Ellie's Countenance

The great majority of the thousands of photos that have captured my two-an-a-half-year-old granddaughter Ellie, most all record her idyllic smile:

Yet I have been more drawn to the few photos that have caught a much more thoughtful countenance:

The smile is wonderfully engaging and can’t help but elicit a reciprocal response (one of the reasons, I’ve recently read, for an infant’s or toddler’s joy), but it is reaction to stimulus, a visceral response. The other look is a much more reflective, inquisitive countenance – a Robert De Niro “You lookin’ at me?” quality that I hope reveals a mind that is already skeptical but curious, wary but willing to see what else is out there, what’s coming next. And I hope that she can carry that – both the smile and the quizzical gaze – well into her future.