I remember very clearly a day from Alex's infancy when I went to a giant garage sale sponsored by our local Mothers of Twins group. One of the women working the sale was talking to her friend about solids. Her 9-month-old babies just loved macaroni and cheese, she said. She cooked up a box of it and whizzed it in the blender and they scarfed it right down.
I remember the speedy ascent of my inner eyebrows, my disdain for the idea that you might feed boxed macaroni and cheese to an infant.
Twelve years later, I have mellowed considerably on the topic of boxed macaroni and cheese. It is, in fact, a regular feature at lunch on Saturdays -- for people over the age of 1, at any rate. Yesterday I meant to scoop some plain noodles out for Stella but it slipped my mind. "Can't you just give her some anyway?" Elwood asked.
I said, "Of course not." But she really really wanted some. She was staring at that macaroni, and reaching for it, and so I gave her a noodle. I was hoping she would drop it, but she did not. She wanted more.
Lissa wrote this post that made me say, "Oh, yes, exactly." The contrast between the number of books I read to Alex when he was four and the number of books I am reading to Pete at four -- it's dramatic. The standards to which I held myself then -- let's just say I have revised them downward. And on Saturday, handing my baby yet another noodle coated with fake cheese and yellow #5, I distinctly felt the disapproving shade of Alex's mother in my dining room.
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