The Art of M&M's

During some point in this past week-end house cleaning extravaganza, I found it necessary to encourage (ok bribe) Lucas and Eli to keep moving.

In a fit of cleaning fume induced dementia, I gave them snacks of M & M's and Diet Coke. We were out of everything else... no root beer, sprite, juice....milk was not going to cut it and they'd inhaled all the fruit the day before. I cracked under the pressure ok?

The first sign that I was entering the vortex of no return was when the boys are sitting at the table counting how many M&M's they each have....11 for Lucas, 12 for Eli...oops! Then I sat there and watched Lucas consume his treat as a normal, starving (because that's what I'd been hearing for 20 minutes) boy....he wolfed. I thought, again from the vortex, great we can get back to the chores.....and then I tuned into Eli.

Eli does nothing without complete and surprising results. Apparently M&M's fall into a category of their own. First he counted them, then he sorted them by color, then he subdivided them into the number of pieces for each color, then he equalized the colors by eating the offending extra pieces....did I mention this entire event was done while simultaneously needling Lucas that he indeed had one more M&M then him.

I give credit to Lucas, he didn't rise to the bait. He simply looked down his nose at Eli and said, "So what I ate my candy, you are still counting it." And so the vortex entered the next level.