A few days ago, Mr. Wonderful and I were at the grocery store, picking up a few things to get us through the weekend. As we strolled through the dairy aisle, he put eggs and biscuits in the cart, saying that with all the kids at home, it would be nice to have breakfast together this weekend.
During the school/work week mornings go at a pace just short of a frenzy. The first round of alarm clocks goes off before 5:30, the first round of waking up kids at 6:00, and the first carpool run leaves the driveway at 6:30. To have an organized meal on these days would require an even earlier wake-up, and since we value sleep here as much as food, grab-and-go breakfast during the 30 minute commute to school has become the norm.
Our kids go to “academically advanced” schools, and they work really hard (4 years of Latin hard). Harder than Mr. Wonderful and I ever dreamed of working in high school. (OK, harder than we worked in college, but don’t tell the kids that.) They make good grades, stay out of trouble, and basically, do what we ask of them. So when we have the chance to do so, we like to let them have some latitude.
Which brings me to breakfast.
We never eat breakfast together anymore. I mean, hot breakfast, served at the table. (Don’t call social services yet on me… we have lots of food in the house. As I write, Mr. Wonderful is whipping up waffles for The Little Guy.) He and I have had coffee, and Slick is still up in his room, either still sleeping or playing Xbox quietly (so we don’t know he’s awake and demand that he come down for breakfast). The Trailblazer spent the night out, so that chair’s empty, too. I guess the eggs and biscuits will have to wait for another day.
The Little Guy LOVES waffles. (Please no comments about the nutritional value of waffles. I'm aware. But he likes 'em.)
Maybe we’ll have breakfast for dinner. I can usually get them to show up for that meal.
P.S. Look what Mr. Wonderful did while I was writing. This is why I call him Mr. Wonderful!
Lisha Writes 
He is Mr Wonderful and that is the beginning of a happy family. God Bless!
Why, thank you! I wonder what he calls me to other people????
I’ve been the primary breakfast provider since Sarah was born over 13 years ago and Cindy’s work day began at 6AM as a hospital nurse. There are too many children that have no breakfast before they make it to school. I will take the “lovetritional” breakfast over the nutritional breakfast as having a more far reaching benefit for my child every time.
I’m with you, my friend! Pop Tarts and Gogurt get us going lots of days!!
Amazingly I do cook breakfast on weekends. Francesca is not much of a egg girl. She will only eat like a few bites of scrambled so I cook the kind we like. Figure she will make up that 3 bites of protein somewhere else. She will eat the bacon and toast. Today I had to work and missed cooking breakfast for them. I like it now more than I did years back. Maybe cause I get up with the Amish. We do eat dinner together her and I even when he is out of town and all of us when he is in town. Fast food is a every now and then thing with us. Our generation was raised eating together and I vowed to do it with my family. Keep up the good work. They will remember the good dinner table conversations.
Eug
I think if we all got ready at the same time I’d probably feel differently about it. So we do the best we can with the crazy life we live!
I have never had a problem with serving Logan waffles for breakfast – or for dinner, for that matter! (There was even a short period, soon after I had been newly-bachelorized, where I actually ate Peanut Butter Crunch for dinner – that’s a bit more problematic though, and it only lasted… a week?)
I really wanted to comment on giving your kids the latitude you mentioned – one thing we learned over the years, is that Logan (who is now 19) performed so much BETTER when we didn’t try to force anything on him. The leeway made him feel like he had SOME control in his life, which was apparently a lot more important to him than we realized early on. That little tidbit I learned courtesy of Dr. Fontanelle. 😉
Love Dr. Fontenelle. His book “How to Live with your Children” is my other Bible. 🙂
We have a similar morning routine which will probably get worse when K starts (7:50A start time). At least some kind of breakfast is served at the new school following ‘radio taisho’ (Japanese morning exercise routine). But I grew up with working parents, too. I figure having a sit down, hot dinner in the evenings is one way to make up for this. A colleague of mine with 3 daughters (all grown up) always made time for the family meal, a time for everyone to discuss their day or what might be on their minds.
Oh, and waffles–a favorite here, too. I get frozen wheat or quinoa ones as a way to sneak in more fiber and other nutrients (quinoa pomegranate?). Nothing wrong with waffles or biscuits (yummy!). They just need something to fuel them until lunch, right?
Yes, those are supposedly “healthy” waffles. And I can usually tag some yogurt with it, but rarely fruit. But if he ate well now, we’d have one less thing to argue about when he’s a teenager, and what would be the fun in that??? 🙂