The Breakfast of Champions

So I woke up this morning, and thought "that's odd, usually I wake up because my kids wake me up. I wonder why I don't hear either of them." I get out of bed, go to the boys' room, and there's my younger son sitting in his crib, content as can be, just hangin' out. No sign of his older brother.

So I pick up #2 and bring him to my wife, still in bed, and go off to track down #1. Now you have to realize that #1 long ago figured out how to drag the chairs in the kitchen to wherever he needs to go. He's done that this morning, pulling it to the counter next to the stove. He pulled it there because he knows his parents, in a desparate gambit, have "hid" the box of cookies in the cabinets above the stove, the highest cabinets in the kitchen.

Some of you may know where I'm going with this.

So kidd-o has, indeed, procured said box. The cookies are a health-food version of Oreos from Trader Joe's. He took ten of the cookies, twisted them open, scraped the gooey, chocolately inside out, and abandoned the hard edges.

Ten.

After that, he wasn't the least bit interested in eating anything of substance, so that was the extent of his breakfast. Oh, and since the wife was still in bed at that time, I got to clean the sticky mess off little fingers, red smiling cheeks, and countertop.

There's an epilogue to this story. And not just the epilogue that involved kidd-o bouncing off the walls all day while I was at work. When I got home, kidd-o insisted I sit down with him and watch a movie. Maybe twenty minutes into it, I realize he's crying. So I pick him up and hug him, and pat him on the back, and tell him it will be okay. I didn't think the movie was very disturbing, so the reaction was a little ... oh wait, oh crap, he just threw up all over me. And all over the bedspread. And all over the carpet on the frantic trip to the bathroom. And all over the floormat in the bathroom on the way too the toilet. Not to mention all over my and his clothes. Almost everywhere, in fact, except for in the toilet itself.

So in retrospect, cleaning up the cookie mess wasn't really all that bad, now was it?