Authors Note: To all of my new dietitian friends, please stop reading immediately. I am about to reveal the dirty ugly truth about breakfast in our home. Please come back in a day or two when I share strategies for idyllic two year-old behavior for long stretches of time away from home. Or something scintillating similar to that anyway.
The Breakfast of Champions
Breakfast at our house is an on-the-go event. It always tends to get pushed to the one-foot-out-the-door priority and unfortunately I haven’t found a microwavable Denver omelet that comes in a Disney Princess package that my 2 y.o. would agree to eat in the car as we shuttle off to day care.
Sometimes I manage to get up a little early and make her some muffins or biscuits. That’s rare. The sad news is that the bloom is off the rose for Fiber One granola bars. So lately I’ve been buying frozen waffles in the Cinnamon Toast variety. You know the Let Go My Eggo ones that you can tear apart? Goodness no, I don’t give her syrup in the car. She is unaware that the rest of the world consumes them drenched in mapley goodness. She likes them fresh out of the toaster and torn into quads. I feel only slightly better that I am in fact giving her a “hot” breakfast as we frantically load up the car. I think Kellog’s got my back and shoves some vitamins in with all the preservatives anyway…
All fine and good except for the day that I discovered the box was dry. And of course that’s all that she wanted. NOTHING else was acceptable. It was destined to be one of THOSE days as she was also wearing a eclectic collection of wardrobe pieces that not even Stacey London from What Not To Wear would find humor in. That’s because mommy picks her battles and clothing is not one of them anymore. I choose personal hygiene…
After the initial shock of no waffles in the freezer, plan B hit me like a lightning bolt and I quickly thanked my lucky stars that we actually HAD bread. A rarity in our house. But we did. So I told Princess that she was in luck and that we could make REAL CINNAMON TOAST.
Her ears perked up.
“Real cimmon toast?”
“Yes, REAL cinnamon toast. And you can help Mommy.”
Tears instantly over. She dragged her step-stool over to the prep area, scrambled up and eager awaited her cooking lesson.
I popped a piece of multi-grain bread into the toaster oven and while it was doing its magic, grabbed the spray butter (we only use the fake stuff) and the ground cinnamon and the – gasp – real sugar.
Ding! Bread ready. I sprayed the “butter” (or whatever it really is) liberally and got out a spoon.
As soon as I started to dip the spoon into the Tuppperware full of sugar, Princess caught on and snatched the spoon away from me. “NO, I DO IT,” he favorite four words. Then tossed aside my spoon as she dug around in the drawer for a pink spoon – of course. Cinnamon toast just doesn’t taste right unless you use a pink spoon.
I showed her how to sprinkle the sugar onto the toast, and she proceeded to dump several teaspoons onto it. After knocking most of it off, I reached for the cinnamon and showed her how to sprinkle again.
Two-year-olds do not have the gentlest touch when it comes to sprinkling and it had several patches that were completely saturated with cinnamon. I managed to shake it around a bit so that it was more evenly spread.
Tah-dah! A beautiful four ingredient meal. “All done! There you go. Try it.” I waited with baited breath to see if she’d eat the cinnamon since she used a quarter of the can. I did not have a Plan C.
She took a bite. Then another. Then another. Then she said…
“Where mommy’s?”
Excellent point – and that’s how it started. She made one for me too that morning. And then this past weekend, she made breakfast for me, Daddy and herself.
So that’s how we roll at our house now. Toast by toddler.
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