1m2aSandbox

All this week Maddie’s been doing some standardized testing in school – the things we hate but have to go through to keep our state funding. And every night when Maddie has me sign her homework folder, I see where it says in big letters: GET TO BED EARLY TONIGHT. EAT A GOOD BREAKFAST TOMORROW MORNING.

And Maddie has said, anxiously, “I need to eat a good breakfast tomorrow!” To which I reply, “Maddie, you always eat a good breakfast.”

“Oh, yeah,” she says, “I do.”

But it’s got me thinking about breakfast, and how for a lot of us it can be a pain in the hiney. How can we feed our kids a hot meal, get them out the door on time, and still get a modicum of sleep ourselves?

I can honestly say that the girls have a hot breakfast almost every single morning – and that on the mornings they don’t have a hot breakfast, it’s most likely a bagel with bacon and cantaloupe or homemade yogurt and granola, not cereal. In fact, the girls eat cereal for breakfast perhaps twice a month.

I’m not saying I’m the perfect mom, but on this front, I’ve invested a lot of research and a bit of effort and think I’ve gotten us to the place where I can have a hot, filling breakfast on the table in 15 minutes or less on a school day. Which, let’s face it, ain’t bad.

So for the next couple of weeks I’m going to come back to this topic as we dive into Fast and Filling Breakfasts.

Tomorrow – the McMuffin, reborn.