I am baking at the moment. I was craving sugar to such a degree that I behaved like a pig and creamed together ridonkulous amounts of butter-sugar-cream-flour-eggs to make a cake. And I added pomegranate too. Let’s see how it turns out. By the time I hit publish, it should be done.

As many of you know, I have a nearly-one-year-old son. He is a lovely baby and has never given me much trouble. Even in his infancy, he had a set pattern while waking up for his feeds at night: it was either 2am, 4am, 6am or 3am, 5am, 7am. (Plus or minus 15 minutes at the top of the hour.)

He doesn’t have issues taking a bath. He is generally nice around new people and doesn’t yell when we have visitors. He is a total trooper when we travel and doesn’t embarrass me when we fly. (Except when he gets flirty with the stewardess- as flirty as an 11-month-old can be.) Hell, he has never even pooped mid-air!

Nor does he have issues with food, he eats mostly everything now, we haven’t really started him on meat, fish and poultry, but yeah, he pretty much eats whatever we eat.

I keep touching wood and thanking the powers above for blessing me with a son who has made my transition into motherhood so wonderful.

Except that of late, he has started noticing things. Mostly food. And the food he notices is the stuff we do not share with him, like spicy chicken or meat dishes, namkeen, or chocolate. And he makes it a point to make a noise about it (a loud, high-pitched, highly energized one) that is a cross between a scream and a squeal. And that, my friends is a SCREAL.

I only think it’s fair that I too, am allowed to create new words like Tyra Banks does on ANTM. (Smize=smiling with your eyez.)

The screal. It is loud. It is shrill. It bursts forth, short and rapid, and then gains momentum to become longer, more dramatic, until it is finally just a wail. Add to this leg kicks and fist throw-downs and you have yourselves a little food diva! He cannot stand the fact that we possibly have something nicer on our plate. Sometimes, he even throws his spoon. Maybe Gordon Ramsay was like this as a baby.

Have any of you experienced this? Loud little tantrum-y screals because your child is excluded from a certain kind of food?

The first few times, I though ok, let the kid have a little crumb of what I’m having, and I would give him a tiny piece. But now, I just ignore it. I look at my husband and say “No one is going to pay any attention to Raghav. Raghav has eaten his dinner and he does not need to eat food which is not meant for him.”

On one level, perhaps we should not eat any of those things till he is ready to eat it, too. But on another level, I think: he is going to be surrounded by stuff that may be off-limits as he grows up, and he needs to understand that. Everyone can’t have everything. And he certainly can’t screal his way through life.

Even if he wags his finger at people.

Thanks arjun menon for the photo!