The Mommies' Diaries…Parenting, One Blog at a Time.

Breakfast in our house makes me itchy, so of course I immediately consult doctor google and then I’m all BAM!  I have bed bugs or scabies or maybe both. But really, it’s just a scorching case of my picky children.

In my head, breakfast is tv-show ideal. Daddy sits at the table reading the paper, the children discuss very important matters while they eat a full four-course breakfast and drink a glass of milk and orange juice, while I stand, aproned, at the stove, with a frying pan in hand and a smile on my face.

In reality, however, breakfast is a little bit different. Daddy is already at work, the children are only half-dressed and half-awake, and I’m standing braless in front of the coffee maker willing it to move faster and hiding behind my coffee mug, hoping no one will ask me any direct or difficult questions. It’s a beautiful picture, really.

They want nutella sandwiches or cinnamon toast or toaster waffles or sugary cereals and hot cocoa. They do not want the Cheerios that are placed in front of them. Cheerios is a big lie. It does not make anyone cheery at 7:00am in the morning. It just makes everyone grumpy.

So at the beginning of this week, in a moment of pure crazy, I announced the following:

“If I wake you guys up 20 minutes earlier, I promise to cook a well-balanced meal filled with eggs! and fresh fruit! and toast! and pancakes!”

Because, you see, in my head I was so sick of breakfast time. I was so sick of fighting about all the things I didn’t want them to eat and I was sick of hearing that breakfast really is the most important meal of the day when I wasn’t sure if any of my children were actually doing any eating at breakfast — they were doing a lot of arguing and a lot of sitting around and letting the Cheerios get soggy and then complaining that their Cheerios were too soggy to eat.

So I thought. Eggs! Turkey bacon! Fruit! Orange Juice! Pancakes! It’s a more beautiful picture, really.  Isn’t it??

Until I realized that this was basically a glorified punishment for me. Because even though I got to put on a lovely anthropologie apron, waking up  twenty minutes earlier means having to wake up twenty minutes earlier and then waking up all three of my very, very tired children twenty minutes earlier. And then I have to actually, you know, cook said promised breakfast before I am allowed to even attempt to percolate my coffee.

For the past three days I made breakfast. And somehow I’m the only one with a full belly. They didn’t eat the eggs, they didn’t eat the pancakes, they didn’t eat the toast, they didn’t eat the fruit. But I sure as heck did.

And we are all just so tired.

Maybe tomorrow we’ll just go back to fighting over soggy cereal and hiding behind my coffee mug.