The Sweetest Things

I may have mentioned before how I have a wicked sweet tooth. I may have also mentioned how I have passed that sweet tooth along to all three of my girls, Sonya probably getting the worst of it. It may have been all those milkshakes I drank when I was pregnant with her. Actually, that might make sense, because Lana LOVES peanut butter and I craved peanut butter and chocolate constantly when I was pregnant with her. Georgia loves blue cheese dressing, and it wasn't until I was pregnant with her that I found out I could indeed eat blue cheese, which I love, as long as it was made in this country. Had to be pasteurized and all that. Huh. There could be an interesting study here, but I digress...

Oh right! Sweets! Here's where I was. Sonya loves all kinds of sweets. I can get her to do anything, as long as she has a reward of some sort of treat at the end. I realized just how bad her sweet tooth was a few weeks ago when she brought home a book she made at school. It was called, The Very Hungry Kindergartner.

It was a really cute book. They had obviously used Eric Carle's, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, as template for creating their own story. Each page had a day of the week and what the Kindergartner, Sonya in this case, had eaten that day. Every day they ate one more of what they had eaten the day before. She had written the food at the top, and the amount she ate and then drew a picture below it, to represent the words.

I started to flip through Sonya's book and read it.

"On Sunday Sonya ate one lollipop. On Monday she ate two ice cream cones. On Tuesday she ate three pieces of blueberry pie."

I was starting to sense a pattern. Every day had a new sweet. Then I got to Thursday where she did eat some carrots, but that appeared to be the only healthy item. Then I asked her,

"Sonya, where did you get the ideas of what you were going to eat each day?" I asked

"Oh, my teacher wrote them down on the board for us to copy," was her reply.

"She wrote down nothing but sweets?" This couldn't be right. I knew Mrs. Lombardo and she had been an awesome teacher all year and, from all appearances, a healthy eater.

"No," she answered. "She had other things, like chicken, apples, celery..."

"But you chose to just write down treats?" I said.

"NO MOM!" She replied, annoyed with me. "I wrote down carrots! That's a healthy thing!"

"It's the only healthy thing you wrote down though," I pointed out. "The rest is all treats."

Then she just stared at me blankly and shrugged her shoulders.

Needless to say, I will be packing her lunch when she starts full day school next year. I just can't trust that she'll get past the chocolate milk and cookie on the school lunch if left to her own devices.