Nutritionally speaking

There's a lot to judge about other mothers, and how you feed your child/ren is one of the biggest areas. It starts from the first second the baby emerges - breast or bottle? Everyone seems to want to know, from the doctor (normal) to the random coworker (awkward). It doesn't stop there though. The next phase is solids, and the choices range from homemade (best) to organic (okay) to Gerber jars (sub-par). Beyond just what to feed babies/kids is the question of when. There's been a move toward delaying solids from 3 weeks (our parents) to 4 months to 6 months or later. Soon, we'll be delaying food till 12. Then there comes the eyes on you at the playground as you pull out fruit snacks (the devil) or organic celery sticks shaped like hearts. The school lunchbox comes next - and no one would dare admit that they throw in a Lunchable - nope, its all customized Bento box lunches with flax seed and wheat germ smoothies.
As for me, if you know me or have been reading long, I'm sure you can guess where I stand on the spectrum. I do take pride in the fact that I nursed my girls for a year, but it pretty much goes downhill from there. The idea of making my own baby food was laughable to me, especially as a busy working mother. I can barely make myself food, so why would I want to subject my babies to my cooking before I had to? We went Gerber (or even Target brand) all the way. I loved my pediatrician's low-key take on baby food - he told me not to waste my money on jarred food past the first stage and just mash up whatever we were eating. Of course, I'm pretty sure he wasn't talking about pulverizing frozen pizza, so I did stick to baby food for a while longer.

In either case, its not that hard to feed your baby in a healthy manner considering the entire baby aisle filled with jars of fruit and veggies. All of the choices were pretty healthy so I didn't worry too much.

Its the toddler and beyond stage that I find the most challenging. Balancing picky eaters, my lack of cooking ability and a busy lifestyle often results in some not-so-good choices. Consider that my 18-month old can say "m&m's" as if it was the word "cat" and you'll have some clue as to how my kids eat. They love treats, and I use this to my advantage. A Hershey kiss is a pretty good bribe to get Big A to eat a few bites of a semi-healthy dinner. I try to push fruits and veggies and dairy and keep the bad stuff to a minimum but it doesn't always work out that way. I'm not one of those mothers who is afraid of McDonald's every now and then. I mean, if my kid is going to eat two bites of food, it doesn't matter too much if its two bites of chicken and a french fry or an organic burrito, right? And lucky for me, my girls' natural taste buds lead them to make pretty healthy choices all on their own.

Still, I sometimes do feel like I need to make a bigger effort to feed my whole family better. I wasn't the smallest of kids (oink), and I know firsthand how much it sucks to be the chunky kid. On the other hand, I don't want to deny things so much that they become even more tempting or the girls get a complex - there's plenty of time for that. Everything in moderation is what I strive for, although some days we don't quite get there.

It does make me feel better to know that kids' diets should be based on a week, not a meal or even a day. So if one day, they eat m&m's, ice-cream and macaroni and cheese (not that that happened today or anything...), the next day I'll strive for carrot sticks, grapes and string cheese.

Now pass the dip, would you?