Look at This

Photographic evidence of Ella's shoe addiction.

The only reason she isn't wearing that pair of black Nike flip-flops you see in the picture with her is because Aunt Becca brought her four pairs of plastic, dress-up deathtraps shoes. Otherwise, she basically greets Aunt Becca with, "Aunt Becca! Take off your flip-flops!" And then wears them until Becca wrestles them back from her. She especially loves the gold ones from Old Navy.

I've lost count of the number of times she has busted her boohonkus in these new shoes, but suffice it to say that somewhere around number 5, I stopped being concerned and just started laughing. She tells me that one pair is less slippery than the others, but I'll just have to let her believe that because it isn't true. The only safe place for her to walk in them is the carpet, but any girl knows that carpet doesn't make a good clomping noise.

Now that she has four pairs of her own high-heels, she makes me put mine on and clomp around the house with her (she usually just wears mine when she feels like clomping).

Luckily, these are classified as toys, thus they live in the toy box rather than in the already too-large jumble of shoes in the floor of her closet. Yes, she keeps her shoes just like her mother, probably because I'm the keeper of the closet.

Incidentally, my system of shoe organization is the number one reason Dave and I cannot share a closet ever again. He likes to keep his all neat and orderly, in matching pairs, lined up in rows, front to back. (What's wrong with him?) Me? I enjoy foraging on hands and knees, deep in the bottom of my dark closet for a matching shoe. It helps me remember the other shoes I haven't worn in a while.

And so, as it stands, EGR now has four pairs of high-heels, 10 pairs of flip-flops, 5 pairs of sandals, a pair of tennis shoes, a pair of boots, and a pair of Crocs. She might really have more shoes than me - but not more than Aunt Becca, whom I think she is striving to be like.