Excess: A Story In 2 Parts

Today was Easter. It was a good day, filled with all the things you'd expect from Easter -- including, of course, chocolate.

Sam loves chocolate.

He's got a general sweet tooth, really, and he asks for an awful lot of treats. He gets maybe 2 a day (things like a gummy worm, or a chocolate egg), and truth be told, I think that's saved us a lot of grief; when it comes to things like his birthday cake, he nursed a single piece for three days. I think that because he's used to sweet things, he doesn't crave them. Consequently, he doesn't binge on them.

Normally. (Can you see where this is going?)

Part 1:

We figured that, seeing as he's getting older, we'd loosen up the chocolate chains a bit today. Sam ate accordingly. We tried to make sure that he balanced the crap eating with real-food eating, but he still had a bunch more chocolate than usual. It still didn't seem really excessive, though I will admit that I don't exactly know the normal tolerance for a 3-year-old.

I was wrong.

After the afternoon egg hunt -- spread happily over the three Compound houses -- Sam complained that he needed to go to the bathroom. Well, he was right about his belly being off... I swear, I'm starting to think that we go over to Ian and Nancy's house just so Sam can throw up. Needless to say, he felt much better after that. Also needless to say, he didn't get any more candy today.

Part 2:

Sam, as you may have understood, got a lot of chocolate. A lot. One thing that a lot of chocolate can do is throw off the balance of your system, making you sick. Another thing that a lot of chocolate can do is make you bounce around your dinner chair like some kind of giant Gummi Bear, possibly flailing your arms and yelling.

(That happened, by the way.)

Happily, we were eating outside on Ian and Nancy's deck, and Sam was feeling very biddable. So we did what any good parents would do with a hyper, willing child: we ran him. Run to the tree! we told him. Run and touch the downspout! we told him. Hop like a bunny! Go backwards on tippy-toes! Anything and everything we could think of we told him, and he did it. It was great; we had a post-dinner show, and he burned off most of the sugar high.

I'm pleased to report that he crashes like a timber falling in the woods. I expect him to wake up sometime tomorrow afternoon.