Cram holes

After each candy holiday, my parents always had an attitude of "When it's gone, it's gone."  At least that's how I remember it.  The days following Halloween, for instance, it was up to me to decide how much of my candy I would cram into my cram hole.  It worked because I kept a conservative regimen of candy intake to ensure that I'd still have resources at least until Christmas Eve.

My children did not inherit my calm and calculating attitude toward holiday candy.  They would prefer to cram it all in their respective cram holes immediately and with great force.  Perhaps it's their age.  But as it stands, all I think about when they get a basket of candy is that if I'm not careful, I'll spend my evening cleaning up crib vomit.

So we regulate their candy intake like a couple of high-strung helicopter parents.  This evening after they each put forth utterly pitiful attempts to finish their tacos (come on: tacos!), they insisted it was time for me to get their Easter baskets down from the mantel, where I had so oppressively placed them earlier.

"DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADDYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!" they said.

I told them they could each have one piece.  When toddlers become teenagers and talk about sticking it to the man, they mean people like me.  I'm the man.

Of course, then Lyla's "piece" became an entire box of animal crackers, and Rowan's "piece" became an entire bag of fruit snacks, but you can't regulate everything.  And look at them there all nice and polite with each other, like two hyenas stuffed with fresh wildebeest.