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I like to write about my children on or near their birthdays each year.  Here is what I wrote about Ila last year when she turned 2 and here is what I wrote about her two years ago when she turned 1. It’s hard to believe that she’s 3 now.  She’s still so small to me.  She accepts her smallness as part of her.  She regularly tells me that she’s too small for this or that or that now she’s big enough.  (it may not sound so adorable as type on a screen, but if you can imagine her little voice telling you how she’s too small for a haircut or big enough for underwear, then you’ll understand why I it makes me smile every time)  She has learned to work around being short.  She recently discovered that she can climb up on our counter high chairs and with a “purple chair” she can access the computer or her booster seat.  She wears the same size diaper as her baby brother, but she doesn’t mind.

Now that Nicole is in preschool half day, 4 days a week.  Ila has become my little sidekick.  She’s the only one who can say more than a few words as we drive to and fro in the mornings and I have to say I quite like our time together.  She cracks me up all the time.  Ila loves to sing silly songs about everyday things.  Lately the tunes she’s been using the most are “The Happy Elf” by Harry Connick Jr. and “I like to move it, move it” from Madagascar.  She’ll sing “It’s the happy white truck, it’s the happy white truck. . .” or  “I like to eat it, eat it. . . “and then she’ll laugh about her funny song.Ila is fun to have around because she’s amused by so many things.  When something amuses her, she laughs and says, “that funny, mom?” Last week at church we sang “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and Ila laughed and said “That funny, mom.  That a Charlie Brown song!”

She is very particular about things.  She will only eat on our colorful IKEA plates and it’s important that the fork or spoon and cup match the plate.  When she has “ball cereal” (Reeses cup cereal) she must have milk and a spoon, but she never has milk with Life cereal.  She will only accept dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets and I must warm them up 3 at a time (it used to be 2 at a time, but she had a birthday so now we warm up 3).  If I do anything “wrong” like warm up the wrong amount of chicken nuggets, she’ll laugh and say “silly mommy.”  If she does something wrong, she will call herself out by saying “silly Ila.”  When she’s amused by something, she often declares “That a funny idea.”

She does sometimes cry and scream if things don’t go her way or if she’s in a grumpy mood.

Orange is her favorite color and she gets excited every time she sees something orange.  Fall was especially fun for her as there were orange pumpkins and decorations all over.  She loves to point out white trucks and say “That look like our truck.”  Our friends, the Huntings, lent us their gold suburban when our truck was out of commission and now every time she sees a gold truck she gets excited and says “Look, a Hunting truck!”

Her most frequently repeated sentence is probably:  “I need a mommy hug.”  She says it whenever she gets hurt, if she gets scolded, first thing in the morning when she wakes up, in the middle of meals, if she’s scared or tired or moody.  Even when she’s mad about something I’ve done, she wants a “mommy hug.” She hates having her hair combed and always asks to have a “mommy hug” while I’m combing her hair.   When I push Thomas in the stroller she asks for a “mommy hug” which means I should put her on top of the stroller and hug her as we walk.  At the top of the stairs a “mommy hug” means she wants me to carry her down the stairs in a hug.  After bedtime she will sneak out of bed walking slowly and quietly down the stairs and into the living room with her little face covered.  When I ask her what she needs, she usually says she needs a “mommy hug” and after her hug, she runs back upstairs.Ila loves babies.  She likes having a big and a small item that she can refer to as a “mommy and a baby.”  She also loves to carry around dolls and take care of them.  She usually refers to her dolls as “Tommy.”Ila is a wonderful big sister.  She was gentle with Thomas right from the start and has shown him much affection since then.  She likes to call him Tommy.  She was the first one to adopt that shortened form of his name, but now we all use it often.  She likes to tell me “Tommy is my best friend!”  All of the kids love to play with Ila because she’s so sweet and gentle, but Ila considers Charlotte her other best friend.  Ila loves to crawl into Charlotte’s bed and read stories with her.  Often when Charlotte has a day off of school, she’ll come downstairs for breakfast hand in hand with Ila. 

Ila loves her belly button.  She likes to draw and to cut with scissors. She can pick her own clothes out and dress herself, although she doesn’t always match.  Her favorite shoes are her hot pink crocks.  She has a pair of nice little Nike shoes that she calls her “school bus shoes” because they look like the kind of shoes the big kids wear on their first day of school.  Her butterfly coat is her favorite coat, but I can talk her into her warmer coat on a cold day most of the time.  The other day she said “this coat keep me warm, that coat keep me cold.” She loves to help me bake.  Her current favorite movie is A Charlie Brown Christmas and she loves to play on starfall.com on the computer.  She also likes to read books.