Weapons of Honey Nut Choice

Even as she grumbled her way awake several times a night for months on end, I had confidence that it would all work itself out. Mila is my sleeper. I knew from the day that she was born that she wouldn't be the challenging combination of early bird and night owl that Alexis happens to be.

I was right. THANK GOODNESS.

Mila is definitely my sleeper. She asks to go to bed every night and she fights waking up like it's the worst thing in the world. Which it is. She and I agree so completely on the waking up thing that we often growl at each other all through the morning.

Mornings really are stupid.

Because Mila is my sleeper, she has been staying in her bed all through the night more often than not lately. She's by no means perfect, but I'll take 3 to 4 nights per week of perfect because Alexis didn't unlock that achievement until ... hold on, I'm still waiting for it. Maybe she will get there before she gets her drivers license? Maybe?

Even when Mila has a bad night, it's not a usually a terrible night. She will wake up before midnight, I'll take her back to bed with me, and then she won't make another peep for the rest of the night. It's all good.

But when Mila has a really bad night, she has a REALLY bad night.

Two nights ago Mila woke up long before midnight complaining that she needed cereal. She hadn't done a great job of eating dinner, so it wasn't a total surprise that she woke up hungry. So, fine. Cereal.

Except she didn't like the cereal I grabbed for her. We fought about it for a few minutes before she finally just said she wanted Cheerios. Which, of course, we didn't have. There was screaming and crying and when I was done with all of that, I did everything to get Mila back to sleep.

It lasted an hour or so. We then repeated the call for food but not THAT food and what do you mean I didn't run to the grocery store to buy Cheerios? WHY NOT?

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Mila woke up a bunch of times all through the night, each time demanding Cheerios and each time I shrugged and offered her 17 things that were not Cheerios. She refused them all, so I put her back to bed, and blah, blah, blah.

It was a very bad night.

When morning rolled around, Alexis gave her little Gremlin sister cereal for breakfast. It was refused, of course. CHEERIOS, PEOPLE. THAT IS THE ONLY ACCEPTABLE THING.

I assumed the Cheerios obsession would be a one day thing. That's how these sort of battles usually work. Mila gets fixated on something, but then a day later is fixated on something else. Thus, I didn't bother to buy any Cheerios.

Of course she repeated the middle-of-the-night fiasco the next night. She still wanted Cheerios.

I'm not dumb enough to let it go to a third night. I went and bought a box. I figured she would move on to wanting something else, but at least there would be Cheerios in case I was wrong.

I wasn't wrong.

Not only did Mila no longer want Cheerios once they were in the house, when I showed her the box, she grabbed it out of my hand and threw it at my head.

Cheerios hurt, you guys. Remind me again why I have them in my house?