Breakfast

When I was growing up, I learned breakfast was the most important meal of the day. I mostly skipped it because my high school day started at 6:30, and I basically rolled out of bed and dashed out the door to arrive on time. In college, I was smart enough to mostly avoid early classes, so I wasn’t hungry when I woke up. When I was teaching, I forced myself to eat breakfast during the morning nutrition break so I wasn’t so hungry by lunch that I’d overeat. But on the whole, I’m still pretty hit-or-miss when I comes to breakfast.

A couple years ago, a mom in Tate’s grade kind of mommy-guilted me about his lunches. I was sending him with standard kid-lunch food. You know, sandwiches, fruit, chips. She told me she noticed how much he admired her kids’ lunches. She sent them with taqueria and other “hot foods.”  I thought it was a little outrageous. But I started sending him with taquitos.

Then last spring, he had the cleft surgery and I was sending him first with thermoses of liquid for snack and lunch. When he graduated to soft foods, bought a normal food thermos and filled it with rice or pasta for him. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that sooner. It’s continued ever since. Some days he still eats sandwiches. But he also takes hot food. (He also has access to hot lunch offered by his school, but he refuses to eat cafeteria food.)

All this to say Tate is a bit spoiled when it comes to his food. At least I think so. My older kids don’t want thermoses of food, but I think they secretly roll their eyes at how kind-of high maintenance this seems.

I’m not spending the same amount of time in the mornings making Tate lunch anymore. So now he gets real breakfasts. Like this:

And because I know it matters to Tate, who also announce back in August that he no longer wanted to eat mammals, those are turkey sausages.

Sheltering at Home

A friend’s infant has a diaper rash, and I remembered that I had an incredible cream recipe for it from when Marcie was an infant. So I looked up the post. And that led me back down memory lane, reading some of my posts from a decade(!) and more ago.

I’m so glad I blogged when the kids were young. Those small, everyday occurrences are so easy to forget. Especially if you are the kind of person who tends to focus on big picture emotions. And as the kids have gotten older, of course I’ve been reticent to post because it just feels so much more intrusive to do so.

But this year for lent I decided I’d try to journal every day. My goal was to find one inspirational quote and to write down one thing I’m grateful for each day. And with one exception. (I fell asleep!), I’ve kept up so far. Little did I know my journaling would coincide with a pandemic, which has informed and flavored my attitude and experiences.

I’ve really enjoyed others’ humor about the situation. I’ve read tweets mostly - But in the end, it’s a way to connect. Or at least potentially connect. and I think that craving is pretty universal.

Today I was touched by this video made by Berklee students and posted on NPR:

https://youtu.be/QagzdvzzHBQ


Enjoy!