When Lizzie, a 36-year-old mother of three, went to check on her toddler before bed one evening, she spotted something unusual that immediately set off her parental alarm bells. In the dim light of her son’s bedroom, she could make out what looked like deep, dark circles spreading around the eyes of her three-year-old boy, Nate. Worried something might be wrong with him, she grabbed her phone and turned on the flashlight for a closer look. What she found instead of a health problem left her equal parts stunned and amused.
Her little boy was fast asleep, completely unbothered, with chocolate smeared neatly around both eyes, making him look, as she described it, like a raccoon. Lizzie, who shares her family life on TikTok under the username lizziebo1, told Newsweek she was completely caught off guard. “I was in total shock when I first saw him,” she said. That night, she gently cleaned his face with warm water and a soft cloth, being careful not to wake him up in the process.
The mystery of how it happened lingered for a day or two before the answer presented itself in the most straightforward way possible. Lizzie walked in on Nate carefully balancing pieces of chocolate on top of his closed eyes. “I saw him balancing pieces of chocolate on his eyes. That’s when everything made sense,” she explained. The toddler had apparently invented his own version of a skincare routine, swapping out the classic cucumber slices for something far more delicious.
Lizzie uploaded two photos to TikTok: one of the sleeping Nate with chocolate around his eyes, and another showing him awake and mid-routine, carefully placing the chocolate pieces. She captioned the post with a line that quickly resonated with thousands of parents online: “Turns out it’s his skincare routine.” The post exploded, racking up more than a million views and drawing an outpouring of reactions from delighted followers.
The comments section became a highlight reel of humor. “No pimples, no enlarged pores, no dry skin. I believe in this boy’s routine,” one user wrote. Another admitted nervously, “I was scared the second photo was going to be something very different.” A third chimed in with the practical question: “Can you ask him if chocolate works better than cucumbers?” The warmth and laughter in the responses reflected just how universally parents and non-parents alike connected with the moment.
Lizzie lives with her partner Mike and their three children: 15-year-old Lewis, 11-year-old Erin, and little Nate, who recently celebrated his third birthday. She shared that she and Mike spent a long time going back and forth on whether to have a third child before ultimately deciding to go for it. Looking back, she said it was the best call they ever made, and moments like this make it easy to understand why.
TikTok, which launched globally in 2018 and has grown to over a billion active users worldwide, has become one of the most popular platforms for parents to share funny and heartfelt moments from family life. The app’s short video and photo format is particularly well-suited for these quick, candid glimpses into everyday parenting, and stories like Nate’s routinely find massive audiences because they tap into experiences that feel both specific and universal. Toddlers between the ages of two and four are known for their imaginative and often imitative behavior, frequently mimicking the routines and habits they observe in the adults around them, whether that means pretending to cook, talk on the phone, or apparently, do their skincare.
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