We love to talk about how our kids are just like us, a combination of our best and worst traits.

It starts at birth.

“She looks just like you!” –  “She looks just like John!”

Those comments always made me inwardly laugh.

Ivy didn’t look like John or I, she looked like a startled monkey, and even on our worst days of sleep deprived new parents I don’t think we sunk that low.

Then as personality surfaces we move from looks to acts.

Ivy:  She’s stubborn like me, outgoing like John, she stays up too late reading books like me, and she talks non-stop like John.

But we are all wrong.

Ivy is, and always has been, Ivy.

She may share the trait of contrariness with me, and she may have Johns tendency to preform for an audience.  The combination could result in her dancing opposite of everyone else at her first ballet recital with a grin on her face and a smile for the audience, but our little, pink, tutu clad, ballerina is all Ivy.

She always has been, and I’m certain she always will be.

After all neither John or I have ever been into pink!