The giving boy

Ian is not a big candy eater. Besides lollipops (and he usually doesn't even finish a whole one), he'll only eat M&M's. They are his favorite. Everything else in his candy bucket at Halloween he could care less about. Just give him all the M&M's and he is one happy camper. In fact when I took him trick-or-treating this past Halloween, he kept count of how many packages of M&M's he was given. Each time another homeowner handed him a pack, he'd yell back to me, "I now have 8 bags of M&M's!!" We have quite a collection of M&M's for Ian to have when he has been especially good or eaten an exceptionally healthy meal, or our go-to treat for bribing him.

There is a boy in Ian's class who has started a candy store in his house. From what I understand, he sells candy to relatives and friends who happen to stop by for a visit. This little boy takes the money he makes from selling the candy and does good deeds with it. He is a very special little boy and in the past has given money to the homeless.

Over the past few months, Ian has heard about Dylan's candy store and vowed to do what he could to help stock it. You guessed it, with his very favorite candy in the whole wide world, his M&Ms. Every week, Ian would continue his mission to add to his M&M's supply and he no longer asked to eat any of it. He kept saying that as soon as Dylan and him had a playdate, he would give him his M&M's for his candy store.

Sure enough, the playdate happened last week and Ian handed over the big ziploc bag full of bags of M&M's. It was very sweet of Ian to do this. However, there seems to be no end to his generosity. At the mall over the weekend, Jeff took Ian into the candy store for him to pick out a treat. Ian filled up a bag of M&M's (like there would be any other choice) in his favorite colors - blue and green. When I met up with them a few minutes later, Ian proudly showed me his bag of M&M's and then he said, "I'm giving these to Dylan for his candy store." Uh, I don't think so.

It's a tough situation to be in. We want Ian to continue to be generous and think of others. But yet, we don't want to continually be buying M&M's for someone else's child. Especially when M&M's are so yummy and I enjoy them just as much as Ian used to.