The Sugar Situation

Will you look at this loot? This (slightly blurry) photo shows the massive pile of candy my son collected trick-or-treating. And that doesn’t even include the haul his baby brother brought in, or the candy we had left over. (We don’t get many trick-or-treaters at our house.)

Oh, how times have changed. It seems like just yesterday he was having his first taste of sugar at his first birthday party. And I was still watering down his juice and mixing plain yogurt with strawberry jam because I thought store-bought yogurt had too much sugar. When we took him trick-or-treating his first Halloween, he didn’t even know what he was collecting because he’d never had candy before, aside from a Dum-Dum or two.

Fast-forward to my second child. One of his first words was “cookie.” He screams for ice cream, hoots for juice, and spits out fruit if it’s not sweet enough. He instantly understood the point of trick-or-treating right out of the gate.

He would toddle adorably up to each door in his Tigger costume, hold out his plastic pumpkin, then turn around and demand that we unwrap each piece of candy immediately. I had no choice but to feed him M&M’s one by one as we made our way through the neighborhood or risk screams that would frighten the pants off even the scariest Halloween ghouls and goblins.

So now we have 10 lbs. of candy in the house and because I’m such a good mom and am concerned about my children’s oral hygiene and nutrition, I will do the only conscionable thing: eat it all myself.

With the kids, it’s pretty much out of sight, out of mind. (Though I need to do a better job of “out of sight.” They spotted the candy on top of the fridge first thing this morning and started screeching for it.)

Not so for the adults in the house. My husband has stronger will power than I do. As for me, I hear those mini Butterfingers calling me from two floors away. The Starbursts tempting me with their tangy goodness. The Junior Mints with their creamy, refreshingly minty center. The crunchy Whoppers and the chewy Laffy Taffy. And Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, you’re the worst of all. I am powerless against your seductive sweetness.

BTW, my son just totally busted me as I was writing this. I thought he’d gone upstairs to bed, but he came sneaking up behind me and caught me red-handed in the plastic pumpkin. I was forced to buy his silence with a Milk Dud.

For the sake of my teeth and waistline, maybe I’d better send the candy into work with my husband. At least the kinds I like. Then again, my preschooler’s pretty smart. Even he would know if he looked at his stash and found only a half-dozen boxes of Dots and Almond Joys that something didn’t add up.

READ O’ THE WEEK: According to this article, “The average trick or treater brings home a haul of 3,500 to 7,000 calories in their bag.” Yowza! Can you guess the best and worst kinds of candy, calorie-wise?

Boo on the Halloween PJs

Sometimes as a parent, you make mistakes. You let your kid drink Gatorade and he bounces off the walls for 2 hours. You let him have one last cup of milk at night and he wets the bed. Or you buy him spider pajamas for Halloween and then discover he’s deathly afraid of arachnids. And you make him wear the PJs anyway.

I can’t get a handle on the random fears my kids have. When Miles was a baby, he was terrified of:
- Old people wearing Santa hats
- Mean ladies in cartoons
- The vacuum cleaner and the blender
- Monsters

Then he got older and became afraid of:
- The dark
- The poster of tropical fish on his wall (He says it looks like it’s moving)
- Different foods touching (I really thought we’d dodged this bullet and I’d never have to buy one of those divided plates. WRONG!)

My second-born, Riley, is terrified of:
- The vacuum cleaner and the blender
- Bugs

(Not including the first 12 mos. of his life when he was afraid of keeping food down, sleeping through the night, and just about everyone but his mom. Especially old people.)

The bug thing started when he spotted a giant, hairy spider one of our neighbors had hung on their porch for Halloween. I admit, an enormous black, 8-legged, red-eyed spider waving in the breeze is enough to scare anyone. But Riley would begin whining and shaking whenever he was within a few YARDS of this thing.

Then at home, he would point to every speck on the floor (and in our house, there are lots) and say, “Bug!” Even if it was a leaf, an old raisin or a clump of dog hair. (Actually, a bug might be LESS gross.)

Too bad for him I’d already bought his Halloween PJs at Old Navy. Luckily, he doesn’t seem to mind those spiders too much. Miles got skeleton PJs that glow in the dark. How cool is that? And he thought so, too, at least until 4 a.m. the first night he wore them and he woke up glowing and ran into our room. “I’m scared of my jammies,” he said. And they’ve been stuffed in the back of the drawer ever since. Sigh.

Looks like I’m 0-for-0 on the Halloween PJs. So what random things are YOUR kids afraid of?

A Treat and a Trick

You know what’s fun? Watching your 2-year-old run around the neighborhood dressed like a skunk because this year, he’s finally old enough to understand the point of Halloween. By the third house, Miles had gotten the idea. He and his friends would tear up the walk and pound on each door and/or ring the doorbell repeatedly in their excitement to yell “Trick or treat!” and collect their loot. And the look on people’s faces when they opened their doors to find a 3-foot tall furry skunk… Hilarious!

You know what’s not fun at all? Watching your 2-year-old like a hawk for 9 hours straight and not leaving the house once because you’re potty training him. Why would I start this onerous task on Halloween, you might ask? Because four consecutive days when school was out and we had no obligations seemed like the perfect block of time to attempt it. Right.

So there I was on Friday morning, making a big deal about Miles’ new “big boy underpants” and how he was now going to go on the potty instead of in a diaper. And for a few hours, this worked. In fact, Miles went to the potty approximately every 18 minutes. And every time he’d leak out a few drops, I’d reward him with a small treat and lavish praise. I think the kid was playing me.

By 5 p.m., I was totally frazzled and had serious cabin fever. While Miles had peed more than a frat boy at a keg party, #2 was elusive. Screw this, I thought. It’s Halloween. So I threw a Pull-Up on him and we headed out to trick-or-treat.

The next day, Dad was on duty. Thank GOD. However, being a little less "vigilant" than I (though he might use a different word), C. did not hover over Miles every second of the day, looking for “warning signs.” In fact, C. cavalierly left Miles downstairs alone while he went off to change his clothes. Well, what do you think happened? Exactly. 9 a.m., and we were already down one clean pair of Cars underwear.

The next day, the accidents happened more frequently. Despite -– or perhaps, because of –- my repeated urgings for Miles to sit on the potty, he responded like most toddlers: by refusing. Not good. “Don’t push or punish” is the mantra of all the potty training literature I’ve crammed into my overtaxed mommy brain.

Then today, Monday, was the worst so far. In a bad mood because Dad’s back at work, there’s no school due to a mysterious “professional day,” and both Miles and I are suffering sugar hangovers from eating our weight in Halloween candy, I lost my patience. I swear, the kid PURPOSELY did a number (both #1 and #2, to be exact) in his pants mere minutes after a successful potty session. WTF?!? Not the way I prefer to start my day. And that was only the first of several accidents, none of which seemed to remotely concern him.

So we’re back to square one. Maybe I don’t have the patience or stamina for potty training. Maybe Miles just isn’t ready. Maybe everyone should just bite me and pass the Reese’s peanut butter cups.

NEWS O’ THE WEEK: Studies show mom bloggers, 78% of whom review products and services on their blogs, are fueling conversations about products and brands on the Internet. Who knew? Oh, right: all of us mom bloggers!