Serena had chocolate for breakfast Christmas morning. We feed our children on an exclusive diet of chocolate kisses, coca-cola and rusty nails, so this morning wasn’t anything special.
Actually, of course, she sees candy pretty much only on holidays. Usually even then I try to curtail her consumption, but what would you do in the face of a toddler who opened the Christmas festivities by grabbing her stocking at the toe, flipping it upside down, and dancing with wild glee on her stack of candy for several minutes before carefully lining them all up and eating them one by one?
I thought so.
After eating her body weight in Hershey’s, we took her to my mother’s house where we encountered – no joke – another stocking full of candy with her name on it. This is the world she was born to rule, Serena felt. After she’d eaten her second fistful of kisses, my mom brought out a chocolate cake and a chocolate pie for dessert.
On the drive home, Serena was typically serene while her sister fussed. Then, about five minutes from home, she serenely vomited pure chocolate goo all over herself, her new jammies, our new car and (most horribly) her new Christmas dolls.
It turns out it is shockingly easy to wash chocolate vomit out of Disney Princess Barbie’s hair. Cinderella’s improbable bouffant ‘do even survived the bath. The glitter on her dress fared less well, and my tub is still sparkly as a result.
After a long happy bath and a grand mal tantrum over which towel would be used to dry the f***ing princesses, Serena adorably tucked them all into bed and then brought me her bedraggled copy of “Where the Wild Things Are.”
“Mommy read it?”
Yes, sweet thing, Mommy read it. She fell asleep before the end.
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