Because styrofoam is not only an environmental issue

On Thursday we arrived home to discover that a few packages had been delivered in the mail. The girls set themselves in the middle of the front hallway, ripping and tearing and enjoying the sanctioned destruction. Among the packages was a lamp for the baby's bedroom-in-progress.  It came, innocently enough, in a brown cardboard box. But inside the box, a split block of molded styrofoam cradled the base of the lamp.  The girls squealed.  I suggested we go upstairs together to put the lamp in Baby Brother's room; I just needed to run to the basement first for a lightbulb. I should have realized they weren't squealing about the fantastic little table lamp.

I might have been gone for three minutes.

The girls broke the whole styrofoam block down into individual white pellets and explained to me that they were playing with inside snow. 'Inside snow' was on the ceiling.  It was in their hair, on the jackets I rued not hanging up properly, in the seat of the parked stroller.

It was in their mouths, as they showed me with drooly, open pleas for assistance.

It was completely stuck to their clothes, so much so that I made them strip naked in the foyer before we ran upstairs, and then it was on their bellies, their backs, between their toes. L climbed up first, then E, then me with the lamp in hand. When E hit the top and I was three stairs or so behind, she cracked her full moon wide open with ten fully splayed fingers (mere inches from my face) and screamed Mama! I think there's inside snow inside my tushie!

And yes, there was.