Beverage dilemas

I had a crazy 5 minutes today looking at the kids nutrition isle. I had barely stopped at this isle at our local supermarket before. Vivaan has a staple of his milk based products that I buy for him usually, which is essentially Pediasure and Nido. That choice by itself shows a little bit of neurotic me, since I have not been able to figure out what exactly am I looking for in terms of pre-schooler nutrition. So I basically picked the top two where I saw the best nutrition information when this pre-schooler was a toddler, and I have stuck to them ( yes, I mix the two !). 

Now, that he has crossed the 2 year mark, I tend to stop and ponder at the kids nutrition isle and just goggle at the vast expanse that is this isle. Name any flavor and any combination of nutrients and you can find it here. Its mind boggling actually. The staples that we grew up on, Complan and Horlicks etc. have undergone a make-over with Complan Nutrigro and Horlicks Ninja ! They even make a "Lite" version with low sugar and all. Who would have thunk !!??

There is something with extra calcium for bones and some other for better memory or better brain growth. How the hell does one pick ? Do you actually chose which part of the body you would actually want to focus on for your kid ??? I am still grappling with this.. And don't get me started on the flavors that you can get. From Simple chocolate and Vanilla, now we have "Home style Badam kheer" and "Stawberry icecream" flavors. How is an average indian consumer supposed to choose ?

I had palpitations just looking at this isle, this is more complicated than my tax returns that i need to file by later this month. This isle made me wonder about things that I usually would not spend precious minutes over. I look at this one brand which said "with DHA for brain development", and I think to myself - "Pah ! We never had all that when we were kids, our brains turned out just fine"....Even before I could complete that sentence in my head, I saw this other mom pick up that particular malt beverage for her toddler and now I wondered - "Wait a minute, what if the rest of his generation is on high DHA malt beverage and only Vivaan is missing out on some mysterious brain development that his confused mother could not provide for him".

Do you see how messed up that is??

Then there was this store helper lady who very nicely, came up to me to ask if I needed assistance and I actually looked at her for guidance. I never thought I would see this day when a store helper would help me make my decisions ! Not to sound derogatory or anything and neither am I implying that they don't know their bit. Just that I have always thought of myself who knew exactly what I wanted or at the very least was capable of making my own decisions. Now all the bets are off !

I think she knew my confusion and had probably seen it in many mother's eyes before and slowly suggested that I go by a flavor that I thought my kid would like. Now, this sounds logical but was far from feasible and anyone who is a mother of a 2 year old will tell you so. 

So, I bravely did the next best thing. I made Vivaan stand in front of the isle and pick up the one that he wanted. For a second, he thought I was crazy and wanted to run back to the candy isle, till I told him that these boxes had candies inside them :P. Now Mr. Pre-schooler pondered for 2 seconds and picked up one each of about 7 of them. Obviously "Pick one" had not resonated sufficiently. I put away all of them and re-emphasized picking up a single one. He now picked one up and I was a happy soul again. 

When R heard the entire episode, he found it extremely funny to say the least. He kept saying that I would need to start drinking this in the morning and I kept telling him that it wasn't for me. This went on for a bit till it was milk time for Vivaan in the night and I proudly mixed a bottle of the new malt beverage. 

Vivaan took one sip and spat it out and needless to say that I am drinking a new malt beverage from today.....