Sweet Potato Queens and Foofs

I love the Sweet Potato Queens. I do. I think Jill Connor Browne is very funny, even though at least half of what she writes is completely inappropriate and not worthy of my time. I am aware of this and I have not read any of her work for several years. Consider her my guilty pleasure- like Superbowl ads, and CNN2 or The Weather Channel are for some other people. In one of her books, Jill talks about how much she loves Deviled Eggs (I know! Eww gross, right?) Anyway, she says she loves to eat them but they are WAY too much of a pain to make "her own self". Her solution to this quandry, is to periodically make the rounds until she can find someone who already has some made up or else will make some for her. It is so lazy and yet, I see the merit of this slacker strategy when I have to, say, change a diaper for the four millionth time in a week or something needs to be ironed. Once upon a time, Little Mommy(9) found this slacker approach particularly satisfying when it came to "Foofs".

"Foof" is the term Little Mommy(9) used (when she was Little Mommy(18m)) for "bubbles". The reference is obvious if you had ever seen her trying to blow bubbles with the little plastic wand from the bottle. She would try over and over again but all she could manage was, "Ffffffff!"- hence, the name. Going "Fffffff!" directed the air from her mouth straight down her chin and almost never resulted in bubbles wafting away on the breeze. She became so frustrated with the whole process that I eventually got out the oscillating fan and showed her how to hold the bubble wand in front of it so that the fan did all the work. The result? A happy 18 month old who requested we play Foofs every single day for nearly three months, and a mom who was not passing out from hyperventilation due to blowing bubbles for 2 straight hours every time, while being pregnant with Bubba(6).

The reason I was reminiscing about Foofs today is that Muhloo(7m) discovered her own version of bubbles this afternoon. She is starting to switch over to baby food and she's pretty excited about it. The trouble is that she also gets bored with the repetitive motions of scoop, open mouth, swallow, repeat. In response to the tedium, today she came up with a way to mix things up a little. She figured out that if she waits to baby-babble right when the spoon is just about to go into her mouth, it blows bubbles in the sweet potatoes and effectively sprays them EVERYWHERE. She wouldn't talk to me when the spoon wasn't at her lips. It was like she was speaking into the microphone. I thought maybe she was not hungry and was therefore more interested in playing with her food than actually eating it. NOT SO. When I tried to gently remove the food items from in front of her, she had a huge fit because she was still hungry, apparently. She just happened to be hungry AND entertaining herself with her lunch at the same time. (Is that a problem?) By the time her interest in eating had dwindled, I had sweet potatoes all over my face, shirt, pants, and hands. Her clothing was remarkably clean, come to think of it. (Maybe I ought to do the rounds and see if someone else in the neighborhood has a hankering for feeding babies?) No, on second thought, I would much rather enjoy this experience "my own self". Getting to be in the stories of The Sweet Bubble Queens and the people who hang around them is so much better than anything Jill Connor Browne has to say. I love being a mom. What more is there?

Photos: "5/19/07 Baby Shower Food" by Nodame; "Untitled" (Bubble Wand) by TeraRoop11; "Deviled Eggs for Easter Dinner" by Tojosan. All photos found on Flickr.com. Incidentally, I had a hard time finding a deviled egg picture that wasn't copyrighted. How weird is that? There were like ten zillion of them but they were all exclusively copyrighted. This is one bizarre cyberworld we live in.