The kid has turned to a life of crime.
Once upon a time, you would never catch Alexis doing something she had been told not to do; her conscious wouldn't let her. However, it seems she has shoved her little conscious into a box and found a way to break free from the chains of guilt.
She is smuggling fruit snacks to the other kids at daycare.
It started out as an open request to perform an act of what could be considered kindness. "I want to bring fruit snacks to school for my friends." I told her that I appreciated that she wanted to be nice to her friends, but that it wasn't a good idea to give food to kids without asking their parents first.
Despite my request that she leave the fruit snacks at home, she grabbed a pack out of the pantry. I found the contraband packet of sugar and artificial colors clutched in her chubby hands when I went to get her out of the car at school. I asked her to leave them in the car. She wouldn't. It turns out that standing in the parking lot at daycare at 7:30am is the exact situation in which I don't have the patience or energy to fight with a 40-pound mound of determination and stubbornness. Instead, I drug the kid to the coat area in her classroom and insisted that she stick the fruit snacks in her coat pocket RIGHT THAT SECOND OR ELSE. AND LEAVE THEM THERE.
She kinda listened. She put them in her pocket. But, when I picked her up at the end of the day, the fruit snacks were gone. She had smuggled them out of her coat and into the hands of her first customer.
The next day, she tried to head off a disagreement by smuggling a pack of fruit snacks into her coat pocket while I was putting on my shoes. I told her I knew about them, to which she earnestly declared that she HAD to give them to a different friend. SHE HAD TO. I stole the fruit snacks out of her coat before we left. Yet, somehow, she managed to smuggle another pack past me. I only found out because when I picked her up later in the day, she confessed her sins.
People, she managed to go through an entire box of fruit snacks over the course of the week. I'm not sure what the other kids are paying her with, but the kid is apparently running some sort of elaborate fruit snack ring. And don't even get me started on how she's pulling off this caper without teachers catching wind of it. That's a whole other level of baffling and frustrating.
All I know is that I have instituted a ban on any and all fruit snacks. Period.
Of course, Alexis keeps telling me that she'll find some by herself. Apparently, she has secured other sources. UGH.
