Yesterday the mom swung into the kitchen exclaiming, "My fifth child is sucking the life out of me. Literally." She started crying.
For three weeks, the mom has been attempting to get her son off her knockers and onto a sippy cup. I know more about crocodiles than I do children. But I think most kids progress from boobs to bottle to sippy cup. Every time the mom tries to give her baby the cup, he screams like he's being tortured by yetis. She says she's tried everything. Today, she put me in charge of feeding him so she could pick up garters for her daughters. When I think of garters, I think of lingerie and strippers. Her daughters are five and seven years old. I didn't ask.
I plopped the baby on the floor and gave him the sippy cup to play with. He cried when he looked at it. I filled it with formula and sat him on my lap. I sang to him. I kissed him. He screamed. I ate a banana with peanut butter and considered pouring some of the formula down the sink so I could show the mom that he'd drunk some. I'm not the most clean food consumer, and when I resumed the attempt at forcing formula down the seven-month-old's trachea, peanut butter traced my hand. I slathered the sippy portion in peanut butter. For the first time, the baby drank formula. After a half hour, two tablespoons of peanut butter, and one hundred milliliters of fake breast milk, the mom returned home.
"I found a way to make him drink," I announced, holding up the peanut butter jar and a more proud smile than the time I got out of a foreign language requirement in college by claiming foreign language disability.
"My baby ate peanut butter?" she cried.
Note: Kids aren't supposed to consume peanut butter until they're over a year old, as they could be allergic.
The mom watched the baby for the next twelve hours like it might go blind.
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