One-Tooth Baby

One of the cool things about newborns is that they are practically self-sustaining: biology has sent them off into the School of the World with a six month supply of free lunches. Whether this provisioning represents one of manifold ways in which the species might have evolved, or is simply good business sense on the part of nature (psst, you there, parent-to-be: how about a brand new semi-you, no money down for six months? One condition: no throttling...) is a question for scientists and/or theologians. But it is a fact that kids come with most accessories included. Sure, you might throw a few bucks at clothes, or buy a stuffed bear, and it's probably inevitable that at some point you'll crack and splurge for something that is cute, expensive, and totally useless, like pair of baby driving gloves, or a mini zoot-suite, or a shaving set. But in the grand scheme of things, these expenses are incidental: the basic paradigm is that kids come along for the ride. Mom eats, milk materializes, and the children go about their business of thriving. Sounds supremely easy. Why not have two?

Well, the free lunches are about to end: Benny has sprouted a tooth. And he is thus, if traditional tribal wisdom is to be believed, ready for solid food. Non-tribal sources (i.e. pediatricians) have told us that technically we should wait until the six month mark before attempting anything other than breast milk, but the fact that Benjamin physically wrestled a ripe red Anjou pear from Catalina's hands the other day in a desperate attempt to get it into his mouth suggests that, as usual, he occupies an unusual place on the statistical curve.

Childcare Complexity has suddenly shot up by an order of magnitude. There used to be a single alimentary decision variable. It was called t, for time, and the optimization routine boiled down to deciding if the the Creature should eat now or later. The consequences for guessing wrong were nil, of course, since if we flubbed the estimate, Moosco would let us know, with his usual ear shattering tact. But overnight, it seems, the number of variables has skyrocketed. Suddenly we need to calculate not just when, but what, and how much, and in what ratios. We need to worry that if he eats too much X, perhaps he won't get enough Y, with all the associated unknowable but uniformly terrible consequences for the long term development of his pineal gland or his mordant wit.

Perhaps we worry too much. Do I really need to devote several days to writing an object oriented linear program that taps every NIH nutritional database to devise an optimal fruit-to-starch ratio for Chupo's first three months on food? Probably not. Especially as, for the moment, he is really still eating only breastmilk. (Mashing a half inch of ripe banana into a gooey paste and inserting pea-sized portions on the tip of our pinkies is what we're calling the Supplemental Feeding these days.) But let us give the paranoid imagination its due: soon, he will be onto things that are bad for him, like ice-cream and animal crackers, at which point suddenly we're playing the discipline game. And at his rate, I imagine it won't be too long before he'll be vying with me for my own favorite things, like tenderloin and hefeweizen, at which point I'll need to remind myself of what it means to be a team player who shares limited resources (getting married was the first time I was introduced to this painful exercise.) So it seems that starting on solids is rife with consequences. We lose peace of mind, we gain messier diapers: we start down the path toward Parenting Proper, au sense plus noir du term, where the talk will soon be of limits, sharing, balance and principles. Did I sign up for this?

I feel a bit like Faust on the day the Devil returned to claim his soul. Oh. So this is what you meant by "coming due." Or like Bob Bigelow the Aging Sloshball Champ, who bought himself a Truck over there at Fast Freddy's Whee(d)ls, no-money down, but that was August, and now it's February, and those once fat $400 bi-weekly checks from nights at the Fry Guy are looking leaner and leaner. Hmph. So that was the fine print, eh? Oh, cruel fate. Let the days of Sticky Pooh begin.