I just want to eat cookies for a little while

Last week I went to get a few things at the grocery store with the kids. As we entered the store there was a massive display of cookies, 2/$4. Jack saw them and his face lit up, “Mama! We have to get those!”  Normally I disregard such requests, but this time I thought, what the hell. 2/$4, a small price to pay to fill a 3-year-old’s heart with joy and make his day.

We chose the Pirate cookies, which in case you don’t know are peanut butter oatmeal sandwich cookies, and classic chocolate chip. Jack was very excited, we rarely buy cookies that aren’t whole grain Fig Newtons. He was so excited in fact that he held the package of chocolate chip cookies close to his chest as we shopped and talked of how he would be eating them later.

We had a few more errands to run and by the time we got home it was 1:00, we were due for lunch. “What would you like for lunch Jackie?” His response, “Um, I don’t need lunch. I just want to eat cookies for a little while.” Very matter of factly. This boy is SO his father’s son when it comes to sweets.

Cookies for lunch was not an option so I gave him some pasta and told him that if he ate it all I would give him 2 cookies. Well. I’ve never seen that boy shovel food into his face with such fervour before. It took him, like, 90 seconds to eat his lunch. I was impressed by his passion. He was awarded 2 cookies as promised.

Happy is a little boy munching on cookies.

A few days later Marc and I broke out the cookies after putting the kids to bed. Now, little baby Hannah is a VERY light sleeper. Cookie packages are very LOUD when you are trying to be as quiet as possible. So rather than make a ton of noise, Marc did not return the cookies to their original packaging, instead, he put them in a tupperware container and put them in the kitchen.

At 6:00 in the morning Hannah woke up and I went to the living room to nurse her on the couch. I fell asleep and woke up at 7:00 to find my boy weeping before me. Deeply concerned as to why my son was so sad I asked, “Jackie, what’s wrong sweetheart?” He pointed to the empty cookie packages on the coffee table and said, “Mama, they’re empty.” Broke. My. Heart. What a sensitive little boy I have.

I explained to him that we had put the cookies away in a container in the kitchen and assured him that they were not all gone.  Just yet. He wandered off to the kitchen and I sort of half fell asleep again. I awoke moments later to my son calling out to me from the kitchen, “Mama! Mama! I don’t see them Mama!”

So I got up off the couch, with a sleeping Hannah in my arms, went to the kitchen, got the container, opened it up and showed Jack the cookies inside. Relieved, he uttered a simple, “Oh.”

Crisis averted. “Now, what would you like for breakfast?” I asked in my uber patient mother tone. “Um… Cookies.”

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