During the week, our mornings are tough. Some little ones are up at the crack of dawn. I am constantly urging them to sleep longer, come cuddle up. Others do not care to get up at all and would sleep the day away, wrapped up in their comforters and under their mounds of pillows lost in contentment. It’s a struggle to get up, get ready and get three children out of the door. Needless to say, my weekday morning breakfasts are not of a great caliber.
Typically, the children are served a bowl of cereal, a glass of orange juice, sometimes with a side of fruit (if I have my act together) or a bagel or toast if they are having carb overload cravings. That is it. Nothing hot. No protein. No requests. I just can’t manage it. I have friends that perform short order cook duty each weekday morning. They send their troops out of the house only after serving up pancakes, eggs, bacon, egg sandwiches, oatmeal, homemade muffins or whatever the request may be. Not here. I’m kind of a stickler about it. Never going to happen.
However, the weekend is almost the complete opposite. I cherish breakfast time on the weekends. Perhaps, it’s that my husband is home to share the duties and just to make me happy. Perhaps, it’s because we are not in as much of a rush.
We always play music. Calm, happy music. It sets the tone. It helps to establish the mood for the day. When B and A were little, we always danced in the kitchen on Sunday mornings. We still do sometimes.
T is our pancake man. He whips them up every weekend. Blueberry for me. Chocolate chip for the kids. I’m on egg duty. There is oatmeal, if requested. Toast. Bacon sometimes. We talk. We eat slowly. We dance. The paper is out. My son is now fighting my husband for the sports page. My daughters giggle over the comics. T and I have a second to discuss something interesting we may read about.
They are still in their pjs. Their hair is tussled and messy. They are sticky with syrup. Sweet on the inside and out. When I sort their clothes to pass on or save, it’s the jamies that I keep mostly. It’s what they are wearing on mornings like these. They are worn and tight sometimes. Their chubby feet poking out of the bottoms. Always looking a few inches short on my daughter’s long legs. R the only one still in those soft blanket sleepers. The sandpaper scruffy sound of the feet bottoms on the hardwood floors.
Long after everyone’s gone, it’s one of the things I think I will always remember about our children being at home. Those relaxed weekend mornings. The complete yin to the yang of the weekday.
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