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My little Ila turns 2 tomorrow.  She was named after my beloved grandmother, Ila O’Bryant.  My grandma always seemed to just radiate love.  My little Ila is the same way to me.  Her siblings genuinely love her and enjoy being around her and she loves them too. There is some indescribable quality about her that draws us to her.  After I pick her up from nursery, she’s always eager to go find the rest of her siblings.  She’ll start calling down the hall “Charlotte, I’m coming.” 

I love her laugh.  She finds joy in simple things and just seems to be genuinely happy most of the time.

I think she is our best talker.  She regularly uses 5 word sentences and even attempts to say ridiculously hard words like Zarahemla.  It’s funny to hear her talk so clearly because she’s still so small that 12 month jeans are loose on her. 

She loves to read and count and sing.  Whenever she sees letters somewhere, like on a sign, she starts singing the ABC song.  She sings along with several of the songs on the CD in our van and has picked up many of the songs they sing in nursery.  She knows all the words to the first verse of “You are my sunshine” and has even started to memorize parts of books that we read to her regularly.

When  she wants to tell me something, she points her little pointer finger at my mouth, looks directly in my eyes and tells me what she wants.  She’ll often say something like “I want lunch.”  I respond by saying “you want lunch?” and she’ll say “ok” in a cheery little voice.  It’s funny because sometimes she turns my confirming that I understood her request into what sounds like I’ve just offered her exactly what she wants and she has agreed to accept it.

We color code things for our kids based on their favorite colors (Isaac = green, Charlotte = pink, Nicole = purple, and Ila = orange).  [There is still some debate in our house over whether Ila’s color should be orange, but she was born in Knoxville and if you’ve ever been to Knoxville on a Friday during football season, you’d know exactly why her color is orange]  Today, when we were at a preschool, Ila picked out a green bead and then said Isaac.  Then she picked out a purple one and said Nicole.  There were no pink or orange beads in the box, but after picking out several “Isaac” and “Nicole” beads, she picked out a red and named it “Charlotte.”  The point of this story is that she makes connections easily and seems to have a high natural intelligence.

She is still the pickiest eater I have ever known.  I could write several paragraphs about how illogical and odd her eating choices are, but for this particular post, I won’t describe them in detail.

What more can I say.  I love my little Ila with all my heart.  She brings such joy to my life and I am so incredibly blessed to be her mother.