I am not a morning person. I loathe the first half hour that I am out of bed everyday. I just want to be left alone. My kids do not seem to care that Mommy does not actually become a person until she’s had a shower. They do not leave me alone. Moments after waking they are demanding things from me: namely breakfast.
My husband used to do the breakfast thing every morning with the kids back when he worked evenings. Now that he leaves for work at 6 in the morning, breakfast falls under my purview. Everything was fine until my three year-old ratted my out to my husband about feeding the boys peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast everyday.
“I eat peenbutter sanwich for breakbast!” My husband tried to convince him that he had a “peenbutter sandwich for lunch, not breakfast. He said, “No Daddy! I eat chick chicks and bwacolli for lunch. I eat peenbutter sanwich for BREAK-BAST!” Little man had it right. Mama was smearing some peanut butter on a slice of bread, folding it in half and calling it “breakbast.”
My husband has always been the get-up-in-the-morning-and-cook-the-kids-pancakes-and-eggs sort of guy. He shamed me over my feeding the children sandwiches for breakfast. So I bought a big box of toaster waffles from Costco and we worked with that for the next several weeks. As it turns out I can throw frozen waffles in the toaster in the morning. And Logan loves “rockles.” One day when I was pulling some rockles out of the big freezer to bring inside, I noticed the ingredients. Holy preservatives, Batman! I wanted a healthier option. I tried doing instant oatmeal for a while, but I had no patience waiting for the teakettle of water to boil, plus I had to get the brown sugar out, and after breakfast, I had to clean oatmeal out of the baby’s ears. It was a no-win situation. I finally devised a reasonable solution. I make about 75 pancakes in advance, freeze them in freezer bags, and toast them as needed. It was a bit of a trail and error process, and the first couple pancakes were served partially frozen before I realized that they needed a double toasting.
But now we have hit our stride. We have toaster pancakes with whatever fruit I have in the house for breakfast. It meets the expectations of “breakfast food” by my husband, it’s healthy, and most importantly I can prepare it while mostly still asleep. One thing that was really disappointing for me though, was how much I enjoyed Logan calling his waffles “rockles.” I knew I would miss this when we switched to pancakes. It ended up better than I could have imagined. He calls them “paynk-paynks.”
So if you ever want to come to our house for breakfast, head on over. We will all be in our pajamas, munching on some paynk-paynks.
The (not so) Super Mama 