We're pretty sure this mommy lives in a lovely gingerbread house.

Money was pretty tight when my little one was a baby (what?? new parents who were broke? Say it isn't so!). My husband had this tradition of ordering me a box of pears every year from one of those catalogs that specializes in the really good fruit. So if you get pears from them, it's like every pear is a work of art for your tastebuds.

Anyway, I got these pears that first year, when my baby was almost a year old. We really couldn't afford it, but my husband thought I needed a treat. Frankly, I thought so, too. It had been a tough year. I never had a minute to myself, the baby still wanted to breastfeed all the time, he hardly ever slept, and I wanted something that was just plain MINE.

So I didn't share my pears with him. They were my present, darn it! And they were expensive! HE wouldn't be able to savor and enjoy them the way they deserved!

I wouldn't take bites of the pears -- I liked to cut slices off them. That left a pretty fat core, with plenty of fruit left on it, and I would give that to my baby. I know, I know -- Mommy eating the meat and throwing the baby the bones. But it gets worse.

One day I turned away for a minute while he was contentedly gnawing away at a core. When I looked back again, the core was GONE. I looked everywhere -- under his highchair, in corners where it might have rolled away. It never turned up. He HAD to have eaten it.

To this day I have no idea how the boy who was still gagging if the bananas weren't mushed up enough managed to down an entire pear core -- seeds, stem, and all -- without so much as making a face.

But I did start sharing my fruit with him after that.