I have a pretty well thought out schedule with my kids at work. After breakfast, unless my boss has something we have to do, they play in the gym while I drink my coffee. The plan is they can burn energy while I wake up enough to have energy so that when we get to our classroom we're all at about the same level of awake.
Well early last week four of my kids were playing near me and started talking to me...
"Is that your coffee Ms. Tina?" says the tiniest three year old you will ever meet.
"Yup." Ms. Tina has only had a few sips and is therefore slightly less conversant than she would like to admit.
"Is it yummy?" says the biggest three year old you will ever meet.
"Well I like it." I've had another sip, so I'm waking up a bit.
"So does Ms. Debbie." A third child adds. "And Ms. Tina is cranky style without it. It must be yummy." she adds. The other children look at her and nod as if she's said something very wise and very profound.
"Me smell!" a fourth child starts pulling at my arm to bring my coffee cup down to his reach.
I think, "eh, the smell won't hurt anything and there's hardly anything left anyway". So I let him smell my coffee.
"Yuck!" he exclaims and runs away, his attention now focused on something far more desirable than morning coffee- our "cool" ball with Spider-man printed on it. The little girls still want a smell, so I give everyone a chance. They all think it smells "weird" and go about their morning. I nearly forget this ever happened.
Except the next morning all three little girls are at my side,
"Can I smell your coffee?" they ask, shyly for some reason. So I let them. What's it going to hurt, it's not like I'm letting them drink the coffee! I'm not crazy.
But it happens again the next day.
And the next day.
Friday I drank my first cup at home, so I don't have any when they ask. Everyone goes to play, and eventually I get another cup and survey the room. I have one yawning under the climber, one whining about not having the cool ball (which is laying on the ground just out of her reach, but quicly attainable), and another one reaching out to smack another kid. Everyone is cranky on Friday morning. I sort out my little catastrophes, wake up the sleeper and finally take a drink of my coffee. Suddenly I realize I have three tiny shadows looking up at me. I let them have their sniff of coffee and everyone goes about their day. Except ten minutes later I realize my sleeper is now wide awake playing a game of monster, my whiner is laughing her head off, and my smacker is giving out hugs to all her friends.
I think caffeine is inhale-able. Should I have told their parents?
**I swear to you, this is a completely true story that happened to me this week. In case you were wondering :-)
