Deceptions

A long time ago, Jake's cousin Paul shared with us his favorite piece of parenting advice. He explained that when the ice cream truck drives through your neighborhood, you should get excited and dance around and announce that the "Music Truck" is in the neighborhood. Make no mention of ice cream whatsoever. This worked well with his first child, although I believe it has been less successful with the later ones.

We loved the idea, and definitely instituted it, as there are at least three different, competing ice cream trucks that regularly cruise our neighborhood in the summertime. Lucy loves dancing to the "Music Truck." Awesome. Recently, a friend and parent of three of Lucy's young friends told us that his three girls think that Lucy is really deprived. Whenever they complain about something awful their parents have done (like not allowing them to eat candy all the time), they say "well, at least you know what an ice cream truck is. Lucy doesn't even know that!" This is hilarious to me, and then sometimes (briefly) makes me feel guilty about the way we've warped her mind. What will happen when she figures it out? Hmmmmm....

This comes to mind at the moment -- rather after the ice cream truck season afterall -- because Lucy has eaten 5 popsicles today. I know, that sounds absolutely outrageous. But here's what her popsicles look like:



Yes, that is one of the new Popsicle "MIGHTY MINI" pops (with Slow Melt technology!*). The Mighty Minis are awesome. I have a large stockpile in our basement freezer because I fear they might be discontinued. I don't know what will happen if Lucy actually finds out what regular-sized popsicles look like. It might be rather like what happened the first time I met an actual full-sized ("standard") poodle, after thinking all my life that the toy poodle was the only size poodles came in. Scary.

Lucy loves them. She often gets to have three popsicles. This makes her very happy. Today she had five because she had a little accident where she ran her lip into my computer (the very computer on which I am typing this). There was a lot of blood and a distraught mom and Lucy, so I swiftly decided that the way to staunch the blood and calm the child was to administer a popsicle. Actually, she got two. Then, after dinner, she got 3 more, just for good measure.

And the next day....

Jake was getting Lucy out of the bathtub. She bumped her elbow. She cried and looked sad. Jake kissed it and said he thought it would be OK. Lucy announced, through (presumably feigned) tears:

"I think a popsicle would make it better."

Oh, the deceptions.

*"Slow Melt Technology" involves gelatin being added to the pops so they don't melt so fast.