The Candy Goblin

All of Gabi's Halloween loot went into a big purple bowl, which lives on top of the fridge. And every night Gabi is allowed to have one piece. Until last night. Now there is no more candy, and the purple bowl has been returned to the pantry. And there was quite a bit of melodrama involved.

Last night, I caught Gabi hiding in the pantry eating candy. She had climbed up on the counter, gotten a handful of candy, and ran into the pantry to eat it in secret.

Me, from the living room: Gabi! Whatchya doing?

Gabi: Nothing, mom! I'm not doing ANYTHING!

Uh oh. Not only does that statement send up huge warning flares, I could tell she had a lot of something in her mouth.

As soon as I turned the corner into the pantry, Gabi jumped two feet in the air and then frantically tried to hide something on the shelf. Busted! We had a very serious talk about disobedience and lying and health.

When this happened a second time, not even an hour later, I angrily declared an end to all candy in the house. I marched straight to the fridge, with a screaming Gabi running behind me, and dumped all the remaining candy into a plastic bag for Gilberto to take to work.

Gabi, much to my relief, was devastated. I wanted her to understand that disobeying me has consequences! Unpleasant ones! And by all the crying and body flinging, I'm pretty sure I made my point.

After Gabi had been released from her time out and was once again busy lining up her every single one of her toys in a line across the living room floor, I hid the plastic bag of candy in our desk. It's one thing to take it away from Gabi, an entirely different thing to deprive Gilberto and myself of all that Halloween candy goodness.

The ants sure did appreciate Gabi's deviation from the good side, though. They were all about those candy wrappers that I didn't know had been stashed throughout the pantry.