s told us about trips to the moon, that one and one make blue and that’s she’s headed off to college next week. The rest of us laugh and engage her in conversation, which she is happy to join with her own baby coos and other sounds. But it won’t be so much longer before she can talk on her own. And then we’ll be hearing her opinions for the rest of our lives, and the line Andy Griffith once used on Opie will run through our heads: “And to think I was glad when you learned how to talk!” Because once someone starts insisting on thoughts and opinions that are different from ours, well, it’s a little harder to think of him or her as perfect. Once upon a time, parents were told that a baby was a tabula rasa, a blank slate, ready for them to write on. Usually all it takes is a second child to discover that parental influence isn’t the main factor in determining a child’s personality; they are individuals when they are made, with their own strengths and talents and even weaknesses. When they are babies, it’s so easy to think we know what they are thinking, or what they would think if they had our perspective. But they never will have our perspective; they will have their own, and the world will look different through their eyes. In a few years, I’ll get to know Teresa even better than I do now. I’ll know more about what she likes and what she doesn’t, I’ll hear about what she thinks, I’ll find out what she can do better than me. Along the way, at some point, she’ll tell me, “I’m not perfect. I’m only human.” I hope I remember to tell her that’s OK. All she needs to be is perfectly herself.