The blessings of parenthood

My profession is medical laboratory science.  During some nights, part of my glamorous job description is the plating of specimens, which refers to inoculating plates with various bodily fluids, solids, and occasionally, ground up chunks of tissue.  Plating a stool specimen involves streaking it on 6 plates and three broths.  I've plated liquid stools, rancid stools, fatty stools, multicolored stools, and at least once, a hairy stool.

As a result, when I make the following statement, I speak from experience with some of the nastiest biological products in the world.

Baby cereal may be the most disgusting colloid on the face of God's green earth.


I would rather do a half-dozen of the most disgusting specimens I've ever set up, than try to cram a helping of liquefied rice into a baby's mouth.  The main difference being at least I don't have to watch stool coming out.  Cereal:  not that nasty looking.  Baby drool:  kind of cute.  Cereal + Baby drool=incredibly disgusting.  It looks like mycobacterial synovitis.

PPD time!

Our beagle will not touch the stuff.  He didn't even give it a test lick.  This is the same beagle who, in the first four months in our family, ate and expelled from both ends the same chunk of 24-year old couch cushion at least once a week, usually twice.

The worst part is the yield.  For every time the same spoonful of cereal goes in, approximately 5% is actually consumed.  I have not seen this kind of inefficiency since organic lab.

I have come to the conclusion that babies should be born both potty trained and eating solid foods.