harry potter and the candy conundrum

kai has been raptly enjoying reading harry potter these last few months - he and his dad are on book 4 - and so it was of no surprise that he chose to be harry for a day.  he made a very good look-a-like!  we trick-or-treated with his best schoolmate jack, the ninja, and company.

   

despite my limiting kai's candy intake, he is a huge fan of the stuff.  he didn't have any candy (or dessert foods) from birth to the age of 3 and then he was only given the good chocolate and gelato (i would continue to eat my favourite junk food behind kai's back, the bag of potato chips, for another few years).  the ban on candy was lifted for birthday parties, easter, and halloween. 

our halloween tradition over the years has remained the same.  on halloween night before he begins indulging i toss out all the hard candy and gum then i let him eat as much candy (bars, jellybeans, licorice, chips, etc) as he wants.  i also join in on the candy gluttony - we will have a race of who can eat the most candy, kai usually wins but not by much!  once we have completed our gorging i put the remainder in a jar in the cupboard.  he may ask for a candy the day after, or not, then it's forgotten.  slowly over the course of the year, i toss out the remainder of the candies readying the jar for the next halloween. 

sometimes, i want us to go cold turkey but i fear i will end up with a kid that hides in the bathroom to eat an oh henry bar and deep down a part of me feels a little bad that i would be shortchanging him.  so i guess i will continue with what i have been doing - throw caution to the wind when it comes to 'candy' centred festivities and then the next day we go back to business as usual.  so far, it's been a good system for us.

how do you handle the halloween candy dilemma?