Breakfast of champions

It’s no secret. My cooking skills are up there with New Orleans’ elevation level. I decided I needed some true and tried gourmet recipes. So, I started Pinterest stalking. If I stalked you, consider yourself a good cook. (Or a good pinner of yummy looking food).

I made a meal calendar. I listed ALL meals. Breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, desserts… I was going to go BIG! A food revoLUTION!! I was to start TODAY!

I saddled up this morning. I had the determination of a half-starved cheetah with a wounded elephant in my sights. I lured the children into the play room and, when I thought they were encompassed in their game of Conner and Brighton saving Brooklyn, a princess, stuck in the top of the tallest tower (or bunk bed), I tiptoed to the kitchen. I gathered my ingredients with zeal and turned on the stove eyes. I HAD this.

Before I could crack open the dang kitchen DRAWER, in TRAMPLES a HERD of children.

 “MOM is that EGGS?!” asked Brooklyn as she looked at the EGGS in my hand. I didn’t feel the need to answer her question. She obviously KNEW the answer. She can name practically all animals, tell you if it is a mammal, reptile, amphibian, insect, bird, arachnid, etc. and the climate in which they live. She KNOWS what an egg is. BUT, the question, apparently, bared repeating. Again. AND AGAIN.

“YES! These are eggs!”

“MOM! IS that BREAD!?”

I took a very DEEP breath, trying to focus on the task at hand.

“Attention little DARLINGS that I LOVE! Mommy is COOKING us breakfast. On the menu is French 

toast and eggs! NOW, I can’t focus if there is too much noise.”

Boeing thought that a fine invitation to ATTACH himself to my leg. Aggressively. I untangled him best I could, because I was covered in French toast batter; mostly raw egg sliding slimily through my fingers. But, no matter where I PUT Boeing, he CHARGED his way back to his perch on my leg. And NOT meekly. VERY OPINIONATEDLY. And Brighton and Co Co excitedly started dragging my bar stools across the TILE floor. (Nails on a chalk board ring a bell in the uttermost unnerved part of your brain)?

“WOE! WOE! NO moving the bar stools! Let’s put them back. No.. NO! We are NOT climbing on top of the counter. Get OUT of the sink! BRY! BOYS! Boeing, GET off my LEG! Brooklyn, stop crying! I didn’t mean to hurt your feeling by telling you I needed to focus. BOYS! STAAAAAAARRRRRRLIIIIIIINGGGG!!!”

Well. Starling didn’t come in a reasonable amount of time. (He never does). And so, immediately, the fact that I was standing there waving my battered hands at two boys laughing HYSTERICALLY, a bawling Brooklyn, and a baby wailing on my FOOT, became STARLING’S FAULT. For not foreseeing this moment and being on the phone with a client instead of helping me control the masses. (Eh- men are, at this moment, thinking that’s illogical & berserk reasoning. Women are saying, “EXACTLY!”).

I rinsed my hands, drug the boys to the table where I told them to STAY PUT, popped a bottle in Boeing’s mouth, tried to reason with a sniffling broken-hearted 4 year old DRAMA queen, and attempted to rescue the burning eggs and toast.

“I WANT EGGS!!!” Brighton started whining.

“Just a minute baby. Almost ready.”

Something happened. Who knows? Co Co looked at his cup. Brooklyn said she got the middle seat. Never can tell. But Brighton lost it.

“Mamamama I want EGGS….” How he correlated his dire situation to eggs missing from his life, I don’t know.

I dumped the toast on plates, threw eggs at them, put a vitamin, and a chunk of banana on their plates.

“HERE you GO!!” I said shrilly.

“MO-OM?! WHY did you put my EGGS touching my TOAST?! I just don’t LIKE when they TOUCH!”

“I wan-ned a BWOOO pork!”

“I wan CHOC-WIT MI-YILK!!”

I just stood there. I blinked about twenty five times. I breathed in. I breathed out. I held my breath. Then I made a volatile mistake. I parted my lips.

“BROOKLYN SOLICE (pronounced SO-leeece) JOHNSON!!!! YOU say THANK YOU MOM FOR MAKING ME FRENCH TOAST! THANK YOU MOM FOR MAKING ME EGGS! THANK YOU MOM FOR MY VITAMIN AND BANANA! YOU ARE A TERRIFIC HUMAN AND I ASPIRE TO BE JUST LIKE YOU WHEN I GROW UP!!!”

Then I turned on the boys. “YOU SAY THANK YOU MOMMY FOR GIVING ME A FORK. AND YOU SAY, ‘MOMMY MAY I PLEASE HAVE SOME CHOCOLATE MILK WHEN YOU HAVE A SECOND TO BREATHE.”

That obviously made everything better.  

But Starling DID show up, then. When breakfast was ready and all. Not that I let him eat.

“Will you PLEASE cut up their toast for them.” (It wasn’t a question).

Starling scarfed his breakfast and disappeared like shirts at a Mardi Gras parade. Brighton decided he was DONE, so he climbed down from his chair. “I WAN BRY’S!” And suddenly, as Co Co’s hands grabbed Bry’s plate, Brighton was suddenly NOT DONE. In fact, he was RAVISHED. And between the two of them they ate 3 MORE toasts. And just when I finished cooking and made MY plate, Brooklyn decided she wanted more toasts. So I gave her one of mine and had to make a decision. I decided I only wanted one toast and no eggs. I was too tired to eat by that point, anyway.

No sooner had I sat down at the table, a WAIL of horror sounded. I turned to see Co Co grabbing his stomach. He had one of the tiny little plastic chairs that Brighton and him carry around the house, for some ABSURB enjoyment of hauling and climbing, and he’d somehow tripped and the plastic leg had scraped his abdomen in a BIG way.

“Oh my GOSH!” I jumped up and wrapped him up in my arms, trying to get a look at the scrape without freaking Co Co out.

“WHAT happened?” Bry kept asking. “Did you get SHOT?!” Now where in the HECK did he learn about getting “shot”??

“I need BAND AIDE!!” Co Co actually didn’t need a band aide, but I got a ginormous one and stuck it on him just the same. That made everything better.

I got everyone calmed down and settled and FINALLY got to eat. I was GLAD I’d only had the ONE toast left to eat. Since it was COLD, soggy, and nasty.

Starling asked me to update our storage payments for the units we own. Co Co and Boeing were piled up in my bed watching me type on the computer. Brooklyn and Brighton were playing Barbies in Brookie’s room.

My friend came to buy my old camera and I went to greet her at the door. ONLY for her to call to my attention my new couch decorations.

Brighton was feverishly SCRUBBING a spot on the couch saying trancelike, “I gotta cwean dis up. I just weally have to cwean dis up.”

I took a moment to survey my living room. Cinnamon so carefully distributed in a lovely glaze over every piece of furniture I own. And carried on to the fireplace. And little mounds of cinnamon were perfectly centered on EACH of my 4 window seals. I walked to the kitchen. Every single counter had a gleeful little trail of Bry’s cinnamon parade. And in the middle of the kitchen was my giant, formerly full, vanilla extract busted in a cuzillion pieces.

Once I finished cleaning the kitchen. The living room. The CHILD. My extravagant resolve for cooking sunk down with the shards of broken glass at the bottom of my trash can.

We ate cereal for lunch. AND dinner. Tomorrow is a new day. It can’t exactly be WORSE.