ELLA

Ella has always seemed much older despite her small size. She's been potty trained for a year, she has talked clearly and in complete thoughts/sentences from 14 months but still I have always thought of her as my baby Ella. Lately, she has lost the 'baby' and is definitely just Ella. She loves being the oldest while Braden and Taylor are at school and is becoming quite the helper around the house. She loves to clean up the toys and often has to help Braden because he is struggling when it comes to cleaning up the toys. These pictures are from one day after we dropped the kids off at school she came upstairs with her dress and hair pretties and told me she wanted to take her picture. She decided how she wanted her hair and how she wanted to pose for the pictures. She looks so much older (but still tiny) to me. I just love my sweet little Ella!

And as long as this post is about Ella, I wanted to jot down a few things that I thought were cute.

At dinner Taylor was telling us how when she was 3 she would throw a fit. Ella chimes in and tells us when she is 3 she's going to throw up. Hopefully she'll do neither. ;)

Ella let out a huge sneeze and said, "Wow, that was a big bless you!"

Ella always wants to know what people's first names are. She has a really good memory. Taylor will ask who is picking her up from preschool and I'll say so and so's mom and Ella will correct me and say, "You mean _____" and she'll say the person's first name. She was asking me what Grandma McCune's first name. I said, "Morag." She said, "What?" and we repeated this back and forth a few times until she said, "I'll just call her Grandma."

Ella is also very curious to know what store all of our stuff comes from. In the beginning of this curiosity she would say, "Mom, is this from Target or Costco?" (I guess we shop there a little too much! Reminds me of when we bought the swing set from Costco and while we were setting it up Taylor says, "Thank you Costco!") But Ella knows and remembers where everything comes from. It's quite impressive. We were putting hair pretties in her hair and she said, "Mom, Grandma gave these to me for my birthday." Sure enough, she was right. This morning she picked out Lily's outfit and said, "Mom, we got this from the Old Lady." I started busting up and said, "You mean, Old Navy?" Again, she was right.