Juice Freaks

Yesterday was Moggie's first day of preschool this year. She went last year so I wasn't in the sobbing-for-leaving-my-baby crowd of moms. I dropped her off in her classroom with a few of her friends from her class last year and headed up to the parent orientation meeting. I've been to so many of these meetings that I could really give the speech myself but I still went because I was supposed to. Anyway, in the midst of the carpool procedures, calendar review and curriculum overview, the subject of snacks came up. At this preschool, about once a month your kid comes home with a big bucket and you return it to school the next day filled with snacks for the class. I normally send in stuff like cheez-its, fruit and apple juice or maybe milk. The preschool director was saying that you don't even need to send in juice or milk because they encourage the kids to drink water. There was a lady sitting in front of me and she started nodding and getting all worked up. I could just tell she was a juice freak. You know the type, never give their kids any juice or sugar of any kind. Yet when those kids come to my house I find them raiding the pantry and after they are gone I notice the empty juice boxes hidden around the house. My girls are allowed to drink juice and usually have maybe 4-5 ounces a day. They drink lots of water and enough milk according to their pediatrician. The juice helps my kids with pooping, too. I don't know exactly where I'm heading with this novel and the adult ADD is kicking in, so I'll just say that I am not a fan of overly-restrictive parenting. I'm seeing the juice as a starting point for control freak moms. Oh my, no, Granola Junior doesn't drink juice, it's not healthy and he has a peanut allergy and cat allergy and has to have his ADD medicine only with Fiji because of contamination in the tap water and toxic metals from the plumbing and could you dust and vacuum with a microbial filtering machine before I drop him over uninvited so I can disappear for 4 hours when I say I'm just going over to the organic market for an item I forgot and feed him lunch since I failed to bring anything for him. But please don't give him juice, refined flours, chicken nuggets, peanut butter or anything processed on machinery that ever had a rendezvous with a nut. Also, he's recently developed a possible allergy to wheat and soy. See you in a few!

If you have to give the sort of run-down in the above paragraph, do me a favor and keep your little high-maintenance motherfucker at home. I have a cat, I'm not vacuuming the entire house for your rugrat to come and drop crumbs all over the place and I'm not coughing up a freaking virgin organic lamb for his lunch. I'll give his ass Reese's Cups with a generic apple juice chaser.