Choose Your Friends Carefully

I've decided that Mila's superpower is making friends with the people who can help her the most. I first noticed her mad skills a few weeks ago when we were picking Alexis up from her after-school program. A police officer stood just inside the doorway and Mila was all FRIEND! LET'S BE FRIENDS! With a smile and a glowing pair of blue eyes, she gifted herself with someone who will some day say, "I won't call your mother this time. Now go home."

Here's to hoping she makes it past first grade before she needs that particular friend.

An afternoon with the extended family cemented my belief that Mila knows who to befriend. We were barely out of the car before she found her grandpa and blessed him with all sorts of snuggles and cuddles and sweetness.

Keep in mind, this is the kid that is known as "The Piranha" at daycare. She has a sweet streak, sure. She put it on full display and perhaps exaggerated it a whole bunch that day.

She did it again with the just right cousins and uncles and such. When I look back at the list of people she cuddled that day, YOU GUYS SHE KNOWS. She knows whose dad is a police officer and whose dad is a lawyer and who will bail her out of jail and SHE KNOWS.

And then there was today's little spectacle. While Alexis was at dance class, Mila and I ran to the grocery store. Mila was full of whining and yelling and running as I tried to run in for just two things. She should have been wearing a t-shirt that said, "I am an unruly toddler. ROAR!" Or maybe she should have been beeping like a vehicle backing up. Either way, she was definitely in a mood that was best dealt with using much caution.

Until she saw the school principal.

Mila had never met the principal before today. I have no idea what made her think she should run across the produce department, stop two feet from her, and yell "HI!" while batting her over-sized eyes. I REALLY don't know why she thought she should follow her "HI!" with a very carefully selected word.

"Pretty!" She called the principal pretty. (Which she is, for the record.)

I don't know how she knows, but she knows. Which, it's all good. I suspect the kid is going to need all the friends in all the right places she can get.