Bad Mommy

In honor of Mother's Day, I feel the urge to buck the trend of the day and confess something I've done that's bad, bad, bad-- at least by the supermommy standards of my friends and relations.  Are you ready?  Agatha has recently eaten-- and enjoyed!-- both Chef Boyardee ravioli AND cheese curls (maybe they should be written "cheez curls"?).  

With Henry, it was all organic brown rice and so on for at least two years, but once it was clear he was such a good and generally healthy eater, I started to get more lax.  Also, he really didn't like much junk food, so I didn't have to be very vigilant.  He didn't have much of a sweet tooth, and never even tasted ice cream, by his own choice, until two months ago.  He didn't like the processed "kid food" that sometimes appeared at friends' houses, like Kraft macaroni and cheese or chicken fingers.  But there were some things he really liked, such as hot dogs.  Pasta with tomato sauce, especially with meat, is one of his favorite meals, so in a hurry on a day we were getting him a babysitter I got him some canned ravioli, and he loved it.  It's become our go-to babysitter-night food-- a special treat and easy, all in one.  A couple of weeks ago when we were in the throes of our super-busy season (and Mom was in Seattle!), I was feeding Henry ravioli before the babysitter arrived and Agatha was squealing for her dinner as well.  Why not?, I thought.  When we were in England when Henry was 10 months old, we got the best baby food there that actually smelled like something you wanted to eat-- chicken curry and lasagna and stuff like that in a jar.  How was this so different?  The tomato sauce is sweet and not too acidic, the noodles are mushy-- it's basically baby food as it is!  I handed her a ravioli and she loved it.  She could feed it to herself, and it tasted good.  What's not to like?  (Well, I know, many things... that's the "bad mommy" part.)

The next day Michael was looking for something to feed her, and I confessed my Chef Boyardee experiment.  He was a little dubious, but willing to let her have some.  "How small should I cut up the pieces?" he asked me.  Ummmm....