This past Wednesday we pulled ourselves together and set out for Ikea to buy some sundry items for our apartment. We discovered that they have really built up their children’s offerings, and happily chose a duvet cover and considered buying a cute armoire with oversized door pull and feet in bright colors. Then we spotted a hanging soft basket that we imagined would be a good place to store the proliferation of Chiara’s toys. But what color to choose? Her room is blue, should we choose pink? blue? green? I liked green. Luke liked blue. We held them up and asked Chiara, “Which color do you like Chiara?”

I don’t think Luke nor I were really expecting an answer. However, Chiara fixed each of us with her large brown eyes and seemed to be thinking. Then she looked at the two packages we held and pointed at the green!

I was so filled with love and pride for my daughter that I felt giddy. At 12 months, 3 weeks, she has grown so much. The fact that she could comprehend our question, even if it was just from our body language rather than our words, give it some consideration, and then make a choice–that is sophisticated and complicated thought-processing there, and I was so impressed.

So green it is. Although at the moment her bedroom isn’t ready enough for us to install her new hanging toy basket. But once we’re moved into our new digs comfortably, and have finished some minor but annoying renovations that we hadn’t expected to have to do, we’ll put that green basket up and hopefully, it is exactly what Chiara wanted.