Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm thankful for these two turkey's

Cheerios

I love Cheerios.  I’ve mentioned before that Cheerios are my comfort food.  In fact, I usually have a box next to my bed so that I can have a little snack before I go to sleep.  Nothing makes me feel better than a handful of dry Cheerios, or a nice bowl of Cheerios with fresh, cold milk.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.  And I’m adamant that the plain ones are the best.  As a kid I remember my mom trying to trick me by buying the generic Cheerios and putting them in the Cheerios box.  I knew the difference and asked her what the deal was.  We never had fake Cheerios in our house again.  Even when I was at my most broke (if that makes sense) I would splurge on REAL Cheerios.

Ella has inherited my love of plain Cheerios.  She eats them almost every morning for breakfast, she often has a bowl as a snack, and sometimes she’ll even eat them for dinner.  The girl loves her Cheerios.  And, like her mom, she prefers the plain ones.  I even bought the fruit kind onetime (like mini-Froot Loops) and she wouldn't touch them.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store where they had Cheerios on sale 2 boxes for $4.  This is a great price, so I went fully prepared to stock up.  Unfortunately, other moms got there before me and by the time I arrived the store was completely sold out of Cheerios.  Right next to the Cheerios were the generic brand, Toasty O’s, and they were on sale for $1.97.  I stared at the box for a solid 5 minutes trying to decide if Ella would eat them.  I even thought to myself, 'She had better eat all of these because I'm not touching those things.'  I'm an awesome mom like that.  In the end, I decided to take a shot and I bought the box of generic Cheerios.

This morning I offered Ella her standard breakfast.  She took one bite and knew that something was wrong.  From that point on she wouldn’t touch her cereal.  Finally I asked her to take a bite and she looked at me and said, “Mommy, these Cheerios are yucky.”

I buy a lot of generic food that tastes exactly the same as the name brand, but when it comes to Cheerios, Ella is proof that there is no substitution for the real thing.  I just hope I haven't tainted her love of Cheerios.

If anyone would like an almost full box of Toasty O's, let me know.

Sound Sleeper

In case you forgot, Ella didn’t sleep through the night until she was 3 years old.  I didn’t tell anyone when she started sleeping through the night because I didn’t want to jinx it.  The funny thing was that once she started sleeping through the night, it was like something triggered in her and she can now sleep anywhere.

Let me first explain the difference between Joe and myself and our sleeping habits.

Joe: One of 8 kids.  Always shared a room.  Slept on a bunk bed for much of his life.  Can sleep anywhere on anything with any amount of noise in the background (all of the Murray’s have this gift, and yes, it’s a gift).  Can drink an entire pot of coffee at 9pm and still be sound asleep by 10.  Joe moves all over the place when he sleeps and the covers are a complete disaster by morning.

Me: One of 2 kids, and my only sibling is a brother so we never shared a room.  Not only did I have my own room, I always had a double bed entirely to myself.  I need complete and utter silence and complete darkness.  It always takes me at least 1 night (usually 2) to adjust to sleeping in a new place, which means I spend my first night barely sleeping.  At night I lay down in one spot to go to sleep, and I wake up in the same position.  In fact, when I sleep in a bed alone it hardly looks like someone has slept in it.

Just for a few more added details, let me say that I didn’t sleep through the night until Joe and I had been married for over 4 months.  I went from having my own double bed to sharing a bed and it was a tough adjustment.  I also slept with earplugs in until Ella was born because I couldn’t sleep with Joe’s breathing/snoring/whatever noise he happened to make in the middle of the night.  I make our bed every morning, not because I necessarily want to, but because the covers are so messed up that I end up re-making the bed before we go to sleep anyway, so I figure we might as well have a nice looking bed all day.

Now to Ella.  The child didn’t sleep until she was 3, so I was convinced she was going to have my sleeping issues.  Well, it seems as though once she learned how enjoyable sleep is, something triggered in her head and now she can sleep anywhere.  She has totally adopted Joe’s sleeping habits.  Hotels don’t throw her off.  New beds don’t bother her.  Noise doesn’t make her budge.  She just sleeps.  And she sleeps A LOT!  Usually she’s in bed by 8:30 and I always have to go in and wake her up in the morning so that she gets to school on time.  If I let her she’d probably sleep until at least 9:30 without a problem.

Now that she has decided sleep is a good thing, she falls asleep in the oddest places.  So here are some pictures of Ella in her funny sleeping places, and these are just the times I’ve had a camera handy.

There you have it.  This child can sleep anywhere.  I love her!

Happy Halloween!

Needless to say, I’ve been a blog slacker lately.  I hope I can make up for it with these fabulous pictures of the cutest Stinkerella on the planet!  Here are just a few things we've been up to in the past couple of weeks.

Here is Ella showing off her new pumpkin dress that GiGi made.  She was especially excited about the orange hair.

We went to our church Fall Festival where Ella ate this entire cotton candy, an entire snow cone, 3 Twizzlers, several Sweet Tarts, and a hot dog bun (no dog).  I was just glad she at least ate one thing that wasn't completely made of sugar.

Ella helped daddy carve the pumpkin.  She did NOT want a scary pumpkin!  She made sure he was making a happy pumpkin.

And of course Ella went Trick-or-Treating.  She was so excited about the Cinderella wig.  Her only concern when she wears her Cinderella dress is that she doesn't have "yellow hair" just like Cinderella.  The wig solves that problem.  Of course she only wore it for 30 minutes, then came home and asked me to take it off and put a bow in her hair instead.

 

Ella was also VERY excited that I let her wear make-up.  She got to choose the color of eye shadow and lip gloss.

 

And here's a picture of Cinderella with Farmer Daddy.  Ella wants all of us to dress up for Halloween.  Daddy was a good sport.  Mommy wasn't such a good sport.  When she asked me what my costume was I told her I was just a mommy.  She didn't like that answer, so I told her, "I'm a tired mommy."  Whenever anyone would ask her what I dressed up as she told them, "A Tired Mommy."