Anyway, so I posted this on Instagram with the caption, "She makes her own lunch. She also dresses herself head to toe including shoes, socks, and a ponytail. You know what? I'm just going to say it. Girls are smarter than boys. ;)" (I was kidding.)
And I was going to leave it at that, but then two different people mentioned to me how advanced she is, and I thought, I should blog this. I'm positive that when she's older, she will love to hear it. So this is not meant to be boastful at all. I am seriously just amazed by this child.
Looking back, it seems like all signs pointed to her being a teenager trapped in a child's body since the beginning. When she was born, she was wide awake and super alert taking in everything around her:
Then there was the attitude face she mastered at just 6 months old:
And the womanly hair she had from the start (1 year old):
I mean seriously. She already looked so old at 2 years old!:
And was already trying to make us laugh at every opportunity:
When Camila was born, people told me my boys would be able to help. HA!! No. They were not interested. But my two year old brought me diapers and wipes like a champ. She was a mini mommy.
I think the thing with Eliana is that she has been convinced that she's grown up since she was born.
This girl is SO full of personality, spunk, life, whatever you want to call it. She is a character. She cracks us up daily. Sometimes it's bad! She uses her skills of hilarity to get herself out of trouble. Dinner time (any meal time, really) is the worst time for the parent/Eliana relationship because she refuses to eat pretty much anything. She's the pickest eater we have. So at mealtimes is when she gets herself into trouble. We'll be sitting at dinner and we'll tell her to eat for the 1,000th time. She fights it and fights it, until the moment she realizes, "Uh oh...they're starting to get upset." At that point she starts pulling out all the stops to make us laugh. She makes faces, funny noises, says silly things, whatever it takes to get us to crack. And we fall for it. It's too hard not to.
One night, she was not doing a great job at accepting the fact that it was bedtime. She was trying to use her funny antics on me to get me to be fine with letting her stay up. I was sitting on her bed firmly telling her it was time for her to stay in bed, and she started to make funny faces to soften me up. I held strong and pointed at my face and said, "Do you see my sad face?" She looked at me for a second and then got a giant smile on her face and said, "Do you see my happy face?" And then started cracking up. This is her trick that works every time: If Mommy is mad, just laugh at what she's saying with your big giant belly laugh until it's contagious and she can't help but laugh with you. I'll sit by her bed and say, "Eliana, why are you getting up tonight? It's time for bed! Why aren't you being a good listener?" And she'll reach out and caress my face and say, "Mommy, why are you so beautiful? HAHAHAHAHA" and start cracking up like she's soooo clever because she just complimented mommy and made her annoyance dissipate. It is impossible not to smile. IMPOSSIBLE.
Marcelo says that the things she says scare him because she sounds like a 6 year old half the time. We walked into Bed Bath and Beyond this week and were standing by the candles and she very quietly and nonchalantly said to no one in particular, "This store smells GREAT." This may be mommy (and daddy) goggles, but we just looked at each other like, "Great? Really? She talks like an adult." When Marcelo gets home from work, he can count on her to fill him in on what he missed. Like so, "Daddy, today we were playing outside and Camila was crawling because she didn't want to be walking, so she was crawling and then she scraped her knees and she got an owie. She was bleeding but she didn't cry. I got the band-aids for Mommy." At which point she'll turn to me and say, "I was telling Daddy what happened to Camila." Having a conversation with her is no different than having a conversation with the boys. It's weird. Especially after raising two boys who were nothing like this. Sure, they were super smart and adorable and knew their ABCs, but did they dress themselves at this age? Like 40% of the time. Did they know how to put their socks and shoes on by themselves? No. Did they show any interest in making their own lunches? Uh, definitely not. Did they have the vocabulary she does? Nope. Did they know how to write letters? Um, pretty much the letter O. And she writes tons of letters! Like I said, she thinks she's all grown up.
I posted this on Instagram a couple of weeks ago with the caption, "Eliana needs her own show." This perfectly demonstrates her personality.
I can't express how grateful I am that I get to be her mom. I'm so grateful that Heavenly Father sent me 4 beautiful kids who are each special in their own way and who make it clear to me on a daily basis that we all come to earth with a built in personality!
