Ode to Isla

The only pictures I've taken this week were in the span of about 90 seconds chatting with Isla on Saturday morning.  She was having a snack and wanted to make herself look pretty.  She grabbed two bows and glasses, because glasses make you look pretty.  I put one bow on each side of her hair and popped the glasses on and she just kept telling me how pretty she looked.  I agreed.  As you can see Isla's hair is starting to grow out a bit.  We may try to grow it long...certainly her bangs are growing out...not sure about long hair on her though.  She's so dainty that it might not work.

Each day I'm more amazed by this little girl.  She has started to show us what a smart little girl she is.  She knows how to spell and write her name, and can trace nearly all the letters in the alphabet and numbers up to 20.  I don't think she can do them from memory yet, but I think she's ahead of her sister Sawyer's writing at this point...and she's got good penmanship for a 3 year old.  But really Isla is about feelings.  She is still very much a lover - needing lots of hugs and cuddling.  She is always saying thanks to us for doing the littlest things for her.  Yes, it's good manners, but also she just generally is a grateful kid.  She also loves to imitate other people's feelings.  When we read books she does imitations of the characters - their facial expressions and their hand gestures.  There could be five people on a page and she would go through all of them.  She also gives us a million facial expressions a day herself.  I've captures a bunch of them here.

Isla loves to be outside.  I would say the same about Sawyer, but Isla to an even greater extent.  She would stay out there for hours if we'd let her...unfortunately this wasn't the winter for it.  We did get both girls out on Saturday for an hour and a half - riding bikes and scooters, using chalk, taking down Christmas lights...all that good stuff.

We took all three of the girls to the mall this weekend for a little last minute vacation shopping.  Isla is a lover of clothes and especially shoes.  She picked out a pair of navy mary janes with silver piping on them and all but insisted we buy them.  The girl doesn't get a ton of new clothes so I usually concede when she finds something like that.  She also got a new dress to match and a bathing suit.  Margot may be in that suit next summer - they told me it runs small at the store (it's a size 3) and I said no worries, she is smaller than most 3 yr olds.  Well let me tell you, this will fit her but probably not all summer.  For $10 it was so cute I had to buy it, knowing Margot would also use it, and probably one of her cousins after her.  I digress.  I am looking forward to her rocking some of her new clothes on vacation though.

Yesterday I took Sawyer and Isla downtown while Mark and Margot hung out at home together.  We went to Caroline's apartment for a bit - both girls really wanted to go hang out there, and remembered that she had a lot of steps to get up to her place.  We then walked to lunch and then made our way to the Chicago River to see it dyed green for Shamrock Day as Sawyer calls it...a holiday she is not enthralled with due to her dislike of the color green.  They both liked the river though, and especially running along the river walk and the paths back up to the street.  It was a pretty cold day so we didn't last outside too long before we headed in to some Michigan Ave stores to warm up.  It was a special day out so each got a little treat - Isla picked out a play tool set/tool box, and uses the same names that Handy Manny has for his.  It's actually been a favorite of all the girls, including Margot.  After dropping Caroline off at home, we headed home.  Isla fell asleep about 10 minutes before we got home - around 5 o'clock and while I tried to wake her up for dinner she wasn't having it.  Girl just asked to go to bed, so I put her in bed clothes on and all, and she clocked in a good 14 hours last night.  She did come into our bed around 2am and slept there the rest of the night but didn't get up for good till about 7:30.  Amazing.  She doesn't nap during the day and every now and then it just catches up with her and she has a night like that.

This last shot is Isla trying to pose the way that Sawyer does in every picture.  It just makes me laugh though as she looks pretty awkward.  She's a funny girl.