The Curse of the Penguins

The other day, I was at the grocery store with Justus picking up a few items. I am now going to list the items I was sent to get. See if you can discern something about the Tieche household simply by examining the contents of my shopping list:

1. Milk
2. Orange Juice
3. Cereal
4. Dimetapp
5. Robitussin
6. Tylenol Extreme Cold Relief
7. Afrin Severe Congestion Nasal Spray
8. Children’s Tylenol
9. Vicks Vapor Rub
10. Children’s Nyquil Cough Syrup
11. Children’s PediaCare Long-Acting Cough Syrup
12. Kleenex
13. 7-up

Yes, that’s right. The Tieche household has been turned into an infirmary. Both Nicole and Justus are sick. For a while, Justus had a fever of 104, but that went away and morphed into a full-throated cough. Then Nicole got sick.

It is not good when a pregnant woman gets sick, for a variety of reasons. First of all, they already kind of don’t feel good. Pregnant women are tired all the time and being sick just makes them more tired.

Secondly, apparently when you are pregnant, your body stops caring about you. Women’s bodies work with the single-minded determination of Storm Troopers frantically trying to complete the Death Star before the emperor comes for a surprise inspection.

“We shall double our efforts!”
"For your sake Admiral, I should hope so."

Therefore, if the mom gets sick, the body is like, “You think I’m sending help your way? I’ve got two kidneys to make today, and part of a gall bladder. I don’t have time for your sinus inflammation.”

So poor Nicole has been suffering. And in case you don’t know my wife, she’s not one who rests well. Lying around and doing nothing might sound like a vacation to some, but to Nicole, it’s the third circle of hell, right below “not having enough time to organize the receipts.”

So, in an attempt to give her some rest, I took Justus to the store. But then a weird thing happened. We were in the cereal aisle, and all of a sudden, my son got really excited.

“Happy Feet!” he yelled out. “Happy Feet!”

Now, to give you the back story: my son adores penguins. A few months ago, Nicole thought it would be fun to take Justus to go see the movie “Happy Feet” an animated movie about penguins. We didn’t think much about it until a few weeks later, when I happened to flip by on a documentary on the Discovery Channel about penguins. Justus got all excited, ran to the TV and said, “Happy Feet!” We weren’t even sure he remembered the movie, since he seemed so much more interested in the straw in my drink. Then, a few weeks later, we took him to the Monterey Bay aquarium and every time he saw a penguin, he would happily exclaim, “Happy Feet.” I ended up buying him a small penguin plush doll at the aquarium gift store, which only cost 80 dollars.

And so, now, every night, Justus sleeps with “Happy Feet.” It is his favorite toy. In fact, his first real sentence involved penguins. He was holding his sippy cup filled with juice in one hand and his plush penguin toy in the other. He brought them together and said, very clearly, “Happy Feet drink Apple Juice.”

Indeed.

There’s only one thing that penguins love more than mackerel, and that’s Motts.

At any rate, there in the cereal aisle was a box of cereal that featured the movie “Happy Feet” on the front. I am not sure how Justus even saw it, it was tucked in between the brightly colored Sugar Smacks Frog and the bright yellow Honeycomb box. But there it was.

Chocolate Lucky Charms, featuring a miniature toy from Happy Feet.

Chocolate Lucky Charms.

As if adding marshmallows to your sugary breakfast cereal were not enough, General Mills decided to up the ante and make the cereal chocolate as well.

But Justus is so into penguins and he so wanted to hold the box, that I let him. And then I kind of caved and actually bought the box of cereal. I am not going to let him eat any of it, but I since I had to open the bag to dig through the cereal to get the toy, I figured I would try it.

After all, it only had 37 grams of sugar per serving.

So this is my report of what my sophisticated adult taste buds had to say about this breakfast cereal.

First of all, I am not a big fan of the regular, non-chocolate Lucky Charms. I think the freeze-dried marshmallows taste like bits of Styrofoam. And I don’t know about you, but I prefer non-styrofoam cereals.

Second of all, the bits of chocolate turned my milk into a dark grey color that was tinted slightly green from the green clovers which seemed to contain more food coloring than say, the yellow stars or orange moons. Regardless, green-grey milk is not as appetizing as it may sound.

Thirdly, I don’t care how bold of lettering General Mills uses on the cereal box, eating that much sugar early in the morning can’t be a part of a complete breakfast. What are the other parts of this so-called “complete breakfast.” Snicker Bits smothered in Maple Syrup?

So what exactly is the moral of this story? I think we can all agree that the cautionary tale to be gleaned from this episode is that if you take your child to see a movie about dancing penguins, don’t be surprised when you find drinking green-grey milk out of a bowl.