It was Six’s birthday (which means I’ll have to call him Seven hereinafter). And with all of the tree nut, peanut, dairy, gluten and soy allergies, it seems the only thing a parent may send to school is pure cane sugar with some hydrogenated oil and red dye Number whatever.

Despite my aversion to this selection, I didn’t want Seven’s birthday to go by without an in-school moment of celebration. So after confirming with an assistant teacher, we sent him to school on Monday with snack packs of Nibs and a bag of lollipops. Something in every food group color.

When he arrived at home that day, Seven had an impressive story to share about offering two lollipops to a classmate instead of a lollipop + nibs, because Seven wanted to be sure that Nine would get a pack of nibs. I thought it was sweet Seven was concerned for Nine, sweet that the classmate agreed to give up his nibs and sweet that Seven rewarded said classmate with another lollipop. Sweet all around, you see.

So when I noticed the bag of lollipops in his backpack that evening and noted that there were some remaining – I did not check to see how many there were and did not remove the bag of pops from the backpack. I think, I was sort of curious to see what Seven would do with the remaining inventory. [Read more...]