I spent the night with a good friend and her three kids last night, ages 5, 4 and 9 months old. The baby couldn’t have cared less when I left the room (besides his mom was holding him), but the older two went into full alert mode the instant I disappeared into the guest room and shut the door behind me. They’d already had breakfast and I’d been waiting for a break in the morning momentum to sneak in and have mine. The instant the zipper slid open on my bag of Cherrios, they caught the scent and the game was up. I’d barely settled on the side of the bed with my horde and in they swooped. Two sets of big brown eyes eager to be sharing. “What’s that?”
“This is my breakfast.”
“Yeah, but what is it?” I thought hard and tried to turn the tables. “Didn’t you guys already you’re your breakfast?”
“Yep. But we didn’t have that,” she said pointing at the bag in my hand. “What is it?”
“Multi Grain Cherrios.”
“Oh.” Her little brother sat down close to me on the edge of the bed, eyeballing the bag. “Would you like a bite?” I asked him. That’s all it took, the three of us went through the bag like crazed piranha. I was still hungry and knew there was a small bag of fruit snacks still un-opened in my back pack. I also knew my cover was blown. So I brought those out and we snarfed them too.
I have to say their mother has does a fine job with these little ones. The evidence; while we were playing PRETEND breakfast an hour earlier, the little girl asked me what I wanted for breakfast – she was cooking. Of course I wanted chocolate cupcakes with creamy chocolate frosting. She looked hard at me for about three beats with something near horror racing behind her eyes, “you can’t have that for breakfast!”
“Why not?” I asked her, “you said I could have anything I wanted and I want chocolate cupcakes.”
“Well,” she pointed out very matter of factly, “that’s dessert and you can’t have dessert for breakfast.” She’s obviously never had breakfast at my house – boy, wouldn’t she be in for a surprise?! “Oh, well in that case, I’ll have pancakes.”
“Sorry, you can’t have pancakes either.”
“But pancakes are breakfast! Why can’t I have pancakes?”
“Because you have to have turkey and rice and vegetables – here you go.” She handed me a plate colorful Legos and went back to her ‘kitchen’. How do you like that – even in make believe I can’t have what I want. Guess that might be why sometimes we really do have dessert for breakfast at my house! Vegetables for breakfast, hmmmpfh. Only in omelets, breakfast burritos, or on the side as hash browns Little Sweetie!