This is Ella

 

When my first grandchild turned one I wrote a blog post about her, Luna the Magnificent.  My second granddaughter is turning two today, and we are indeed honoured that she has spent both her birthdays with us. 

I met Ella Grace a few minutes after she was born.  She looked as though she could have stayed a little longer in her mother’s belly, a little scrawny, with loose skin like a young puppy.  But she soon grew fat and round on her mother’s creamy milk, and is now a solid, strong little two-year-old.  

And now two whole years have passed, and again this little soul is spending the summer with us, happy sunny days of beach-play and swimming, gardening and play-dough. 

Elsie has always looked at the world with a deep gaze, with sensitive, soulful brown eyes.  She seems thoughtful and dreamy, like her mother and her great-aunt Brenda.  She pores over books and loves music.  She has always been an “interpretive dancer” as her dad called her, when she was still just a couple of weeks’ old. 

Ella is my newest mermaid, with her soft hair and her inherited love of the ocean. 

Ella has her own sweet-voiced language, made up of familiar and some foreign-accented words (for some reason she seems to believe she has a French mother, as she pronounces Mama, “Maman”). 

Ella the delicious chuckler, Ella the beloved cousin/"sister" of Luna.

Ella the grand eater, our Viking at the dinner table, Ella the easy-going (until she decides to stand up for herself with a lion’s roar and a pushing out of the little defiant chest), Ella the singer of her own songs, Ella the giver of elephant-kisses.

Ella the enchanted fan of Peppa Pig, Tinkerbell, Postman Pat, (and even the horse races, watched avidly with Uncle Stuey), Ella, the giver and receiver of abundant cuddles, Ella, the delighted “jumper” in muddy puddles. 

Ella, the little girl who greets trees, woodlice and people with equal affection, Ella the lover of hats, Ella of the most expressive eyebrows since Charlie Chaplin.   Ella, blood of my blood.  Happy Birthday to Ella the Splendid!