I hope you all made it through your first lessons of how to be a bad mom with flying colors. We’re back today with more lessons for you to become a truly bad mom. Because if you don’t strengthen your child with values such as distrust, instability and general anxiety, who will?!

Lesson #3

Break his coccyx (and hopefully his skull too!)

Remember to always allow your baby to set himself up for future failure. Allow him to do activities he finds enjoyable so he will let his guard down and succumb to future pain. A tactic I like to use is to allow my son to play with the junk mail. Ripping it up and throwing it all around the living room brings him joy. Whatever you do, don’t pick up the mess straight away. Allow it to stay on the floor while you do some other task nearby.

This will allow your child to lose interest in ripping paper and get up to “run” toward something else to destroy play with. With any luck, while “running” toward the new item of interest, your child will slip on some of the ripped paper strewn about and land hard on his tailbone, bonus points if it’s so hard a fall that in addition to his coccyx, his upper body falls back too giving the back of his skull a good slamming into the hard wood. When he looks to you for comfort: tell him to walk it off.

Lesson #4

Torture them by exploiting their fears

It will be a glorious day when you discover your baby’s first unexplained strong fears. With any luck it will be a household item that you must use often. I’m in luck as our ninja blender is the source of my son’s terror. This lesson is quite simple. Just be sure to always use the item that terrorizes your baby. If your blender is the “monster” in your house, be sure to puree everything in sight while your son cries bloody murder. When you see the terror in your child’s eyes, and notice them scrambling to get out of their high chair to escape, simply ignore it, because you have more pureeing to do!

Don’t forget, some fears are stronger than others. There’s no need to actually use your object in the usual way to inflict terror and fear. You can simply bump it with your arm “accidentally” when wiping down the table so that it makes just enough noise to bring your baby’s attention to it. Screaming and crying will ensue.  Job well done, mom, Job well done.

Do you have any Bad Mom 101 lessons to share with the class?

I’ve been blessed with a good eater!

Hopefully he keeps this up because John refused to eat meat when he was a kid, and I refused to eat….anything when I was a kid. Fingers crossed that this shark’s appetite stays healthy!

We started him out exclusively breast feeding and supplemented with formula when necessary. Then we tried him on the boxed cereal and he liked it. He still has cereal (and fruit) for breakfast, but I sometimes give him homemade oatmeal instead of the box version.

Then I started making purees. (Apples, Pears, Sweet Potatos, Bananas, Carrots, Beets, Peas, Avocado etc)

I dig making purees thanks to my beloved Ninja. And after he was ok to eat more texture I was able to thicken up his “purees” into … i dunno what you’d call it…”whips?” “mashes” maybe? I dunno but all I have to say is my blender is earning it’s keep.

After the puree combos I used THIS FOOD CHART for ideas of what all I could give the boy. I noticed that different sites say different foods are OK at different times. I guess parents just end up doing what they’re comfortable with.

So he’s gone through all the vegetables, and started having beans, scrambled eggs, tofu etc. But this kid refuses to eat meats. Chicken makes him gag. I even made a puree of it and he acted like I was trying to kill him. He even knows when it’s mixed in with something else. I haven’t tried beef or lamb yet though.

“hooray, food!”

He’s now moved on to finger foods and is such a big boy! I’m loving the finger food stage despite the mess it makes. He loves banana pieces, blueberries, sweet potato cubes, tofu cubes, steamed broccoli florettes, sweet peas, etc.  He surprised me and enjoyed quinoa and sweet peas mixed together. And he likes curry! The Jamaican in him is showing!

Making his food is not as time consuming as I thought it would be. I just bake off a bunch of sweet potatoes, broccoli and I use the steamer for almost everything else and then just use the ninja or dice it up depending on what it is. Despite this,  I want to start integrating his meals into our meals as much as possible. It’s getting easier to do now that he’s able to eat more stuff. I just will have to cook without as much pepper. He digs spices and herbs but his little mouth can’t do pepper yet.

We’re not giving him sweets like cake, cookies, ice cream, etc… and won’t be for a LONG time….(read: years. but that’s a separate post)… but he does get one “junk” food item. His puffs! This kid loves a puff like nobody’s business. A puff can save us from a meltdown, and has the bonus of working on his little pincer grasp! We tried the Gerber brand. (Can I just say that sweet potato puffs should be made for grown ups too.  I’m looking at you, Nabisco.)

Another non-homemade food we tried out recently was those pouches of organic veggie and fruit blends. I got a couple when we were traveling, and this kid sucked it down like it was manna from heaven. I have a few that we keep stashed in his diaper bag now just in case. We’ve tried the Plum brand, Sprout and Happy Baby. It’s perfect for on the road. No mess, no muss, no fuss.

Now that Roey’s turning 9 months (tomorrow!!) I am excited to give him more stuff. I gave him some of my wonton soup today and he was loving it. I was all happy about it til I reallized I just gave him like a salt and msg cocktail…but whatev.

Up next for him to try is:

• Pasta with sauce
• Lentil soup, split pea soup
• Retrying hummus and curried chickpeas
• Retrying chicken
• Baked salmon
• Toast cubes (regular bread cubes just got ripped up and rasberried all over me the place)

When did you start integrating “grown up” food with your babies?
Did they ever eat a food that surprised you?

Any good finger food suggestions?