Nearly Eleven

All through Willa's infancy and toddlerhood, I wondered where she came from. Of course, I gave birth to her, so I KNOW where she came from, but she was always so very much her own person. She was definitely built from a different blueprint than her sisters. I knew her eyes were shaped like Alan's and she loved to push buttons like Grandma Patty and she had a tender heart like mine, but it was such a unique combination that I often puzzled about who she is like. I think I could never get past her eyes, which looked just like the eyes looking out from pictures of her dad at that age.




These eyes, it turns out, needed new glasses in a bad way. We took her to a new eye doctor who dilated her eyes for the first time and explained to us how important it is to track eyes with as much myopia as hers. She loved having her eyes dilated and wanted to take pictures because she liked how freaky she looked with dinner plate pupils. When we went to choose new frames for her glasses we narrowed down to her favorite four and then she wanted her sisters' opinions. They came the next day and gave their blessing to a pair she had almost dismissed, at which point, they became her favorites as well. Then the twins found a frame Willa had refused to even try on the day before and pronounced them the coolest glasses EVER. Those are the ones she is getting. They are tortoise on the outside and lavender on the inside, and really, they are pretty cool. Her sisters are always right about that.




Willa is a reader. This is the corner of her room she rearranged and dedicated to reading. Within the last three or four months, she has read all but one of the books nominated for a William Allen White award for grades 3 through 8 this year because she wants to be an informed voter for the award. That's about twenty books! You only have to read one of them to vote, but she thought that wasn't enough. And she has good taste too. She recommends the best ones to me.




Willa pushes to go on daddy/daughter dates. Every year around Valentine's Day she steals my boyfriend and has him take her to dinner and a dance. This year it was an 80's theme. Alan grew his hair out for the occasion (the nurses at work loved it and told him not to cut it again) and went for a buttoned-up new wave look. As I helped her choose an outfit and turned Willa's hair into the 'do I wore in the 80's she started to look more and more like me. After her hair was curled and teased and she was wearing a tiny bit of makeup and one of my shirts, I couldn't get over how much she looked like me in the 1980's. It was something I had never considered before. With her near-sighted eyes and love of books furniture rearranging and wanting to date the same guy I like, maybe this girl is more like me than I thought.

Last night while the other kids were at church activities Willa and I went to Old Navy to get her a few things she needed. We found some cute outfits and she had me come to the dressing room with her. She wasn't sure she was going to let me in the dressing room to help her hang things up and give opinions on how each piece looked, because after all, she is almost eleven now and privacy is starting to be important. When I told her it was much more fun to be together, and also that I wasn't just going to stand outside the dressing room and wait, she relented and let me in. We found some things that fit her and she liked, which is always a tough combination, so we got them. As we were leaving she grinned at me as she was swinging the bag in one hand and my hand in the other. "That was fun!" she said. And you know what? I had to agree. It was the most fun I've had shopping in months. Fun is Willa's forte.