WHEN GINGERBREAD MEN ATTACK

Usually Elizabeth will start to show adjustment problems after she really gets into something and reality sets in. In this particular case I think everything came to a head about a week into kindergarten. The class read "The Gingerbread Man" story and then baked their own gingerbread men for snack the following day. But to their amazement, when they returned to the kitchen the cookies had run away! The teacher sighed, "They do this to us every year," and the group embarked on a scavenger hunt to find them.

Elizabeth's imagination was completely engaged with this idea. She bubbled over with the story the minute she got off the bus and kept talking about it until bedtime. At some point, however, her imagination took over full time and reason left the picture altogether. She became more and more uneasy and the gingerbread people took on a more and more sinster tone, and when it was time to take her bath she refused to go in alone because they might come get her. (I'm thinking scenes from the preschool version of Psycho.) By bedtime we were in full-blown cookie angst - they were an inescapable, relentless army of cookie people and she was right in their crosshairs. The fact that the class had already eaten the cookies was apparently irrelevant. She was doomed!

On the one hand I really can't blame her. I mean, can you envision an army of kindergartener-created gingerbread cookies? Armless, mutant frankencookies dripping frosting and lurching their way unseen through the halls of the school. That really is frightening, if you ask me.

Fortunately we happen to posess Weapons of Mass Gingerbread Destruction. The Labrador Retriever.

You need to understand our dogs' relationship with food. They take binge eating to dizzying heights. We can't use the "five second rule" in our house because food hitting the floor has no chance of making it that long. They are silly, furry piranahs trolling the waters under the highchair for the stray Cheerio, that unlucky bit of Ritz cracker.

Duke and Cleo would like nothing more than to be the suicide bombers in their own little Gingerbread Jihad. I envision their strategy; "You take the front door, I'll take the back. We eat until we burst! Go!"

Elizabeth is a smart kid; reason and humor almost always prevail if you can wait long enough for her to process things. Eventually she saw the light here and I think she was relieved to find an emotional steampipe so she could get the stress out and move on. I am proud of her, really proud!

But in the back of my mind I'm also a little worried about the Christmas cookies.