What the...???

It all started with the milk. We are trying to get Ella to take milk from a sippy cup, which is proving to be mighty difficult. To Ella, sippys are for juice, bottles are for milk. Period. At some point in her life, this will need to change, so we are introducing the concept in what I thought was a gentle manner.

This morning, I showed her the sippy, then the milk and told her I was getting her milk for her. She was not enthused. When I gave it to her, she acted completely offended, started whining, hitting and kicking the cup. So... I bribed her with The Wiggles. She loves them, but would not go within 5 feet of the dangerous milk-filled sippy and therefore, could not see the TV to watch her show. Scott decided just to feed her breakfast. It took some convincing that I did not have the sippy in my hand to coax her into the kitchen. I tried to put the sippy on her tray... she hit it away. Okay, fine. It sat on the table and I said I'd refill it with juice after breakfast, left the room, came back to Ella holding a juice filled sippy. She looked pointedly at me, held up her sippy and said, "Nananana, Mamama", which is Ella-ese for, "See Mom, juice goes in the cup". She was very serious about this. Score: Ella - 1, Mom and Dad - 0 with the lesson that for now, milk-filled sippy = kryptonite for Super Ella.

Onto breakfast. She has been in a habit of requesting her own food, and to an extent, we honor her requests, which are usually appropriate. Well, for the last few days, she will request everything in sight and eat none of it. We started putting and end to it last night, but this morning, it really cheesed her off. Then she put bananas in her hair, which required a wiping down with the wet washcloth. This round goes to Mom and Dad with no giving in to putting a pantry of food on the kid's tray and helping her sport a groovy post-banana mohawk.

Round 3. Getting dressed. I can hear all of you parents of toddlers moaning. You know this is ugly. I picked out a "new" outfit for Ella... nice and cool for a 90 degree day. She liked it and wanted to hold the shirt rather than wear it. At this point, I was still in my, "Oh no you don't" place and wrestled the shirt on her. This was met with that drooling, motorboat noise she does when really ticked and she turned into a heap which I transferred to the brand-new-as-of-that-moment time-out spot. She put on quite a show, I got into the shower and when I got out, Scott, Ella and Cammy were all gone. I think this one was a tie.

This was the first hour of the day. She has been sleeping very well for the past few days, so I guess that this is re-adjusting after vacation or a stage. Oh, how I hated when my parents would say I was in "a stage". Now I understand that the idea that certain behaviors are temporary may very well have been their only way to maintain sanity.

So, I am off to work and won't be back until Ella is in bed. At one point, I was pretty bummed about that.