Today was my second son’s birthday – he turned 9.  He started the celebrations by having a sleepover at my inlaws (usually just done in the summer) several days ago, and came home the next morning with a bag of 90 pieces of bubble gum that they bought – just for him, he hastened to let me know.  What is it that makes a grandparent think that this would be a good idea??  It must be some hormonal shift that takes place when they become grandparents that overrides the logical and responsible part of the brain.   But ds has been very generous about sharing his windfall with his siblings.

So tonight my 7 yo dd decided to, as her now 9 yo brother informed me,  act like Violet Beauregard (I’m sure I spelled that wrong).   Violet is an obnoxious character in Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who chews gum nonstop and puts her gum behind her ear each night when she goes to sleep, then wakes up in the morning and begins chewing the same piece again.  Lovely, hmm?

It seems when I sent this dd to brush her teeth, she decided to stick it behind her ear to keep it safe.  This wasn’t the greatest idea, since she has hair that goes almost to her waist and it was loosely cascading around her shoulders.  You can guess what the next thing someone came to run to tell me about was, right?  Yep.  It was stuck in her hair.  (If you’ve been reading my blog a while, you may remember that this same child managed to entangle lots of homemade Goop in her hair a year ago.)

The great thing about being a more experienced parent is that you’ve seen so many things that they don’t phase you so much.  So when I was notified about this, I just said, ‘oh’, and turned my head away so they didn’t see me smile.  There are some things I would get upset about, but this kind of thing is just not a big deal.  In fact, I thought it was funny.  So I got out the scissors, snipped it out, offered it to her and told her she was welcome to continue chewing it.  She took one look at the big hairy clump and burst out laughing.

If you’re wondering what is happening with the rest of that huge bag of gum, I don’t know.  I still haven’t decided how to deal with it.  On the positive side, ds has learned to blow bubbles as big as his head today – that’s what comes from having so much opportunity to practice in just three days.  Amazing, isn’t it? 😆

Avivah