Melts In Your Mouth, Not In Your... Uh, Oh...

Guess what?

If you mix M&Ms with a little girl fond of making tasty chocolate last as long as possible, you don't get the nice, neat, slightly crunchy little bits of yumminess you see in commercials.

You get a very cute little girl running around and/or jumping up & down yelling, "CANDY!" as her face and hands and anything she touches slowly turns the same color as the M&M she's torturing.

<sigh>

Incidentally, the Pipsqueak doesn't normally get that excited over candy; she just kept calling out the word because it was a new one for her and she likes playing with the sound fo new words as she learns them... up 'til now M&Ms were just ems or something sounding vaguely like kokoliks.

There was a cute "time out" once or twice when she noticed that the blue M&M she'd been sucking on for the past 5 minutes was the same color as part of the pattern on Mommy's pants (which led to more multiple repetitions of another new word, "match"), but mostly it was my increasingly blue niece running in & out of the family room yelling "CANDY!" and having a wonderful time doing it.

Luckily, the kid's a real water baby -- she absolutely LOVES playing with water, in water, around water -- so after almost 10 minutes(!) of Mommy, Grandma, and Uncle Brian practically begging her to please put that blue M&M out of its misery (and coincidentally stop spreading its color around), Grandma had a brainstorm and told Miri if she gave Grandma the "Em," then Mommy would take her to wash her hands.... Bingo!  After about three nanoseconds' consideration, she put the squishy bluish mess in Grandma's hand and made a beeline for the bathroom, where she had a wonderful time washing her hands.

And her face.

And the counter.

And the liquid soap bottle... and the clear plastic plate her Grandma keeps under the liquid soap bottle to catch drips.

In fact, she spent the next 10-15 minutes making sure (repeatedly) that we all knew she had cleaned the plate, and made sure to demonstrate so by whacking the faucet with it, and whacking the floor of the family room, and then pushing it all around the kitchen floor.  Eventually something distracted her and the various components removed from the bathroom were returned to their usual places only slightly worse for the wear.

But really, folks, I don't think they've made an M&M yet that can stand up to a two-year-old without melting aaaallll over the place... <sigh>