ELKHART — If you don’t notice right away that Brittany Cave and her daughter, Aliya Coquillard, look incredibly alike, Aliya would be happy to bring it to your attention

“Me and Mommy are twins!” The 7-year-old likes to announce to friends and family.

“When I was younger, everyone thought she was my sister,” Cave, 24, said of her daughter.

Though Cave has two other children — Madison, 6, and Trista, 4 — only Aliya inherited Cave’s red hair and splash of freckles.

Their similarities run deeper than looks, too. Cave said Aliya is a carbon-copy version of herself, from the dirty looks to the “tomboy” personality.

“She’s kind of bossy, and all she says is that she’s bossy because Mommy’s bossy and we’re twins,” Cave said.

Cave, who runs a day care out of her home, said she and Aliya get stopped in public fairly often by people commenting on their likeness.

“One time at Walmart, someone just stopped just to look at us and said, ‘I was just seeing if there were any differences!’” Cave recalled with a laugh. “Then she wanted to touch our hair. I said, ‘It doesn’t have powers! I’m not Rapunzel!’”

Cave said she doesn’t know what Mother’s Day plans are in store today, and that her husband is keeping it a secret.

“Usually, my husband takes the girls to pick me out something,” she said. “They each get to pick out something and usually then they’ll draw me a little card or paint me something.”

Cave and Aliya submitted their picture to The Elkhart Truth’s 2012 Mother-Child Look Alike Contest that spanned last week.

The mother-daughter duo scored 1,361 votes as of 5 p.m. on Friday, when the contest officially closed. Their votes edged out Orpha Herschberger and her daughters, Jeanie Herschberger and Joyce Yoder (who finished with 1,261 votes) to secure first-place honors.

Aliya said she saw her first grade teacher voting for her on etruth.com and that “everyone in the whole entire school voted” for her and her mom.

Originally, 52 mother-child pairs submitted their photos to the contest. The Elkhart Truth staff whittled down the list to the final eight and opened voting from Monday to Friday.