Chicken Nuggets and French Fries: Confessions of a Mother and a Chef
Like every other mother, I think I'm the worst mom ever. From the moment I learned I was pregnant, I was bombarded by parenting articles and the opinions of strangers outlining all 4 million ways I would likely fail at being a parent. Some standouts:
Finding out after my baby shower that almost everything I had registered for was WRONG. Consumer Reports released a study one week later that almost all car seats were completely unsafe, meaning I had to return the one I got. Two weeks after that, we found out that all our gifts that had been manufactured in China were more than likely covered with lead. Also, by unwrapping these gifts, I may have exposed my son in utero to microscopic levels of poison! I didn't even have the baby yet and already I'd screwed up!
Learning shortly after Atticus' first birthday of the existence of BPA, meaning that while I thought I was doing the right thing by feeding my child from a bottle, I was actually poisoning him…again. Now every night after he falls asleep, I scour his torso for possible tumors, or the beginnings of additional limbs.
Hearing from other mothers that I totally brought the BPA thing on myself because I didn't breastfeed. There's no excuse for the fact that I had debilitating post-partum depression, requiring me to be on heavy doses of anti-depressants. I certainly could have tried harder and maybe bought a copy of "The Secret".
Having Newsweek point out in a 2009 cover story that my baby could be racist. By the time this was released, Atticus was 2 and Toby was almost 1, meaning that it was far too late to introduce racially sensitive crib toys or Baby Oprah DVDS. I was planning on raising them to be good kids who respect everyone, but now only time will tell if I have the next David Duke on my hands.
Being chastised by a mother in Prospect Park for letting my boys play with toy cars, because it's very important for them to play with "gender neutral" toys. I just let my kids play with what they want and make their own decisions about what they like, but it's possible my lack of micromanagement could keep them out of Princeton. Also, they don't seem to have any "black" or "brown" cars, so maybe that's saying something about me that I wasn't aware of.
One thing I would NOT fail at, however, was establishing the best possible eating habits. As we all know, before you have children, it is totally ok to judge other people on the crap their kids eat. I mean, seriously- chicken nuggets? Fish sticks? FRENCH FRIES?!?! Savages. With two chefs as parents, there was no way our boys would ever become "those kids". No, our boys would be ordering from the adult menus and eating from our plates as we made our way through New York City's sprawling culinary landscape. We would begin them on pureed organic vegetables seasoned with bare hints of toasted spices from underdeveloped nations, then move them to soft cheeses produced in the Hudson Valley. By the time they reached preschool, their lunchboxes would be a veritable cornucopia of worldly artisanal delights.
Sure I may have occasionally forced them to watch Days of our Lives because I was desperate to hear the sound of adult voices again, or let them put their fingers in their mouths without soaking them for ten minutes in Purell, or made them listen to Clutch on loop in the car because if I heard "Wheels on the Bus" one more time I was going to drive us off a cliff. But when it came to food, the Robicellis were going to DOMINATE like parents of the goddarn millennium.
Now here's the funny thing about kids - you think before they're born that parenting means you have total influence over them and the decisions they will make. For some reason, you are actually dumb enough to believe your children will not have any sort of free will. You also, for some reason, have not been informed by anyone that the human brain is apparently hardwired with the directive to seek out and consume massive amounts of French fries. And I have near scientific proof of this fact: my own children.
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