Mom Interrupted: A little sugar won't hurt you

Eighteen years ago this month, I was planning my first-born child's first birthday party. Ever eager to do the right thing, to be the perfect mother and in essence repudiate everything my own sainted mother had done in raising me and my four siblings to relatively perfect health, I planned the party down to the nth detail, especially down to the cake.

Of course, the classic first birthday scenario is the Honored Guest plowing her face into a piece of first birthday cake (and to my neophyte eyes, thus resulting in Baby's First Eating Disorder) and I was determined to not be classic but to be, instead, Perfect, and hold fast to the vow I made the first time I gazed upon The Spectacular Wondrousness That Was My Daughter: she would never, ever, ever eat refined sugar.

Not for her, a life of random food tossed onto her highchair. No driving through fast food! No! I would do Research, and know exactly when to introduce which foods and to never, ever, ever let her near a peanut. And I would be the Perfectly-Researched Role Model and I would never, ever touch that junk again, either.

For a person who had cut out all sugar I sure was hyper.

Of course, by the time I was gazing upon all that Spectacular Wondrousness, I had already blown this in a big way. During my pregnancy, which had spanned the single-hottest, most-airplane-melting summer on record, I was practically mainlining fully-sugared lemonade and I wasn't even holding out for anything like fresh-squeezed...no, like a true junkie I was all about the speed and the convenience and hitting the frozen food aisle at the grocery store and sucking down concentrated high fructose corn syrup.

So by the time she was born The Spectacular Wondrousness That Was My Daughter had already ingested enough refined sugar to equal the entire annual gross output of Jamaica and the game was, essentially, over.

Oblivious, I carefully researched my options and, rejecting all mass-produced, overly-sweetened concoctions, I settled on a recipe from one of the then-widely-accepted baby-parenting bibles that promised a fruit-studded, fruit juice-sweetened confection that TSWTWMD would just love.

Except she didn't. Despite my careful adherence to the ingredients and the instructions, the cake was rejected by TSWTWMD and every guest. Even The Spectacular Wondrousness That Was My Dog turned his nose up at it, fruit studs and fruit juice be damned.

My sainted mother's comment, reviewing the cake and my fruit-studded, sugar-free pantry: "Doesn't anyone eat Oreos anymore?"

Somewhere between The Wondrousness' first birthday and today, I pretty much gave up. It's a lot of work serving as the Guardian of the Portal to Spectacular Wondrousness, especially when there are several other little SWs running around. That, and they introduced dark chocolate M&Ms, which is clearly a sign from Heaven saying that they've added an 11th commandment: Thou Shalt Consume Hershey Products.

The TSWTWMD grew up to be valedictorian and student body president, and so, coupled with the knowledge that Michael Phelps is controversially endorsing Frosted Flakes, I have to conclude that a little sugar won't hurt ya.

But a hyper vigilant mother just might.

Ahwatukee Foothills resident Elizabeth Evans can be reached at elizabethann40@hotmail.com. Her column appears monthly.