Advice, anyone?

One morning before school last week Ella said, "You have a website. I want one, too. How do I make one?"

I asked Ella what her goal was.

"My own advice column. People email me with questions and I answer them," she responded without the slightest hint of superiority one might expect from someone with barely any life experience who plans to give out advice. Ella has the absurd confidence of the oldest 9-year-old I've ever met. 

I told her that it takes time and energy to build a website. Some people pay a lot of money to set up nice ones. Then remembered that I built one myself on Blogger and it was actually fairly easy, even for me. I was about to tell her that but by the time I put the cereal and milk on the table, Ella had already googled "how to start a website" and had set up ella22.simplesite.com.

"I'm going to call myself Miss Advice," she said.

With her own email account, she sent messages to everyone in her contact list, inviting them to check it out. Tanya posted a link to Miss Advice's website on her Facebook page.

After school that night, Ella logged on to check out her progress. She had 66 hits on the first day of her website's existence. To put this in perspective, I think The Dad Life has had a few days with hits totaling in the 40's, and I was thrilled. Of course, I've also been spending 2-3 hours a day working every angle I could think of (including using Tanya and her 8 million Facebook friends) to publicize my blog and increase traffic. Not that my writing is so fantastic, but I'm 38, have written a newspaper column since 2009, articles for a couple of different magazines, and have even received some complimentary emails over the years. I've written a novel, for Chrissakes.

Ella is 9 years old.

I have to admit, Ella's success bothered me initially. I was envious of how she took about five minutes to do something I'm still trying to figure out. I felt awful.

That night after dinner, we sat around the living room as Ella went about her business as a pint-sized version of Ann Landers. With my MacBook perched comfortably on her lap and Sophia looking on admiringly and quietly next to her older sister, Ella tapped out advice to all who sought her wisdom via the internet. Everything from summer fashion to getting rid of pet hair to parenting, Ella doled out sagacious and completely logical counsel better than I ever could have. The kid is good. Seriously, log on and ask her about anything. You might be amazed.

I watched her expression the whole time, and I was truly in awe. Pensive and positively sanguine, Ella read each question, sometimes aloud, sometimes not, before answering. She was confident yet relaxed in pondering each query as if the person were lying on a couch in front of her and paying $100 an hour.

Tanya was thrilled at Ella's new venture. And once I snapped out of my childishness, I could barely contain myself with a mixture of laughter, amazement, pride, love and admiration...tempered by just a tiny, harmless dose of envy.

Ella is smart and savvy and wise beyond her years. She's confident. She's in the moment. Most of all, she has no idea how amazing she really is at this point, or how much better she will surely get.

Maybe I should ask her for some advice.