Chocoholics Anonymous, Here We Come!

You may remember an incident that happened a couple of months ago in which I caught Zachary in the act of filching hot fudge from the bottle with his finger. If only it was an isolated incident! Now we have TWO children who have been caught countless times consuming chocolate conspicuously from containers. Perhaps this pattern is beginning to pose a problem? (Aaaaaaagh! I know... Enough with the alliteration already!)

So, last week, I found Zachary seated at the kitchen table with one of his squiggly straws inserted into the hot fudge container, and he was just merrily sucking away like...like perhaps this was premeditated! Aside from his ingeniousness to use the straw on his second attempt, having previously learned his lesson the hard way while trying his original method of manual extraction, a squiggly straw wasn't exactly the most brilliant choice of tools. I didn't think to tell him that using a squiggly straw to suck hot fudge from the container was certainly doing the deed in a roundabout way. Personally, I would have opted for just a plain ol' straight straw, or I might have just skipped the straw altogether, but that's just me and I'm NOT the one here with a problem. He seemed to have been somewhat successful, as I do remember his face bearing plenty of hard evidence, but the fudge had only filled the straw halfway. I guess I saved him from several more minutes of some serious sucking!

This week, on Wednesday, the kids and I spent the afternoon swimming with Grandma at her neighborhood pool. Afterwards, we went back to the house and enjoyed some frozen yogurt. Then, she and I ventured back into the living room to visit some more. As I recall, Zachary was playing nearby while Ashley disappeared and later emerged as such:



The Hershey's syrup had been left on the counter, and leave it to Ashley to get her hands on that! After allowing her ample opportunity to ingest it for awhile longer while I snapped a few shots for the sake of sharing, I retrieved the bottle from her and set it aside and, apparently, forgot all about it. I didn't even realize it had been forgotten until the next day when my mom told me that my dad had found the bottle EMPTY in the other room and had asked about it. Suddenly, Mom solved the problem that had been puzzling me since the night before: Why was Zachary awake until ONE A.M.??? Now we know: Caffeine consumption from the chocolate syrup, of course!