The Best Cupcake EVER!

When we went to go see Santa the other day, Ella and my mom stopped off at the gift shop (while I waited in the Santa line) and they were selling cupcakes that Ella was immediately drawn too. My Mom said they sold them in all different colors and Ella specifically picked all RED for the 3 of us. These were the REDDEST cupcakes I have ever seen. As my husband said, it looked like melted crayon all over her face. And believe me, it was not easy to get off of her face. I had to wipe her down like 3 times and it still left a red stain on her mouth for the rest of the day.

She dug into this cupcake like nothing else. I could not stop taking pictures of her gooey little fingers, her Ronald McDonald clown face and her enthusiasm for eating it....as you can tell by all the pictures I have posted here.

She ate it the day after visiting Santa. All we did that day was hang around in our jammies at home, so you might see upcoming posts of her in the same jammies since all we did all day was play and take pictures. It was a fun day! :o)

P.S. Still loving my 50mm!!

Best Shot Monday

I went and bought Ella some undershirts the other day since it has turned horribly cold here in the last week or so. As we were getting dressed, Ella wanted to get her hair ready by combing it herself. I guess I always thought combing your hair the way it falls was an instinctual thing. :o) So we had a little lesson on how to actually comb her hair....just after I explained to her why she had to wear two shirts since this would be the first time she had an undershirt on.





When she got up to comb her hair, I felt like I had fallen in love all over again. Although she is always beautiful to me, in that moment I felt that I had never seen anything more beautiful in my entire life. The way she looked in the mirror and so caringly started to comb her hair made my little girl age almost 5-10 years. She looked like she was prettying herself up as she was dreaming about the cute boy she sits next to in homeroom class. It was almost like the angels were shining their bright rays down on mine and made her look so heavenly.

This is my best shot.



For more Best Shot Monday pics, head over to Tracey's.

A Morning With Santa

Christmas at my house when I was little was always really fun. My birthday is a few days before Christmas, and every year my parents would hire a Santa, have all of my cousins and family over and have a big holiday birthday party. One year, my parents told me that I said I could hear the reindeer land on the roof. Ah, the mind of a child. I can remember as I got older when I started to realize that Santa wasn't real was because he always seemed to have the same wrapping paper as my parents did. I think I tried to pushed that thought in the back of my mind as long as I could. As a parent now, I am very conscious of my wrapping paper. Although Ella is probably still too young to think of something like that (hopefully).

The other day, my Mom and I took Ella to the downtown Macy's to see the holiday display. This year was called "A Day in the Life of an Elf". Its a free exhibit that they have every year and then you get to see Santa at the end of the tour. It was a really cool display, smaller than I remember though, still big enough for the little ones. We were packed between so many people going through this display like a herd of cattle that I couldn't position myself to get a picture of her reactions. It was a bummer....but the most important thing was that she enjoyed it.




Santa was so wonderful. When his helper ushered my Mom, Ella and I through the curtain and around the corner to see him, he immediately opened up his arms and said,

"Oh Ella, I am so glad you are here. I was hoping you would come to see me today!"

My child grabbed and hugged him like he was a long lost uncle. She was so excited. So then I started snapping pictures....moving from one position to another, and then asked them to look at me and smile (unfortunately, that one came out blurry). Then the girl taking the pictures asked if she wanted me to take a picture or if I got what I needed. I said, "Thank you, I think I got enough of my own." :o)




Ella and her Amu


We ended the morning by having lunch at our favorite restaurant. Have I mentioned Ella is a butter fanatic? She loves butter. She is always so well behaved at this restaurant because she spoons all of the butter onto the pita bread herself....sometimes taking a spoonful in her mouth! I know! Puke!



After going through the display, waiting in line for almost an hour to see Santa and going out to lunch, you could see it in her eyes that she was down for the count. It was a wonderful morning though.

Theme Thursday - Togetherness

Although I dont have pictures of all of us together, we still had a very nice morning last weekend decorating the Christmas tree. I got the Sunday paper and looked through the ads, while Ella at breakfast and Daddy was still sleeping. It wasn't my intention to decorate the Christmas tree that morning, until I looked at the Target ad and saw boxes of ornaments for $2.00! What a steal. We have a fake tree that has lights on it, and last year we just set it up and put the few ornaments we had on it. We probably had a dozen or so that had Ella's name on them that we got for gifts. Since Ella was too young last year to really understand, I didn't spend the money on a ton of ornaments to cover the tree. The lights we beautiful enough for me. But this year was different. It was time we got into the Christmas spirit.

So Ella and I got dressed and took off to Target to buy some cheapo ornaments to decorate our tree. When we got home, I told her to go into my room and wake up her Daddy nicely then ask him if he could put the tree up for us so we could decorate. When she walked into the bedroom, Keith happen to open his eyes at that moment (he's not a morning person) which led Ella to believe he was already awake and she screams, "Daddy, Daddy, Can you please put up the Christmas tree for us?"

