Ok, so you want the easiest, simplest, DIY, nutritious treat EVER? Here are all the AMAZING things about it:

  • gets vitamins into your child!
  • your child gets a gummy!
  • your child gets a lollipop!
  • they can eat two a day, every single day!
  • it’s so easy!
  • it’s so cheap!

Wagon Sr. came up with this shortly after Wagon Jr. had the first lollipop of his life. He was about 1.5 years old and we were at Snip-Its getting his hair cut. Nothing was keeping him calm, so we gave him a dum-dum and he was in love. The problem, however, was that 1) there was no way he was finishing that lollipop before bedtime, and 2) he spent so much time sucking/drooling all over it that the paper stick was disintegrating into a gummy, sticky mess all over his hands. (Not to mention how hair-covered it got during the haircut… yuck.) He was so wide-eyed and obsessed with it that we couldn’t get it away from him all evening. We got all the way to bedtime and then had to bathe him (good for getting the stickiness off) then pry it from his iron vise grip before putting him down. He was screaming bloody murder and it took him a LONG time to calm down enough to get into his crib and go to sleep. We swore he’d never get a real lollipop ever again until he was old enough to deal with it properly.

One day shortly after this migraine-inducing episode, he was screaming for a lollipop. We had rarely given him fruit snacks in the past (he didn’t really understand how to eat them and we were afraid he’d choke), but we had a small stash of them, so Wagon Sr. grabbed a cocktail stirrer, snipped it in half, stuck a fruit snack on the end and said “here, lollipop!” Wagon Jr. brightened immediately and popped it into his mouth. He sucked on it for a long time before he finally realized he could chew it, then bite it off. He absolutely loved it.

Pretty soon this became our transition object for Wagon Jr. Need to get him into the car? Offer him a gummy lollipop. Need to get him upstairs for bedtime? Gummy lollipop to the rescue. When we purchased gummy bear vitamins for him, we moved from fruit snacks to gummy vitamins and he’s had two a day, every day, since! He gets one at the two hairiest points in our day: when we drop him off for daycare and when we go upstairs for bedtime.

We make batches of them (my mom likes to sit and make HUGE batches while watching Korean videos) and put them in a ziploc bag, and we let him choose one, which delights him. He ponders his choices (red, orange, and yellow… hmm…) and then declares he wants “dat one!”, picks it up, and for some reason always announces that it’s a “blue one!” Sometimes, especially at bedtime, we have to convince him for a while to choose one, but once he’s got it in his hands, he’s ready to go upstairs with us for bedtime.

Here are the mind-numbingly simple steps to creating gummy vitamin lollipops. As long as you don’t mind impaling gummy bears in their butt (or head), you can definitely do this DIY. All credit goes to Wagon Sr. for this genius idea.

Materials:
Gummy vitamins
Cocktail stirrers (plastic coffee stirrers work as well)
Scissors

Directions:
  1. Using scissors, cut cocktail stirrer in half (to make two sticks).
  2. Stick one end into the bottom (or top) half of a gummy vitamin.
And that’s it. Really.
Just a note: Now Wagon Jr. is old enough to understand that he ONLY gets real lollipops at the barber and the doctor’s office (and therefore constantly asks to go to the “office doctor”), and he is able to give them up after a reasonable amount of time (and stickiness). And even after having several real lollipops, the gummy ones still work twice a day, every day. But don’t ever offer him a gummy lollipop after discovering the doctor’s office has stopped offering real lollipops at their flu shot clinic. Not a single tear at the actual shot, but afterwards? Cue meltdown and emergency trip to the convenience store where a bag of dum-dums was subsequently purchased.