I'm the lucky mom of a beautiful little girl who just turned 14 months old. One of the really fun parts of parenting for me has been to watch her personality unfold. Somehow, I always thought babies started out kind of a blank slate, and developed their personality from the interaction of genetics and experience as they got older, but she came equipped with a very strong personality pretty much from the start. As she's gotten older, she's also started to show some definite likes and dislikes and its been fun to see how she reacts to new things.

Here are some of her favorites.

My daughter was a fairly early walker (10 months) but it took us quite awhile to find shoes that fit her well. This changed one day when we walked into an upscale children's toy store and boutique and found Pippytoes. Pippytoes have cute leather uppers and flexible rubber soles, so they promote healthy foot development, too.

The price tag made me flinch, but my daughter LOVES them. Pippytoes squeak at every step (you can remove the squeaker if it starts to drive you nuts), and she thinks this is SO NEAT. She would wear them contstantly if I let her.

One of the biggest hits of her first Christmas was the LeapFrog Learn and Groove Musical Table. My daughter's loved music from the start -when she was a newborn I used to play music pretty much constantly to help her learn that day=bright and loud and time to play and night=dark and quiet and time to sleep. When she got older, she started waving her arms to the music, and now she's a regular little ballerina ... or perhaps a hula dancer, since her dance routines consist more of butt wiggles and jazz hands than plies and jetes.

This table allows her to make her own music with prerecorded sounds including drums, trombones, jazz piano, and bass. There are also dozens of kid-friendly tunes (though I wish some were a little longer.) Turn the page in the middle and it switches to counting, the alphabet song, and other learning activities in English or Spanish.

The height of the table is perfect for toddlers and the battery life seems to be long, which is also nice.

As you might have guessed, she also loves iTunes. Or at least, what's on it. :)

Her absolute favorite song is Abiyoyo, by Pete Seeger. She doesn't really seem to pay too much attention to the story, but as soon as the song starts, she starts dancing. She starts dancing even if you start humming it to her, so it's a great distraction if she starts to get a little fussy.

A little randomly, another song that is almost guaranteed to get her dancing is the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's Shuffle Your Feet. I mean, it's not that I can blame her, because it's a fun sort of foot-tapping song, but I never thought I'd be raising a biker chick. *g*

My daughter is already famous for shoving Sandra Boynton's Doggies at anyone within reach and going "Wuh wuh." Sometimes she will do this with Good Dog, Carl, by Alexandra Day, as well. She likes doggies.

Another favorite is Your Personal Penguin, also by Sandra Boynton, a gift from her aunt that has been another of Christmas's biggest hits. Your Personal Penguin comes with a free MP3 of the song, performed by Davy Jones of The Monkees, and it is another of her favorite dancing tunes.

Other Boynton favorites include Moo Baa La La La, But Not the Hippopotamus, and Barnyard Dance.

My mother has managed to pass on her love of Are You My Mother?, by P.D. Eastman, which we are expected to do with animal noises, and she's also acquired a (somewhat unfortunate, in my opinion, as I've never much liked them) taste for nursery rhymes.

When we get sick of barking like dogs, mooing like cows, and singing like three dancing pigs, we have this handy-dandy noisemaker, which has its flaws (bunnies go BOING BOING? Really?) but is fun for her. She likes the two songs best, but happily barks along with the dog, baas with the sheep, and tries to moo with the cow, though it comes out more like "Woooooooo."