Sugar High

Ben has never shown any signs of being affected by sugar. He can eat and eat and eat candy and drop right to sleep in bed 10 minutes later. Honestly, we've always been pretty big skeptics about kids getting "sugared up" or having a "sugar high" but never really said anything about it. With Maddie Mae, we are becoming believers.

During the church Halloween trunk-or-treat and lip sync Maddie (and every other kid) ate and ate and ate their candy. Finally, Brian had to pry the pumpkin packed with treats out of her hand for the last few performances of the lip sync. Her face was just covered in sweet, sticky yuck. It was disgusting but she was sure happy! When we got home about 8:00 we got the kids ready for bed and Ben went down about 8:30 with no problem, totally exhausted from all the fun. Maddie was a totally different story. We got her down in bed too but she wouldn't stay. She wandered in and out of our bedroom, back and forth from ours to hers, totally aimless. She couldn't focus at all and never, ever even acknowledged anything we said to her. She'd sit on the floor and stare blankly at the tv then walk into her room and turn around and come back. Finally, she did decide she was tired about 10:30 and climbed up in bed between us. She didn't sleep though. Her eyes were open so wide until at least 11:00 they looked glued open. I suppose that sugar can do weird things to kids after all.

For Halloween we did a much better job of monitoring the intake. Maddie totally got the hang of what she was doing from the start this year. She would go say "trick-n-treat" and knew just what to expect in return. After a while, she would just say it and then reach into to giver's bucket to grab stuff. She was super great at saying a really loud "thank you" to everyone. Once again, she wouldn't let go of her pumpkin. It eventually got too heavy for her to carry. Brian tried to take some of the candy out to lighten the load and she totally freaked out. She said to "put it back, daddy!" and wouldn't let him have the pumpkin. Brian figured that people thought Maddie was cuter than Ben because she got lots more candy than he did.

Ben had a blast doing "trick-n-treat" with Eli Miles, his older friend. The dads were always calling the older boys back and making them wait. Must have been pretty painful for them since it was them with Glori & Eliza (3 yrs), Maddie (2 yr) and the twins Ali and Sami (20 months). A good night was had by all, kids and parents alike.