James and the Bubble Tea

James loves drinks!  We recently returned from a trip to Maryland (I'll let Emily tell you all about it).  It's an eight hour drive from Ohio without breaks, and we occasionally stopped for food, fuel and to let the kids get their wiggles out.  Most times this means I was walking down the aisles of giant freeway gas station stores with James.  There were shelves full of colorful packages containing candy, chips, and confectionaries all carefully placed at a child's eye level, and every time James would walk straight past these to the soda fountain, pull a cup from the cup dispenser, and hand it to me expectantly.  He didn't care what drink he got (which means he usually got vitamin water), so long as he got a sweet drink.

On the last day of the trip we stopped at a food court featuring foods from around the world, and I decided to get James a special treat: bubble tea.

  

James LOVED it! The flavor we picked was strawberry.  The "bubbles" in the bottom of the cup are tapioca beads.  The "tea" tasted like dish soap, and there couldn't have been more then 1/4 tsp of sugar in the whole thing, but James was as happy as a kid with a huge dish of ice cream.  He'd drink a huge slug of tea then grin at me while chewing a mouthful of tapioca "bubbles".

I've been told on good authority that bubble tea has no caffeine but was a little worried this might turn out to be false.  I needn't worry though; twenty minutes later James was fast asleep in his car seat with a contented smile on his face.  Bubble tea was the perfect treat for a little boy who loves drinks.