Genetic Downfall

As I have evidenced in writing many times, I have a voracious sweet tooth. Its something I come by honestly, from my own dear mother whose own policy has always been "Cookies aren't worth having if you can't have five." My mother would not let the buck stop with her on this one. My grandfather, her father, does not believe that any meal is complete without something sweet and no birthday is complete without a piece of angel food cake the size of his head.

Thanks to some additional lessons in self-control and healthy eating, neither my grandpa, mother nor I weigh as much as one might expect of people who could probably eat an entire day's worth of calories in candy, cookies, and perhaps a bit of ice cream.

In an effort to encourage my daughter to be a bit more like her father who has never refused a vegetable and can resist all sugar, with Little Debbie's Fudge Round being the only exception, I have tried to keep her diet pretty limited on the sugar intake. As a baby she was a good vegetable eater, and with a stick, I ran off any of those family members who thought it was cute to slip her bits of ice cream or cake. Of course my resolve weakened over time, but we're still careful to limit her sweets and sugary beverage intake. I should have known that none of these efforts would do a thing to stave off the cravings for sweets from a child who uttered "cookie" as one of her first 10 words

Today I knew my battle against all things sweet for Ella was over. When I turned my back for a second while she and I were making cookies to take to my sister tonight, she thrust one hand directly into the cookie dough and the other into the bowl of white sugar on the other side of her. Before I could even get her name out of my mouth, she thrust both hands into her mouth as she simultaneously laughed with glee and sucked on her fingers. While the cookies were baking, she marched back and forth under the oven door, shouting something that sounded like "Cookies in there" over and over. As the cookies cooled, her father found her pushing one of the chairs from the table over to the where the cookies cooled on top of the range. Once he foiled this plan, she resolved to just carrying her toys into the kitchen to camp out under where the cookies cooled, and proceeded to tell all of her Weebles exactly where the cookies were located.

I wave the white flag of defeat. A sweets lover she will be. Perhaps I could at least resolve to change the mantra to "A cookies isn't worth having if you can't have THREE!??"