I Gave My Daughter A Muffin

I'm not proud of it. Not at all.

I made muffins the other day (blueberry) as those of you on Facebook may have gathered. While the recipe does not call for a lot of sugar (1/3 cup), it is generally still by my standards considered to be off-limits for Piper. Why? Because when I was pregnant with Heidi I made the decision that for her first year of life, I would not give her anything with added sugar. Of course I gave her fruit and when she was older I also gave her watered-down 100% fruit juice, but if there was sugar or even 'evaporated cane juice' in anything, I would not give it to her. This is partially what started my obsessive reading of labels and my utter disgust with the food industry that hides sugar in absolutely everything. So Heidi literally went her entire first year without any processed sugar, up until her first birthday when I made her cupcakes with half the sugar in them and she had some whipped cream on top.

Of course, I planned on following this same pattern with Piper because I think it is important to start a child off right nutritionally and there may not be another year in her life that is completely free of sugar. Unfortunately, the completion of this task started to seem more and more difficult to me as the months went on because Piper has one very important thing that Heidi did not: an older sister.

I know this has been going on for a while now, but there's a limit to what I can do. Heidi loves to share with her sister (most of the time). I cannot always separate them when Heidi is eating something Piper shouldn't eat, nor do I always see what both of them put in their mouths. So I know that for a while, Heidi has been giving Piper muffin pieces, or at the very least, Piper has picked the crumbs up off the floor. Even if she was getting sugar that way, I justified it by saying that at least I wasn't physically giving it to her. Until the other day.

Piper will be a year old in just a few weeks...the time is near! Maybe that's why I've gotten a little lax, but the other day when I made those muffins, she wanted one so badly it was clearly painful. She saw me give one to Heidi and then when I did not also immediately give her one, she became visibly upset. She cried a little and came after me, hoping to get at least a morsel to satisfy her craving. So, I gave in to my better judgment, picked her up and gave her a piece. And she was happy. Oh well. At least I tried.