Sneaking food..the hypocrite Mommy

Back when elder boy was born almost 17 years ago, I was still young and dumb and there was no internet to tap into for parenting advice. Yeah, there were parenting books but compared to nowadays where we are on information overload, I relied on the advice of my Mom, Granny and then Mama-in-law to guide me with parenting plus my own instincts.

Needless to say I didn’t get in a huff about what baby boy ate, he ate what I could afford, sometimes it was good shit and sometimes well, not so good. As you can imagine having baby girl though as a college edumacated real adult who was pretty much into information overload, I told spousal unit 3 years ago when she was born that I wanted her only eating healthy food. Her first food was avocado slices which she promptly spit out, for her first birthday I was so concerned about only putting healthy natural goodies into her that she didn’t even get a birthday cake. No, I made zucchini muffins though I did allow a smidgen of ice cream.

Well in the past year, specifically the past several months I started easing up on my strict dietary regime when it came to mini-me. It started when she had a freeze-pop at a friend’s house, she liked it so I bought some for home. Shoot, I grew up with freeze-pops how bad could they be? Well it continued with her introduction to Mama’s secret stash of cold cereal specifically the Lucky Charms. This summer baby girl took to the unnatural dyes and quickly became hooked like most kids did. We tried to moderate but one thing I started noticing a few months ago is that whenever baby girl ate a freeze-pop or some Lucky Charms, she started acting crazy. I am talking crazy enough to make me wanna channel the spirit of my Pops who believed that beating a kid was the way to keep em in line. No, I didn’t but I sure wanted to, I suspect her crazy behavior has played a role in my puffing on more than a few butts a day as a way to keep sane.

Now mister hubby tried to tell me it was my imagination, that the food was not making her go nuts and that I was spending too much time reading the hippy dippy Mamas boards that I belong too. Well lets just say over the weekend he became a true believer and told me we must get rid of the junk. So Sunday night Papa Bear tossed out all her goodies (and some of mine too) leaving Mama with just the Frosted Flakes hidden behind the Cheerios, Raisin Bran and $5 box of cereal from the health food store which looks like shit flakes but boasts 6 grams of fiber.

Mini- me has not been happy but she is snacking a lot better on cucumbers and other good stuff, she did throw a rather large fit when I explained the junk went bye-bye but all in all she is managing. Which leads me to today, why was I dying for a bowl of cold cereal but had to wait three hours till nap time until I could eat my bowl of frosted flakes for lunch. For a moment I felt bad for sneaking forbidden food but times like this I remember that I am the boss and while I like to run a democratic household sometimes it just can’t be that way.  That cereal was sooo good. 

Parenting these days is definitely a trip and I am convinced that the goodies of our youth have been modified to create crazed kids because I swear cold cereal never made elder boy or myself buck-wild.