Keith was a little startled at the thought of doing work the second he woke up....But he was a trooper. He eventually got up, took a shower and started putting the tree up.


Ella's job was to put all of the hooks on the on the ornaments. She was thrilled that she had a job to do and kept telling us that it was "her job to get all of the work done".






While we were at Target, I let Ella pick out a special ornament. She chose this snowflake.




"Look Mommy! Two Ella's!"



For more Theme Thursday images, head over to Stacy's.

A New Addition, Duty x4 and An Early XMas Gift

Beware.....Long post and lots of poop.

I know....You saw the title of the post and thought something completely different. I wish it were so, but its not. The new addition to our family is a brilliant blueish-green Beta fish. As I mentioned in a previous post, we have been diaper free for almost 2 weeks now. Ella has been doing wonderful with going potty in the toilet. One of the biggest surprises is that she has not wet her bed yet either! *fingers crossed* that I did not just jinx it.

In any case, When ever Ella does a #2 in the toilet, besides her new Potty Board that she gets to put a special Tinkerbell sticker on, she gets to call her Amu (pronounced "Amoo", which is my mom) and Amu will bring her a present. Ella has told her that she would like a fish. A real fish. After the first time she got a present from Amu, which was just a sheet of stickers....you could tell that Ella expected a fish. After all, it's what they talked about would happen. But Keith and I said we didn't want a fish because we did not want to have to clean the bowl (me) and did not want her to have to watch the notoriously "non long livers" to die (Keith).

Never the less, Amu got a call from Ella yesterday for doing her duty in the toilet and she came over with a fish. Ella was beside herself. What is the name of our new fish? Sweetie Pie.


Ella could not keep her hands off of Sweetie Pie's cup for most of the day. We hadn't put her in her new home yet because we needed to let the water warm up before we packed her up and moved her. So there she sat (Sweetie Pie)....completely shell shocked with her new environment....tortured by these tiny fingers coming drastically close to her and the wind storm that came blowing through the top of the cup (via Ella trying to blow her a kiss).



We currently give Ella Miralax to get her duty out because she was blocked up for a while (which was seen by having an xray). So I should have known that after she did her huge duty in the toilet, called Amu and got her wonderful fish, that that was not the end of it. When I put her down for her nap that day, all hell broke loose. And when I say "all hell", I mean THREE more NON SOLID visits from the concentrated evil that came out of her butt within a ONE HOUR time period. That would be 3 pairs of underwear. 3 pairs of pants. 3 times on my newly mopped bathroom floor. 1 time up the sleeve of my sweatshirt (don't even ask). 1 duty filled bathroom tub. And 1 final shower. Only to be repeated one more time later that night when hubby came home. Guess Miralax works, but Mommy's job was done. I was SO done.


When she did it the first time, she told me,
"Its ok if I do it in my pants, Mommy"
I said,
"Yup, sometimes accidents happen. But you should really do it in the potty."

When she did it the second time, she told me again,
"Its ok if I do it in my pants, Mommy."
I said again,
"Accidents do happen, but we really need to work on doing it in the potty."

When she did it the third time (may I remind you it was within one hour), I screamed,
"This is not okay Ella! This is not okay! We do not poop in our pants! We go in the potty and that's it!"

Oops. Guess I lost it.


Ella greatly enjoyed the company of Sweetie Pie. She showed her how to drum and eventually started to color the tupperware she was drumming with. We usually don't let her ruin our household items, but since I was taking pictures of her, I figured no harm done.



Which brings me to my final subject of this very long post (for those of you who hung in there). I got my Christmas present early this year....A 50mm f1.8 lens. Christina was SO right. I love it, love it, love it. What I love about it most is that it lets in so much light and does crazy bokeh, which I got to see while I was taking shots of us putting up our Christmas tree. I am still trying to work on the right balance of light and manual focusing, so bear with me. But have I said I love it yet? :)





So it was a crazy, crazy day. Lulu was even a little scared to come around me after having to deal with duty x4, but she peeked her head in once to see what we were up to.


I love you with all my heart little Munchkin, but we really gotta work on the poopy thing.....

The Night's Sky and Light Painting

I heard on the news tonight that Venus and Jupiter were going to be visable in the sky tonight. God I wish I had a better zoom lens! But in any case, here they are in all their tiny glory through my lens. I realized that when Ella and Keith were looking up in the sky the other night to see the first stars of the evening, that this is what they were seeing.




On another note, Laura over at DolcePics did a cool light painting experiment with her Christmas tree. I must have sat for an hour playing around with my shutter speed and moving up and down, all around and in a heart motion to get a good pic. This was the best I could do with the hearts, but I was pretty excited about it. I'm telling ya, try it....You'll like it! ;) Check out Laura's shot!