Confessions of a 2-Year-Old Sugar Junkie (and the parents who let her get that way)

"Canny?" "Wollypop?" "Gum?" "Gummy bears?"

These are the first edibles my 2-year-old Pigtail Sprite asked me for this morning after she woke up beaming with smiles in bed next to my mother, who is visiting from some 3, 200 miles across the country.

There my littlest sugar junkie stood frizzy-frazzy with snaggled bed head atop the cold, black slate kitchen floor, floating in her big brother's 4T Old Navy T-shirt, the one with the golden retriever holding a baseball in its mouth.

"I wan' CANNY!" she demanded while rubbing the sleep from her extra large sapphire eyes. "I nee' canny NOW, mommy!" she bellowed loud enough to wake the neighbor's watch dog rotweiler.

"Honey, you postitively can't have candy at this time of the morning," I said with as much sweetness as I could scrape up before my first cup of sugar with coffee and cream. (Okay. I admit that I ripped that off from a Beastie Boys' song that I can't recall the name of now. I'm a big fan. I saw them at Lollapa-LOSER in Rhode Island more than a decade ago. Eegads, I'm old!)
"Hows' about a bagel or a bowl of cereal, sweetie? Howbouta' waffle? A bowl of cereal? Toast? Anything but C-A-N-D-Y!"

"NO. I NO WANNA BREFFEST! I WANNA CANNY!"

"Look, sweet stuff, I'd like a walnut brownie sundae drowning in vanilla bean ice cream and bleeding hot fudge from beneath a rippling mountain range of whipped cream with a freakin' blaring red marachino cherry on top, but I'm gonna' settle for plain ole' buttered toast, little lady. Now go sit your pretty buns down at the table and wait for whatever I feel like bringing you. K?"

More later tonight (post sugar loaded Carvel ice cream cake and birthday party shenanigans) on how by my third child I thoroughly let myself slip on sweets boundaries.

It doesn't help that nearly every where we go, including both of her brothers' schools, older ladies are endeared with Pigtail Sprite and insist on spoiling her with chocolate, lollipops and all other sugary cavity catalysts.