Halloween Aftermath

Gabrielle just walked up to me and earnestly explained how very, very important it is that she have candy, "in her mouf." Also cake and applesauce.

In previous years I have doled out the Halloween candy, feeling like quite the responsible mother, a piece here, a piece there, never more than two or three pieces a day. Of course, what happened is that last year the girls started assuming there was some sort of universal human right, especially pertaining to small immature females in our family, to a daily candy dose. When we ran out of candy (I threw it out - they had so much that we were into December when I did this), there was a huge outcry and great indignation that I was being so mean as to not provide them with candy on demand.

So. This year I decided to let them just pig out. And you know what? They still have candy! They've been eating much more slowly than I would have thought.

Don't get me wrong - it's not like they're exercising restraint here. In fact, Wednesday, I took the candy away about mid-morning because I was so grossed out by the monster amounts of sugar they were shoving in their little mouths. They were surprising complacent about it; there were a few protests, but then they seemed to forget about it for the rest of the day and the next day, too. They didn't start asking for their candy again until Friday morning, when I gave them the buckets back.

Since then, there's been no gorging involved. They'll sit down and eat five or six pieces, and then walk away from it for several hours. Of course, that's been enough to keep them fairly hyped up. They have taken to running "races" around and around the house. I love it, because, combined with the time change, they're crashing at bedtime. I haven't had this easy a time getting them to bed in months. In fact, since before Daylight Savings started. Hmm, maybe it's the time change and not the candy, after all.

Of course, falling asleep quickly doesn't mean sleeping through the night, but that's a post for another day.