A few years ago, a doctor wanted Phoebe to go on a clear fluid diet for a day as a part of a medical evaluation. In addition to clear juices and broths, she was allowed to eat Jello. Jello is not something we tend to eat in our family, but under the circumstances, I decided to go all out. I picked up packages of cherry, orange, lemon, lime and grape Jello, and I put together a dish of rainbow jello for my rainbow-loving girl.
The process involved making the different layers of color separately, letting each chill and gel, and then adding the next layer. I honestly don’t remember how long the process took. But I do remember that the result was quite striking to look at!
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When Theo was a baby, maybe a year or so old, I came across a link someone had shared of Andrea Bocelli singing to Elmo. We were travelling at the time, visiting my in-laws, and a super-tired baby Theo was sitting on my lap long after he should have been asleep. I clicked on the video, and Theo was entranced. What’s more, he was lulled. By the end of the video, he was asleep in my arms.
This is not the sort of magic than an overtired parent easily forgets, and this video was revisited quite a few times over the next year or so. (Not always with exactly the same magic.) I also bought the song (not the Elmo-directed version, but the original Italian version), and found that it was effective at getting Theo to nap on car rides. When Theo was a little bit older, he would request the song. However, the name he had for it was “Rainbow Jelly.” I’m not sure how long it took us to figure out what he meant, but eventually we realized that it must have been how he’d misheard “Andrea Bocelli” in the video.
And so it was that I was inclined to call the rainbow layered Jello “rainbow jelly.”
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Last week’s friday foto finder theme was food, and given my recent run on rainbows, I couldn’t resist sharing photos of this. It is somewhat debatable whether this treat counts as actual “food,” but Phoebe had fun with it.
To see what other potentially more nutritious food items have been shared, pay a visit to the fff blog.
collecting tokens 
Delightful! Nothing better than decoding toddler speak. I’ll never look at rainbow Jello the same way again.
Wow. That Rainbow Jelly is a thing of glorious disgustingness. And I love the story of the name!
We loved it when we were children. We called it Wackelpudding (shaking pudding). :) The brand was called Götterspeise (food of the gods)
Our kids loved jelly so much they would raid the packet before I could even make up the jelly mix. Our favourite ‘kiddy speak’ was vingular instead of vinegar and Mulk instead of Milk. And as they were growing up words like pedestrian got turned into pedestrainian or pedstrany and other hilarious attempts
“Elmo doesn’t feel so.. Snorrrry” cracked me up. Do you think this video would work for adult insomnia?