Competitive Breakfast of Siblings

Breakfast should be as simple as choosing between cereal or waffles. Toast or bagels. Juice or milk. Should be.

Instead, when a relatively routine morning meal unravels into an all out competitive sibling cereal contest (i.e. who has more in the best/worst Bob the Builder bowl, who can cram more Chex up their nose, etc.) like it did this morning, the choices become more about punishment than nourishment, more about shutting down than waking up.

Time out or confiscating a toy. Sending eye booger crusted offenders to their rooms or cancelling the day's play dates. Creamer in my coffee or Bailey's Irish cream. One Advil or two.

Instead of peacefully welcoming the day with a few pleasantly crisp English muffin bites, I desperately inhaled my caffeinated lifeline with a bitter gulp of whine. Whine spit in my face from the wise ass mouths of my babes.

You moms doubling as short-order breakfast cooks like me know all too well what I'm talking about. I give you the following, whether you ordered it or not: (To breathe extra annoying accuracy into the snippets below from breakfast at my kitchen table this morning, please insert your own kid's nasally whining/demanding voice)

"I WANT milk!"
"He has more milk than me! NO FAIR!"
"Not in this cup! I wanted the Buzz Lightyear cup!"
"But he STILL has more!"
"You may have more than me, but mine is better."
"MINE, MINE, MINE!"
"More juice!"
"I want gum, not cereal. Where's MY gum?"

Next, the discord escalates from verbal to physical.
"He threw a Kix ball at me!"
"She pushed my cereal bowl!"
"He dumped his milk on my chair!"
"I'm gonna' pull those staples out of your boo boo if you keep doing that!"

Between demands and complaints, I punctuate their every command/cut down/complaint with, "What's the magic word?" and "How do we ask like a gentleman?" and "We use our words, NOT OUR HANDS!"

Oh, and "Get your face outta' that cereal bowl. We are not a dog!"

Whining. I HATE whining, unless I'm the one doing it. Especially when I'm trying to jolt myself awake with hazelnut flavored black sludge.

Remind me again. I forgot. What's the "best part of waking up?"

Hey, wait, am I the one whining again right now? Smacks of the classic "Do as I say, not as I do." Whatever.

Bottom o' the mornin' to ya.