Hip Hip Hooray!

Growing up at our house, food was your own responsibility for the most part. My mom provided regular dinners and otherwise the cupboards had ample supplies for you to get your own breakfast and make your own school lunch. (I liked the independence, but I grew sorely tired of PB&Js after first grade, lemme tell you.) Anyhoo, the point is that whatever food was available in the fridge and cupboards was up for grabs. Except for the unspoken rule: nobody touched the baby’s food. It didn’t matter who the baby was—there was always one or two lying around. And since the rest of us could eat anything in the cupboard, but babies can only eat specially-made colored goop in jars and those Arrowroot cookies , the food purchased especially for the baby was sacred.

Oh sure, every now and then one of us would sneak a jar of baby food (I LOVED the banana stuff, and some of the other weirdos in my family liked that apple flavor. Nobody touched the carrots) but for the most part, the baby food was left for the baby. Except, on very special nights when my mom was just too tired to feed us anything else, we got to eat…baby cereal!

I honestly have no idea what it’s really called. No wait, I just looked it up. They call it Rice Cereal. How very generic of them. Officially, it’s called “Gerber Rice Cereal for Baby”, otherwise known as baby cereal. And man, is that stuff magical.

We ate it with sugar and milk like any other boring, bland cereal and the texture was just too fun for words. It’s mushy and mixy and just fun to play with. I loved it then and still love it now. Whenever I’m sick or snackish or have a stomach-eating bacteria that curbs my appetite and makes me nauseous, I can count on baby cereal to be there for me. Loving me. Filling me up with bland mush that sits satisfactorily on my stomach without making me want to throw up. Three cheers for baby cereal!