You did what to your tongue?

Don't go shopping with your children.

Don't do it.

Better to get up at 3:00am and go to the 24 hour supermarket than go shopping with all your children.

Where we go shopping, they have a thing called "Cookie Club." Cookie Club is designed to get your children all sticky and sugared up just in time to deal with the rest of the store. Because Cookie Club is in the bakery section, and the bakery section is in the front of the store to the right side. Which is where most people start shopping anyway, but in this store the layout practically funnels you there.

So start shopping, by all means. With three sticky, hyper children. Walk past the rest of the bakery section to go to produce, see what they say.

"No cookies kids, we'll make our own. Oh, we need more apples."

The revolt is brewing.

It festers through cereals. It dies briefly at "visit the lobsters, ooh look kids, lobsters!" But in the snack aisle, it burns with white-hot intensity.

"Mummy, those are the Froot Snax (spelled that way for legal reasons) that kids like! I want those, I saw those at school!"

They have learned that "I saw that on television" means an automatic no. However, "I saw that at school" means that Mummy will consider whether the item is bad enough to risk the child's popularity for ever and ever to ban it.

Hmm. It may have, at some time, been near a fruit. Mummy looks at the label. It does provide 100% of the RDA for vitamin C. And enough artificial colors to send a toddler into spasms. It's faux fruit. I can pretend I thought it was attempting to be nutritious. But then again, it's full of colors and flavors and no actual fruit.

I stare at the box. My children know this is crunch time. They know that if they mouth off now, all is lost.

Silence. They appear to be holding their breath. It is, at least, Froot Flavored. It might help them appreciate fruits beyond grapes, oranges, and apples. I place it in the cart. There are sighs of relief.

Fast forward to today. Eldest wants the Froot Snax in her bag for snack time. I give them to her. Son also wants them.

And then, Son does the unthinkable and tells Mummy why he wanted the Snax so badly.

"Mummy, they make your tongue turn colors! Green and blue and red! I want one now so I can make my tongue blue!"

I've been hornswaggled. They've wanted something because it has the potential to make them turn colors, and I fell for it. Outsmarted by a four year old and a seven year old.

The raisin marketing board needs to come up with something like this. "Raisins: They make your tongue Grape Flavored."

I asked Eldest if she liked her Snax today. "Oh yeah, and they made my tongue green!"

Hornswaggled, I tell you. Green she says.

On Monday, I'm giving her raw spinach. That'll turn her tongue green too. Let's see what her report back on Monday is.

This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as an entry for a contest sponsored by Brothers-All-Natural. And because I hate Froot Snax but am a gullible sap.
These folks have better snacks: Brothers All Natural.
And these folks let you talk about them: ParentBloggers.com