For a while now I’ve been working on an article called, “Things I Swore I’d Never Do Before I Had Kids, That I Now Do On A Regular Basis.” It’s amazing how judgmental you can be of parents before you have kids. It was so easy to sniff and say, “Oh, I’d never let my kids watch so much TV” — that was before I tried to get dinner prepared with two starving, screaming kids holding on to each leg, and all I wanted was to be able to boil some spaghetti in peace for 15 minutes. Or, “I’d never let my kids eat junk food” — that was before they managed to go 30 hours without eating anything, so we were thrilled to have them finally agree to put some Kraft Dinner and Smarties in their mouth. Now it’s all about doing whatever the hell it takes just to stay alive.
Oh, I can hear you childless people out there giving me the “Tsk, tsk,” but just you wait until you’ve been stuck at home for five days straight with a sick kid, and you’ve watched The Heffalump Movie so many times you can chant it in your sleep, and you’re so desperate to get out of the house that you risk the grocery store, where fun-loving swingin’ singles give you dirty looks as your child screams in the cookie aisle and you frantically grab for the Teddy Grams to shut him up. You’ll see!
One of the smaller things I swore I’d never do is peel grapes. You can’t give grapes with skin to a toddler, because if a piece of the skin comes off, it’s a choking hazard. I figured, there’s lots of fruit in the world, there is no way I am getting in there with a knife and removing grape skins, what am I, a peon in classical Greece? But when your kid continuously refuses all fruits and vegetables, and you’ve tried everything else in the produce aisle, those grapes start to look pretty good. Anything to be able to tell your doctor at the kid’s next checkup that he eats something other than french fries and Froot Loops.
So now, I not only peel the grapes, I just spent a half hour removing the pits from seedless red grapes. Because “seedless” grapes are not really seed-free, they just have really small, soft seeds that a normal person would not notice, but which a toddler feels are huge, threatening boulders in the middle of their so-called food.
And I guess that’s love. 🙂
TurtleHead 
I remember eating skinny grapes (ie grapes with skins) when I was a kid. I had never heard of this danger of the grape skin…
Yeah, these days the baby books you read are so over the top with the warnings. No grapes with skins, no nut products before age 3, no milk products before age 1, no raisins or anything else bigger than a pea as its a choking hazard. No putting your baby face down to sleep, no more using a walker, no honey before age 2 (really!), no large-size fish, no bagged salads.
I can hear my mom right now saying, “We totally gave you that stuff, and you survived!” But I guess, better safe than sorry.
As a childless person, I can assure you that I totally was not going “tsk, tsk”! I don’t have kids cuz I couldn’t handle it! It’s truly the toughest job out there.
The only time I get upset with people who have a crying child in tow is at movies or fancy restaurants where people have gone expecting peace and quiet. Everywhere is totally fair game. Parents gotta get out, too!