What a sweetie

Thing One is not much of a candy guy. Every Halloween since he could toddle to the neighbors', I just left the candy lying around in a bowl and he ate it at his leisure. Usually it was gone in time for Christmas. The Easter basket stayed full for days; he got cookies from St. Nicholas because he didn't eat the candy.

We, of course, chalked this up to our superior parenting skills and our virtuous lifestyle; the fact is, neither of us eats sweets much. I like baked goods better; Paul really has a near total absence of sweet tooth. So we figured that, candy never really being in the house, our little offspring never developed a taste for it. I am sure I have had a self congratulatory conversation with at least one of you about this at some time.

Then we met Thing Two. Thing Two is a chocolate fiend. Thing Two figured out before the age of three what to do if Mom says you can't have any candy. Ask Oma, that is, with as winsome a little smile as possible. Thing Two figured out very quickly that a particular flirtatiously winsome expression is most effective with Oma -- what he does not know is that when he does that, he looks so much like his Opa, it is almost as though a mask has fallen over his little face. This is impossible of course, because his Opa died when he was an infant. This is not impossible, of course, because his father does it, too. But Daan looks much more like his Opa than Paul does, even though it's the same expression.

And he doesn't just eat sweets, he wallows in them. He doesn't just want to eat them, he wants to revel in them. It's not consumption, it's celebration of sweets. Thing Two spends as much of his day as possible with ice cream, candy, chocolate, what have you, smeared from his eyebrows to his chin, grinning like a fiend all the way. How doe she get the chocolate part from one of those vanilla ice creams with the chocolate and nuts on top in his ear? How does it get behind his knees?

However, both of them it turns out enjoy gummy candy. Which I think is just gross and a step too far in the recycling of tires. (I just know that's where they get the sludge to make them from). Today they both made open faced sandwiches with faces made of of soft gummy hearts and cola bottles. Bleah. Douwe, demonstrating his grasp of quantity, has concluded that he gets five candies and Daan gets three (does this mean I get 38? No, it seems this means I get 11, so his grasp of quantity isn't perfect yet). Daan, demonstrating his failure to grasp quantity, still thinks this is fine. But is beginning to peer about suspiciously, so I doubt this will last much longer.

From my own childhood, I remember Boston Baked Beans and candy necklaces and Fun Dip and Pixy Stix. Pop Rocks and Now & Laters. Charleston Chew, which could pull your filliings out if you were not careful but turned out to be surprisingly manageable when frozen. Super Bubble gum and Sweet Tarts. Atomic Fireballs and Bazooka gum. (not together). Bottle caps and candy cigarettes (which they still have, here) and gum cigarettes which had powdered sugar in so if you blew on them, "smoke" came out. Necco wafers and Pez. Can you still get Lemonheads? Wax things with some kind of liquid inside, though I don't think I ever ate one, they looked awfully suspicious to me.

And for athletic events, we were encouraged to eat raw Jell-o. No swim meet was complete unless it was lightly dusted with a powder of Day-Glo sticky sugary goo. Our tongues were green and our fingers, too. But we were fortified against the great effort for the Team, so that was okay.

Where did that idea come from anyway?