My Baby Ate Ghost Pepper Powder

Where do I pick up my mother of the year award?

Jessica Delfino

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Here’s a new one! Anyone read Bringing Up Bebe? Well I did, and ever since, I’ve had these unrealistic, romanticized, French ideas of me and my infant son baking together. Am I on another planet or what?

So yesterday, in my ongoing attempt to keep him entertained and educated at home, I decided, ok, today is the day we are going to start baking together! We are going to make almond shortbread cookies, and he is going to help, because he loves plastic stacking cups and I think this will make him happy — to play with measuring cups and get a sensory boost from touching baking materials. Raw eggs and babies, what could go wrong?

I lead him into the kitchen, he is trailing behind me. I walk to the sink in front of him and wash my hands, singing a song I made up on the spot about how we wash our hands before we bake, because my entire life is sung to an improvised soundtrack now, like I’m in a real life Broadway show called “Mom! The Musical”. He stops at the spice rack lazy Susan to give it a spin. Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe Susan isn’t lazy; maybe she’s just tired?

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Jessica Delfino

I write about life with 1 husband, 2 kids, 1 cat, sometimes funny. Instagram.com/JessicaDelfino Bylines: TheNew Yorker, The NY Times, The Atlantic, McSweeney’s.