When I realized that Alexis is a Master of Sprinkles, I knew I had to find a new task for her. Helping me make chocolate-covered pretzels to take to preschool for Easter seemed like a good idea, but at the pace she was shooting sprinkles onto the pretzels, I would have needed a sprinkle fairy, a canon, and a sugar factory just to get by.
I had jelly beans and plastic eggs stashed in the pantry, so I figured she could join the two together. Whether she were playing the role of her own personal Easter Bunny or the eggs will end up going to school was irrelevant--she just needed some busy work. I sat her at the table and instructed her to put a few jelly beans in each egg and then to stick the egg in a bag.
Easy enough, right?
Right.
Except, she decided to make it complicated. The yellow eggs needed yellow jelly beans. The pink eggs had to contain pink jelly beans. The orange eggs were useless because there were no orange jelly beans in her bag. One...two...three...four....five...EXACTLY five jelly beans had to go into each egg or else she would be forced to start all over again.
I tried to tell her there was no reason to be so precise with the jelly bean project. She looked at me like I had just told her she would never be allowed to use Microsoft Excel to plan out her day. I can guarantee you the kid is going to be one of those people whose spreadsheets have spreadsheets. She will have charted out every possible detail of her life, making her really very likely to be THAT person who works herself into a tizzy as she flips out that there isn't time for breathing on her To Do List, so she just can't do it. In fact, we probably should have named her Rory (virtual high-five if you get that reference).
Her ridiculously anal jelly bean distribution system started to make me twitch. She just needed to get it done and stop spazzing out. I told her as much as I grabbed an egg and placed a random handful of jelly beans in it. As I tossed it in the bag with the other finished eggs, I realized that Alexis had starting twitching. Like mother like daughter, n'at.
She stared in silence as she processed what she had seen. She was aware of the "reject" egg in her bag and she was most definitely NOT happy.
She waited until I went back to my chocolate and pretzels before she reached into the bag to grab my rainbow-filled egg. She hurriedly fixed it while glaring at me.
I grabbed another egg and another handful of not-matching jelly beans.
She glared harder.
Over and over, I messed up her bag of eggs. She glared at me as she quickly fixed it. Every time. For an hour.
Nobody tell Alexis, but it sure is fun to screw with uptight, overly-organized anal types. I might have to do it more often.
