Bad Mama

The mothers' online message board on which I participate has a thread called "Bad Mama!" It serves as a confessional booth for all those times we've broken The Rules of Good Parenting: put infants to sleep on their stomachs, washed the breast pump without taking apart the component pieces, failed to change a dirty diaper because it would wake the almost-asleep baby and we couldn't face repeating the bedtime routine.

I had a definite Bad Mama moment this evening. Edith and I had just come home from school together. As usual, she nursed right away. Then I was hungry, so I put her down and went to get a Balance Bar. When I came back into the living room eating it, her eyes lit up and locked in on it. I don't know why; to my knowledge, she's never had a Balance Bar or anything like it before. But as I watched, curious, she cruised quickly down the length of the coffee table toward me. (For the uninitiated, cruise is the term for a baby's walking while holding onto something, sliding her hands along. It's a precursor to actual walking.) It was the first time Edith had done any swift, deliberate cruising.

She tried to turn the corner at the end of the coffee table to get closer to me but couldn't quite manage. So I knelt down, held the Balance Bar in my mouth, and put out my hands to her. She took them both, walked to me, firmly grasped the Balance Bar, and pulled it out of my mouth.

This is the point at which Good Parenting would dictate reclaiming the Balance Bar from the baby, explaining that one can't take food from other people's mouths, and engaging her in an alternative activity. Instead, I was so interested in what she would do next that I let her keep going. Not to be distracted by the shiny wrapper, which I had thought might be her goal, she confidently grasped the bar inside it and put it in her mouth. Without the usual cautious pause to see if she liked the flavor being offered her, she went to town. I hadn't seen her handle table food so confidently before nor wolf it down so rapidly. Edith can be a distractible eater, with only modest success at holding finger foods and an unpredictable appetite. This was an impressive display.

She ate fully 1/3 of the bar in a couple of minutes. The snack only ended because she got down to the chunk clutched in her palm, which was now a gooey chocolate mess, and couldn't get it out.

Yes, chocolate. Having intended to keep Edith from discovering that divine nectar until at least her first birthday, I found myself bedazzled into total surrender by a modest display of new skills. I should be a animal behavior researcher, not a parent. I let a nine month old have an energy bar covered in a layer of chocolate. I let her get it all over her face, her shirt, my shirt, and the kitchen counter.

At least it wasn't the original Balance Bar flavor, Honey Peanut. Then I would have committed three cardinal sins of baby nutrition--the feeding of chocolate, honey, and peanuts before twelve months--all at once. Meanwhile, which of you taught Edith to identify a candy bar?