Too Much of a Good Thing

I have to ban soda.

I don’t buy soda myself. My in-laws, the kids’ grandparents, buy soda. They used to get diet, and then my MIL decided that diet was worse for you than sugary soda, so she started getting the regular kind.

(I think the dentist would beg to differ.)

Anyway, soda (and ice cream, also a big item there) are occasional treats for my kids.

The other day Eldest took a can of root beer home with her without my knowledge.

Last night, at 11 pm, I got a notice on my phone that Eldest had played her turn in Draw Something. “Go see if she’s up!” I said to Cadillac. She had just been up to use the bathroom, and lately she’s been staying up too late, reading or just staying up.

He told her to go straight to sleep and to quit playing Draw Something on her iPod.

This morning, she was feeling ill, sick to her stomach. But then she said she felt better and went to school.

I was concerned until she confessed to her dad, en route, that last night she was really thirsty. “She thought she’d get yelled at if she left her room again, and she had no water in her room, so in her great wisdom she chugged the can of root beer before she went to sleep,” Cadillac reported.

Ah, yes. So good for the teeth, that!

No more soda.

My kids seem to require military-like regulation. It seems like if we let them have a little bit of a treat, they get really piggy about it. Same thing happened with Cracker Jacks. We bought small bags for them to take to school. After school, Son was hiding them in his shirt to eat them out of our sight. Let them play one video game, they have to play it for a hundred hours and get cranky.

So it’s back to the totalitarian no-junk regime.