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Full Moons and Safety Glass

Full Moons and Safety Glass
Balancing money, time, self, and family
About AmandaS


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April 14, 2008
Last Signed In:
November 15, 2009
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AmandaS - > Full Moons and Safety Glass
Party On
In the past two weeks, I’ve been to two kid’s birthday parties.  Truthfully, one of the parties belonged to my oldest whom just turned five (sob). She had a joint birthday party with one of her preschool friends, so if you count the “family only” Chuck E. Cheese festivity, the count is really three. I’m looking down the barrel of two more by the end of the month.

Don’t get me wrong, I love watching the kids run around acting crazy and shoving their faces with cake and other assorted refined sugars. They run around and wear themselves out to the point that you aren’t sure they’ll ever wake up. Last year, Ava got so worn out at her pirates/princess party at the Fairytale Town castle, she literally passed out in the car on the drive home.

It was awesome.

I have also been known to don the over-the-top badge when planning parties for my own children. I can prove this. I have pictures. I know I am not alone in my over-the-topness. I do, after all, have friendships with other mothers.

Anyway…all of this celebrating led me to an observation. The food that kids love to scarf up—the cotton candy, cake, taffy, sweet cereals, fruit punch—is all totally disgusting. 

Now, I am not a purist parent when it comes to food. Yes, my girls ate mostly organic the first year or so, organic-only dairy is the usual practice in our house, and we eat plenty of vegetables and brown rice. I feel a certain sense of pride that my girls will both say—unprompted—that their favorite dinner is chicken, rice, and broccoli. However, I do believe that “everything in moderation” is important. I don’t want my girls to end up like a college friend of Paul’s—her hippy parents never let her watch TV.  Once she got to college she would spend eight hours a day watching re-runs of The Jeffersons and Love Boat.

That said, my kids have never had soda, Coco Puffs, or Bugles. I have been known, however, to drop a little red food dye in organic yogurt to make it look more like the sickening yogurt cups marketed to the under 10 set. I have also taken the easy way out more than once and given them the 100% fruit CapriSuns. Heck, I’ve even given them real CapriSuns and used M&Ms to help the potty training process along. I have even fed them frozen mini-pancakes, fruit snacks in the shape of Scooby Doo, and Otter Pops. In the past month, I have watched them consume cotton candy “flavored” ice cream and Doritos at birthday parties. (I tried a taste of that ice cream, and truly, it was barely edible)

Judge if you will, I can take it.

For the record, I routinely through away excessive amounts of Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day candy that seems to magically appear in my house.

In spite of my trashcan tendencies when it comes to preschool goody bag booty, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad this weekend. I watched a mom scrape off the frosting of a slice of birthday cake before her kid dug a plastic spork into it. Now, maybe the kid had some dietary restrictions of which I was unaware. I know that in the age of an increase in Type II Diabetes in young children moms have to be really careful about the amount of empty calories consumed.

Still…I felt sorry for the kid. Let’s face it, there is only a narrow window of time where that overly sweet, bright green frosting nastiness actually tastes good. Seriously. The geological half-life on that crap way outlasts the period of time that humans are willing to consume it. Denying kids the experience of enjoying that garbage for the five short years it will be actually be taste-bud appealing seems a little like denying them a trip to the zoo. I mean, you know the zoo is kind of cruel and depressing, but from your kid’s perspective it’s a whole other experience. And really, not even I can imagine a movie without buttered popcorn, the state fair without a corndog, Disneyland without a churro, or a summer vacation without at least one trip to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard. Not every day. Not even every week. Just not never.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to stop by to visit my 25 year-old daughter and catch her shoving Twinkies in her face while watching a marathon of re-runs of Saved By the Bell.

Topics: junk food, eating healthy, kids snacks, birthday parties
posted by AmandaS on Monday, June 8, 2009 at 08:57 PM
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