the ELLA echo

the cheese scans alone

big props to my sister juliana for inspiring the title to this post. we had a family shopping excursion which included a trip to the new and ever-so-lovely kroger grocery store in hendersonville. by the time we got to this store, ella really was past her nap time but she was having so much fun that we decided we could push it just a bit. which worked fine until we got to the dairy section, at which point she HAD to have something to play with. she got a brick of cheese. which she gnawed on gleefully, and waved it at passing shoppers as we made our way to the check-out. scanning was relatively painless, and she continued to gnaw on it the entire way home.

now for a minor rant: ordinary shopping carts must have been designed by someone who never actually pushed a child in them. kids don't want to sit in the back, facing their moms. they want to face front, where they can see the action. (kohl's department store is on the right track with their carts, but the kid seat is too low, all they can see is the bottom of display cabinets). ella no longer sits--she surfs.

this week in ella news

food:

french fries!!! she LOOOOOOOOOOOOVES them. while we were out running errands, i stopped at long john silvers, i pulled into the parking lot of the shopping center and ate in the car. she kept looking at me and licking her lips, so i gave her a french fry. she took one bite, then she got the confused look on her face she always gets when she tastes something new. but by the end of that bite, she was sure--she loved them and she wanted MORE. i think she ate probably what amounts to a 1/3 of a cup of french fries that day.

yogurt: she loves this too, and fights to get the spoon away from me. yogurt meals require three spoons, one for each of her hands and one for me. she drops one spoon and takes the one i'm holding (the one with the bite on it), and i take the dropped spoon for the next bite. she will eat almost 3 tablespoons of yogart in a sitting. she also found out that dogs love yogurt too, they will happily lick her hands clean when she is done.

she took two TINY bites of roast pork--and didn't care for it, she left the next bite on the tray in favor of some avocado.

scan-tasia

the first time i had to hold ella over the scanner at the checkout (lettuce), i thought it was so funny that i almost dropped her from laughing. the next time (scan artist), i thought it was because i gave her the toy to play with before we got to the checkout. but now, i've decided she likes being part of the checkout process: today at target, she wanted the tube of aquaphor, which is understandable because i let her hold the aquaphor tube when i change her diapers, but she wouldn't give it up at the checkout lane, so a-scanning she went. this time, SHE laughed so hard that i almost dropped her.

i see my future already: ella will be the child who initiates all her classmates into the joys of xeroxing her popo.

scan artist

second verse, same as the first: i took ella with me to target, and i saw a small bead maze similar to this one on clearance so i picked up one for her. i put it in her lap to play with while i finished shopping. when we got to the checkout lane, she would NOT let go of it, i had to hold her over the conveyer belt so the checkout girl could scan it.

she held it all the way home too, in her lap in the car seat. luckily, it didn't pull apart and she didn't get any beads in her mouth. :)

lettuce

so i drove 45 minutes away to go to the publix in hendersonville which was TOTALLY worth the trip but it put us in the checkout lane smack in the middle of ella's nap time. the only thing that would make her happy was a bag of lettuce. i had to hold her over the scanner to pay for it because she wouldn't let go. we were coming home on the freeway and just as i hit 60mph she managed to pull the bag open and lettuce went flying everywhere. she was grabbing pieces and stuffing them in her mouth as fast as she could, and i was driving one-handedly and pulling pieces out of her mouth as fast as i could, which was hard because i was laughing hysterically. i couldn't pull over because I-65 is under construction and they don't have a shoulder, just those stupid concrete barricades. i got this picture just seconds before the bag exploded.