That's Not Food!

Peter has begun exploring and testing boundaries.  One of his favorite ways to test is by seeing what food he can get away with sneaking.  His favorite things are granola bars, apple sauce pouches, graham crackers, and marshmallows.  First he learned that if he just asks each person once, he can get 5 servings of something.  Until we repeatedly overheard him asking someone else and realized what he was doing!  Then he had to get sneakier.  He started going into the storage room when no one was watching and swiping from the extra boxes in storage.  Up until recently, though, he wasn't strong enough to open those on his own, so he just scattered bars and pouches around in there but didn't eat anything.  Then last week he figured out how to open up the packages and it was buffet time!  He no longer came to me asking for food when he was hungry, he just went into the storage room and grabbed 2-3 granola bars. I'm all for independence but granola bars are not a substitute for healthy meals, so I moved all the snack foods to the top shelf and moved all the feminine products and kitchen sponges, etc. down below.  I thought Peter would be disappointed and then move on with his life.  Instead, he thought I'd just bought a whole new variety of granola bars!  Little stick ones that come inside little purple dispensers (tampons).  I came downstairs to find three unwrapped tampons lying around the basement, with their wrappers in tiny, soggy, chewed bits all over the floor.  He was sitting happily with a fist full of additional tampons.  He declared, "I find new bars and I eat them all up!"  Then he stuck a tampon in his mouth and licked it like a lollipop.  I could see in his face he didn't like it, but it was like he was trying to acquire a taste for it because clearly, they were so colorful and perfectly sized, they must be good.  He was crushed when I explained to him that they weren't food and what they were really for and then I had to rearrange the storage room for a second time.

The next day I came home to find Peter alone in the kitchen, sitting on the step stool, with a bag of jumbo marshmallows on his lap.  (All responsible teens were on their devices despite my request that they keep an eye on Peter).  His head whipped around to see me standing there and he blurted out, "I not do anything!" before I'd even said a word.  "Really? I answered, "Because it looks like you're eating marshmallows."  He responded, "I think no one coming back.  I go eat marshmallows.  I only eat two."  Then he popped up, dashed to the cupboard and stuffed the bag inside.  By the look of it, he ate far more than two.

Since then I've had to leave and then come back and check on him after he thinks I've left.  Several times I've found him in a cupboard sneaking something.  Once it was the medicine cabinet where we keep the gummy vitamins.  That made me nervous since there are so many other colorful, fun vitamin-looking things in there.  I guess we never needed to baby proof, but we will need to toddler-proof.