Glow sticks!
The peanut butter obsession has passed, for now…and this week it has been replaced by GLOW STICKS. I’m pretty sure the new obsession was fueled by several after-dark Halloween excursions and supplemented by my mother’s mail-in contributions. Every Halloween (shit, every freakin’ holiday!) my mom sends a care pack of assorted propaganda, including decorations-because she knows I would never be caught dead purchasing a tacky, plastic glow-in-the dark skeleton for myself-themed T-shirts(also would never purchase myself), candy, and GLOW STICKS. Once my DH showed the boy how to unlock the secrets of the GLOW STICK it was all over. My husband has been forced (in order to preserve his sanity) to master the tricks of glow stick use, like cracking them just so, waving them like a light saber, and keeping them in the freezer to extend the glow-life. Every night, Nicholas goes to sleep clutching this fiber optic glow-y thing-y (what in the hell is this thing, anyway?) that was sent to him by, you guessed it, my mom.Â
The upside to the glow sticks is that I can now locate my fast-moving toddler in the darkness, especially helpful at the campground after hours.
But now that I think of it…Nick does have some more history with glow sticks. Â At his friend Kenny’s first birthday party last May, he was playing with a glowing green bracelet. He managed to bite into it hard enough to break the plastic and get it all over his tongue. When he ran up to me, grunting and holding his mouth open wide, (to better show off the runny glow-goop seeping onto his tiny tongue) it was clear that he was both alarmed and extremely pleased with himself. The fact that I shrieked and ran him over to the sink to immediately start flushing him with water made him so happy I could almost feel his little heart burst with joy. Why does he love toeing the line between safety and danger? Why does he relish his mother going into hysterics over his antics? Where does he get his SICK SENSE OF HUMOR? Â Where, where where??? I can only imagine what would have happened the next day if he had pooped glowing-green…the kid would have been over the moon.
